tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16455991369569100862024-03-12T17:59:15.883-07:00Friday ThinkingJohn Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.comBlogger361125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-64831409669768299072023-07-08T22:44:00.009-07:002023-07-08T23:42:04.258-07:00Friday Thinking - 7-7-2023<div style="text-align: left;"><b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Friday Thinking, is a playful reflection of the week's pondering moments. </span></b></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><h3 style="margin: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is dedicated to illuminating that the next tomorrow won't be like today's yesterday. </span></h3></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">I've been reading a couple of science-fiction novels lately. 'The Doors of Eden' (2020) by Adrian Tchaikovsky and 'Star Maker' (1937) by Olaf Stapleton - almost a century separates their publication and it's hard to say which is a better account of the 'living possibilities' of vast time-spaces. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">This quote from Olaf Stapleton:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Star-Maker - p.224</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><i>We should not for a moment consider even our best-established knowledge of existence as true. It is awareness only of the colours that our own vision paints on the film of one bubble in one strand of foam on the ocean of being. </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><i>The sense of the fated incompleteness of all creatures and of all their achievements gave to the Galactic society of Worlds a charm, a sanctity, as of some short-lived and delicate flower. </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><i>And it was with an increasing sense of precarious beauty that we ourselves were now learning to regard the far-flung utopia.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">And if we could apprehend our uncertainties. In a way that comprehends our actual context of infinite possibilities, even if we limit our imagination to a concept of a linear-plane of an unfolding. We may come to perceive how indeterminant any existence is. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">and finally -</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">the comprehension -</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">of the sanctity -</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">of life -</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">that arises -</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">with the apprehension -</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">of its precarity -</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">[#micropoem](https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">And it is this indeterminacy, this precarity to change - transformation - that is 'the sacred' of life. No matter the scale with which we measure. Any moment of glimpsing - life's fractals of fragility and our wistful ifs of memory - reveal the form of the sacred. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">This re-calls to my mind Octavia Butler's 'Parable of the Sower' - and her visioning of 'God is Change and we can Shape Change'. Change is irrevocable, implacable, inevitable, unpredictable - and we have agency enough to nudge affordances - to shape experiences. And it is this 'choice-making will' that affords us - the nudging. Of a god - that is not a god - and without a god - the force of a sanctity that is a secular illumination for re-linking a-part to what is beyond parting. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">To end this moment of pondering, I want to contextualize it with another recent science fiction - 'The Ministry For The Future' by Kim Stanley Robinson. This is a magnificent work. Everyone should read it.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Everyone should read all the books I've mentioned.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Ministry For The Future illuminates the essence of the challenge of climate change for humans. For us it is a crisis of consciousness - to grasp and embody the reality that we humans - are one species, on one planet (or ultimately in one solar system, one galaxy - turtles all the way). </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">A paradox of a secular raising of consciousness of the sanctity of our fragile life. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">mhm</div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-45829275083794810292023-03-17T21:48:00.000-07:002023-03-17T21:48:09.164-07:00Friday Thinking - 3-17-2023<h1 style="text-align: left;"><b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Friday Thinking, is a playful reflection of the week's pondering moments. </span></b></h1><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><h3 style="margin: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is dedicated to illuminating that the next tomorrow won't be like today's yesterday. </span></h3></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;">It seems the attractor of my minding this week is the prompt about values as they are embodied in moral-cultural contexts. The way a culture can enable values to constelate in a variety of coherent strange attractors. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I enjoy being able to have some sort of accounting of my own processes - the quantitative-self thing (including the cloud of unknowns it lives in). And maybe this is related to the reality that I've never had so much control over how i am able to structure my time as i choose. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Pondering what "taking measures" means?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I continue to feel, that the analytical metrics of my fitbit dashboard suffers large standard deviations, in the 'sensing-analysis' accuracy of the measures the fitbit, can take to sense my self-enaction.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And then i thought about how, there might be an emotional tone in my day. One that i may not be aware of. And this embodimeants of emotional tone, could be key to measurements it algorithm-I-zes of to determine a rating of stress-level. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The floating-fluctuations of anxieties - like currents generating resistances to the mediums-of-flows - frictions and heat -like imflamation. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And then i remembered my moment - of a glimpse into eternity of - almost one second, of enlightment. Later i could only describe this moment as "resistanceless presense". And now i re-cognize that the moment was a blink of the liberty within "awareness of awareness". </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I was preparing to participate in a conversation of honest accounts about values. This is a somewhat regular-ish effort amongst a group of elder-ish minds - mostly retired intellectuals and professionals. So I've been pondering moral frameworks and how they frame our relations-in-the-world. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I think current marketing - whatever the product - shoes or news - seems to work best by tailoring the 'choice architectures' of any market in ways the enable tuning a repertoire of 'nudges' for shaping narratives. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Watching the news and it's a-mazing to me. Grasping that every compelling narrative has to exude a coherent-rightness, to anyone for whom the moral-framing is used to navigate viable-enough social existence. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And then trying the question: "Is it possible to determine which moral frameworks lead to which types of results - short-term and long-term." That immediately asks another question: "Whether and/or how - other coherent-rightness moral-framing can exist?" </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">It could well be that a socially-embodied moral-frame-space operates a core self-reproducing MEME - a bio-cultural attractor. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">One night this week my 30 neuro-diverse daughter raised an interesting question related to a narrative she uses and develops as a core to her creative career that help her life flourish. The central character - her alter-ego-hero, must save a comrade trapped in a "Dark crystal" - like world (dcw). The question is whether entering the 'other world' would their bodies have to transform to look familiar to the world's inhabitants. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Immediately i understood a concern that if the rescuers did not transform their bodies into local forms, they would horrify the inhabitants of dcw as 'Alien Invaders'. She loves H.P. Lovecraft and this concern seems so normal in that context of a 'Lovecraftian liminal encounter between dimensions'. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">So i let my imagination flow. A sensory-embodied world, with sensory-stimulation protocols enabling response-able, information ecology, as a base condition of re-productive success. The survival of fit ecologies-in-conditions of living. The emergence of cultural learning co-creates a sort-of sensory-shaping field. A meta-protective protocol. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And so what are the choices of an invador's - species-re-productive survival. The challenge should be felt-as-stress by the challenging-invader. When is that stress 'redeemed'? And what protective mimetic-field is needed to structure the social-protocols of agencies for collective response-abilities for evolving survive-ability. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Sensoriums of living systems would be shaped to evolve that can organize viable enough mapping protocols, that in turn enable viable interactions-en-vironments. So the question of how aliens become re-cognized and re-cognize first contact encounters and how they evolve further environments. How do cultural memetic environments perceive evolution enaction? </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">drifting -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">through the cloud -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">of un-knowing -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">moral frameworks - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">socially-constructed -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">sensorial-stimulations - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">organ-eyezed -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">entangled-empirical -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">sense-making-worlds -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">proto-calls -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">fore -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"> aliens-in-a-strange-land -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">[#micropoem](https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Of course an elemental attractor to pondering moral-frameworks is the progressive-conservative, left-right, social-private, collective-individual polarities of moral-political-belief spectrums. And alwasy and everywhere is righteousness. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The challenge of an open mind is finding a foundation for confindence in the right-righteousnees of our observation-and-judgements. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Political Moral Framing</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I wondered about the vigilant and eternal quest of - re-searching for the arc of evolving democracy. Shouldn't the very conception of a democracy inevitably shapes a flourishing of a wealth of diversity. Perhaps increasing growth in the wealth of diversities - each-and-all response-able to evolving and entangled conditions - can provide some useful measures of social-cultural civilizational health. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Pondering Moral Attractors</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I was looking the different constelations of 5 moral values deemed universal (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, purity) that arise when people are asked to rate then. The easiest constelations to imagine are the very liberal vs the very conservative. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">These two constilations also correlate with Democracy vs Patriarchy and Nuturant Parent vs Strict Father Family Models. </span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;">According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory" target="_blank">research</a></span> </div><div>![[Pasted image 20230318001014.png]]</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpcrIb_9fEBal7dFor5SQT2l2F3T5rcsUeJ6wtgg7iITrFz0BiYRrM4HPK0VP_guEvIBZU5fs_JwjLEn6CUdt5P-kDhjOqrbORdgYqiLGsnY-190dKwJ8mJhJ9v0lmu3ohFMegg9II2VBLwO9-ynznc7id8GojGlk8Mq919EYNRDC5IHEBWo4vFXIl" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1540" data-original-width="1542" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpcrIb_9fEBal7dFor5SQT2l2F3T5rcsUeJ6wtgg7iITrFz0BiYRrM4HPK0VP_guEvIBZU5fs_JwjLEn6CUdt5P-kDhjOqrbORdgYqiLGsnY-190dKwJ8mJhJ9v0lmu3ohFMegg9II2VBLwO9-ynznc7id8GojGlk8Mq919EYNRDC5IHEBWo4vFXIl=w669-h640" width="669" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Liberal Democracy weighs - fairness-care as co-equals - with a vital importance. This makes sense, as democracies consider all equal (at least before the law) and thus invites ever developing diversities - welcome. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Conservative governance weighs loyalty-purity-authority - as co-equals - with vital importance within a tight 'center-mass' of reduced importance of care/harm and fairness. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I can't seem to help myself from always drifting into complexity. Thinking of the bio-cultural processes of a metabolic-allostasis or memetic value constelations. The social process of enact-meants of ideological re-production. How the value-relation algorithms have to have a tune-able capacity (like turning knobs to increase-decrease relational statuses) for each value spectrum. And that's exactly what the chart seems to identify - like different cultural value-strange-attractors. Like chords-with-feedback-afford-dancing - melodies. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">This episode of Friday Thinking ends with a wonderful ereka-moment i experienced watching Poker Face with/by Natasha Lyonne - Season 1, Episode 8. In the first episode I thought that Natasha was channeling Peter Falk in his television role as "Columbo" - a low-key rumpled classic 'gumshoe' dectective. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In episode 8 with a brilliant performance of Nick Nolte (being an old Nick Nolte with a fidelity to honesty that only he can convey) illuminated an archetypal - god-like role - of the unplacable, unremiting - confessor. Damming those who don't take the opportunity she offers to embrace the honest accounting of their deeds. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">literally -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">holy-shit - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">poker-face - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">s1e8 - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">'columbo-the-confessor -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">of accounts' - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">brilliance -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">even at its most -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">obvious -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">interio-or-ogations -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" target="_blank">#micropoem</a></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">end of transmission</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">each night -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">i play - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">my small wind -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">chamber - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">of one note - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">another song - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">of multi-dimensional -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">diverse-ariety - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" target="_blank">#micropoem</a></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Last pondering thought. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Pondering my twitter stream. My customized stream - but for who, is it customized? </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And the ghost of my feeling - once ago - of how I felt connected with real people. There was an easy to use stream that actually let me sample and shape enough to stay current with network-communities. Now - it just seems random without easy ways to shape the view of the stream. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">i remember feeling like it was my own sort of personal newspaper. And now Twitter is the future of news. Will it continue to shape us into marketing incanted rational-zombies - dreaming of life-blood. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Then again - there is too much to know - and moore over - there is a moore-to-different phase-transition liminal space - what is on the other side of this phase transition. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Whatever happens we are all anticipating better personal instrument panels for sampling and shaping streams for our entanglemeants and our own stream of experiencing and scheduling of attentions.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">mhm</div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-2281291840387575592023-03-03T20:41:00.004-08:002023-03-03T21:12:36.997-08:00Friday Thinking - 3-3-2023<div style="text-align: left;"><b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Friday Thinking, is a playful reflection of the week's pondering moments. </span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h3 style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is dedicated to illuminating that the next tomorrow won't be like today's yesterday. </span></h3></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: large;">Was watching a Grand Boxing in the WWE-MMA spectacle tradition taking place Saudi Arabia. A big-oil spectacle. And yet i think i smelled or caught a whiff of a sort-of 'Fin de Siècle' atmosphere. Fin de Oil-Siècle - just a few pixels of. And there was something grotesque about this spectacle - past-peak slavishness. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">During another time I pondered - about a point-of-view perspective that is enacted by every part of a living system. Everything alive, every living system - Eats and Shits - something. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">That is how the energy to 'run the system' is harnessed. The self-running system is the measure of the system to be alive. Despite that, being alive, changes the conditions of being alive next - moment. Life is an energy harnessing system. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">The question is: Does this produce more or less energy? Because while energy may balance within some unknowable ultimate boundary that is the whole. But that doesn't work as a construct because it enacts a distraction from a desperate fear that must avoid the possibility of infinity. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">A calculate-able logic starts at the place where there has to be some boundary-bounded space. Whether in the direction of that goes all the way up-down. But I think such enactmeants are unknow-able, because of eternal sensitivity to initial conditions - butterfly-turbulence. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">but that doesn't work -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">because it avoids -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">the possibility of infinity - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">compelling some boundary -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">at spectrum scales -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">future enact-meants -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">are unknow-able -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">because of afford-dances -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">in eternal sensitivity to -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">butterfly-turbulence - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">initial conditions -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" target="_blank">#micropoem</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">And I wanted to get back to the economics of metabolism. That every living thing eats and shits. It metabolizes what it eats to harness the energy released by its own livingness. Does the living system simply rent? Or does it create? The energy released and dissipated throughout what is an entangled living-in-environment-system. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">So what can it mean when energy reservoirs are empty ? </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">And a prime Axiom is that energy is neither created or destroyed. And another prime Axiom that matter is energy - M=E </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">So the only trick is how to rent-surf-shape the dissipation of the energy through living matter. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Re-minded that my thinking of eating and shitting actually paraphrased one of my favorite thoughts:</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The key idea in evolution is survival; yet living organisms, by definition, are dying all the time; they live by dying, which is metabolism.</span></div></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Biological "survival" is a grand, breathtaking, and accurate metaphor, but only a metaphor. Nothing of a gene is surviving in material reality when it reproduces; what "survives" is a piece of abstract information, the sequence {pattern] of nucleotides on the DNA chain [none of the same atoms or molecules]. My liver dies and resurrects itself every few days. It is no more "surviving" than a flame.</span></div></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">A billion-year-old chunk of granite would, if it could, laugh at the lunatic claims of an organism to be "surviving" by hatching eggs, or by eating and excreting. …Yet... there is as much limestone, built from the corpses of living organisms, as there is granite.</span></div></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A mere phantom – a pattern of information – can move mountains.</span></div></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">And if so abstract, so spiritual a thing as that pattern can masterfully determine the structure of large chunks of matter and the whole surface of our planet, why should not the even more abstract and metaphysical entities of goodness, freedom, spirit, soul, divinity and beauty? And has not the success of the epic-composing societies borne out this strange fact in the realm of human history?</span></div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Frederick Turner - Epic: Form, Content, and History</span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Every living system eats and shits- metabolizing what enables the shaping constraints that dissipate a flow of energy for its self-reproductive survival of its own living. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">This of course changes the environment the living system is entangles within and by. This asks for a spectrum of membrains rather hard boundaries of private property. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">When energy reservoirs are empty? Living systems are search engines to seek out new 'know how' about niches that can be energy farmed. And if we believe that energy is neither created or destroyed, that matter is energy - does that mean matter too will evaporate? </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Can the only trick be to re-cognize that matter and energy will all-ways be abundant and to be alive is a 'grey'-matter (puns afforded) of Know-How - for metabolizing more ways to metabolize a wider diversities of afford-able matter-energy transformations. Or simply new forms of eating and shitting.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><div>I check my spam folder regularly. I like to keep it empty. This evening I deleted two tweets about 'defense gutters'. And I re-cognize two things: </div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>I've been getting this type of spam regularly and</li><li>the information mil-bloggers use to identify events-places</li></ul></div><div>Linking those two things and re-calling how, this winter, as a home owner I've noticed-worried about the ice-dams over some of my roof eaves. I've been comparing other homes to see if this is normal. </div><div><br /></div><div>The re-cognition? That advertisers are linking real-time satellite data on local conditions of identifiable internet user home addresses. Has anyone with an address Not had something shipped to them. </div><div><br /></div><div>Of course - how can I possibly be surprised. What I think the real question is why aren't we able to know how to use this data for our collective well being. How can we ensure this Common Wealth of ours enables a more robust and useful public infrastructure. </div></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">I made a #micropoem about what I literally heard a mainstream news broadcaster say: "Things went left the went wrong". And immediately my George Lakoff alarm went off. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">things went left -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">they went wrong -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">the news got it -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">right -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">this is what -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">i think i -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">herd -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" target="_blank">#micropoem</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe it was only me - but i sense a micro-muscle twitch of cognitive dissonance has the broadcaster heard his own words. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">On Jimmy Kimmel the other night, he had a person-in-the-street interview bit. Asking what the last book a person had read. The bit ended in a brilliant comic-jazz. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">When asked, the person said that the last book he read was: "The History". Probed again he described it about "the community, the world" and when as who wrote it the person said, "America". </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amazing and I wrote this #micropoem</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">wow -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">the history - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">the community - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">the world -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">by America</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">sort-of -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">brutal honest -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">reflex-admission of -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">America's -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">orientation -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">framework -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" target="_blank">#micropoem</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">I am going to end this drift of Friday Thinking with a channeling of one of my many beautiful intellectual heroes. The inspiration are the new horizons being revealed through the play with generative afford-dancing of 'stochastic parots and automated statistics' (Bruce Sterling phrase for AI).</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">if McLuhan -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">were writing today - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">he would call -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">his mcluhanisms - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">prompts -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">fore -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">collective-intelligence -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" target="_blank">#micropoem</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">mhm</div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-28780665747519834072023-02-24T22:52:00.000-08:002023-02-24T22:52:41.516-08:00Friday Thinking - 2-24-2023<div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Friday Thinking, is a playful reflection of the week's pondering moments. </b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">It is dedicated to illuminating that the next tomorrow won't be like today's yesterday. </span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Of course, there is no 'neutral politics' or economics or even science. Religion has been how we enculture a faith in values. Politics is how we align our power among ourselves with our cultural values. Economics is how we rationalize the credit-and-debt of our interdependencies in relations to our valuing of values. Science is how we search for and develop the reliability of what we value. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The question of the - __re-conciling the accounts__. I find fascination in looking at the moral and religious palettes embodied in basics of the accounting tems in economics. The invisible hand of moral religiousness of economics. The sacredness of dedemption of our obligations in our socie-ties. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I am reading 'The Ministry of the Future', just past when Frank dies. In hospice. A slow fading, slide out. Podering this membrane moment of evaporation. I feel there can be joy in the simple - of presencing. Awaring and awaring awareness - without judgment. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And then there is Adience. Audience-share. A shadow of the atomistic - isolated -self-ish - individual. The mutualism of performer-audience measures. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The foundation of a democracy is more than the vote. And the vote is not for leaders, maybe that's even a contradiction - do followers vote for leaders? </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Rather, the vote is to appoint representatives, with a duty to formulate the laws we want. And the stewarding of the public institutions that provide for our public flourishing. It is far beyond regulating the 'private-sector-market'. It is the formulation of the rules for enacting our collective will - the general will. Our representatives at all levels are the scribes for encoding laws of self-governance - for public good. Not to be high-priests of the invisible hand of private goods. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Institutions are the organs of the demos - the polis - the political-economy - the social-moral-economy. The core of a political-economy lives through the systems of accounting for the value of our values. The time-space-matter constraints of valueing. The systems of accounting - assets and liability - credit and debts. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Currency isn't a free floating commodity. It is an institution of accounting credit-ability - credit-worthyness - credit-redemption from obligations. And a sense of liberty. And for what? From what? The shadow of liberty, is it enslavement? Or is it the absent of relationship and connectedness. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">For a credit to have value, social relationships have to be trust-worthy. Social-relations have to be able to enact credit-able means of redemption. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Could one read Adam Smith as imagining a most plausible enactment of democracy, in the context of monarch-empires. Shifting toward a self-organizing commons, enacted by moral beings, for moral beings. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Capitalism is a game of compound network-effects - the more x you have, the easier it is to get more x, till you own the house - in a ponzi-way. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And a subjectivity-based agency, whether in the context of a 'natural' nature or in the context of a technology optisms, have the same shadow. It is the looming - liminal-finality of a dissolution of self. This imbues the dark ecology of mind.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">and subjectivity-based - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">agency - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">framed-in -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">polarity of -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">nature-vs-technology - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">have the same shadow - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">the looming - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">liminal-finality of a - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">dissolution of self - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">the dark ecology of mind - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">[#micropoem](https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">but capitalism -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">is a game -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">of compound -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">network-effects - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">the more x you have -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">the easier it is to get more x - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">till you own the house - </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">in a ponzi-way -</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">[#micropoem](https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">From pondering a Smithian strategy aiming to shift a value-attractor for enacting an evolving of collective intelligence. The emergent constraint, that enables the regulation of ongoing living - is an anticipatory response-able shaping of allostasis. A quorum-sensing-stimulation, into being. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">A focus on a self-organizing market was one, plausibe enactmeant, toward a more democratic govern-mentality. A pre-Hegelian evolution of history. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I don't really know, what i'll need - in order to find the pattern that connects. Which means that i don't know what belief constellations, will change what i know, that ain't so. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Believing' is entangled with 'knowing' - a sort of credit-debt mutualism. This is a philosophical afford-dancing -with allostatic - for-see-ables - the sensing-stimulating ouburus. </span></div><div><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-49022106358244957682021-08-26T17:49:00.000-07:002021-08-26T17:49:38.893-07:00Friday Thinking 27 Aug 2021 - The Last Apprehension of the Future of the Digital Environment <p><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hello all – Here’s today’s </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - dedicated to illuminating tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-06e403bf-7fff-1eca-a1f1-1e67af119e6b"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This will be my </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">last</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Friday Thinking - I can’t remember exactly when I first began this little curation of curiosities of possibility. I believe it was at least around 2012. So it’s been almost a decade. I think it has served its purpose. There was too much to know when I started and the ‘too much to know’ keeps growing exponentially. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The uncertainty of our future has also grown in the same way. But we must all remember that - “</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be lucky, it’s essential to be open and alert to the unexpected</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want to thank everyone who enjoyed Friday Thinking even if only sporadically - or in fondness of the weird guy that bothered to keep sending it out week after month after year. :) </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">john</span></p><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; white-space: normal;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 17.6px; white-space: normal;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-de79d0d0-7fff-8446-5473-c1d8f7b0d6bc"><span style="color: #274e13; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-big-can-the-quantum-world-be-physicists-probe-the-limits-20210818/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How Big Can the Quantum World Be? Physicists Probe the Limits.</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/democracy-should-be-sentimentalist-not-rationalist" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Democracy is sentimental</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/mental-phenomena-dont-map-into-the-brain-as-expected-20210824/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Brain Doesn’t Think the Way You Think It Does</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02288-x" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Too many scientists still say Caucasian</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-open-up-to-serendipity-and-create-your-own-luck" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How to be lucky</span></a></p><span style="color: #274e13; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Articles</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-hL27RxkMY" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Neuromancer --- Radio Drama</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02318-8" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Preprint ban in grant applications deemed ‘plain ludicrous’</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-08-passengers-self-driving-cars-human.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Do passengers want self-driving cars to behave more or less human?</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-unprecedented-range-potentially-airborne-compounds.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Detecting an unprecedented range of potentially harmful airborne compounds</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-gardens-crops-insects.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Protecting gardens and crops from insects using the 'smell of fear'</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://newatlas.com/energy/worlds-biggest-wind-turbine-mingyang/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">World's biggest wind turbine shows the disproportionate power of scale</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-janus-graphene-doors-sustainable-sodium-ion.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Janus graphene opens doors to sustainable sodium-ion batteries</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://reimaginingthelocal.medium.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Re-imagining the Local</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="http://www.johnverdon.com/2021/05/a-eulogy-to-truth-long-live-honesty.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A Eulogy to Truth</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #274e13; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">#micropoem</span></a></p></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-39058081-7fff-6f5f-6469-23077f37ec8f"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /><br /></span><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">“Once we can study a situation where quantum theory would suggest that space-time itself should be in a superposition of two measurably different states,” said Aephraim Steinberg, a quantum physicist at the University of Toronto, “all bets are off, and we have nothing but experiment to guide us. It’s reasonable to keep an open mind to the possibility that we will discover something new.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">In other words, expanding the quantum scale up to sizes where gravity matters might teach us new things about quantum mechanics, gravity and hidden aspects of the universe. </span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-big-can-the-quantum-world-be-physicists-probe-the-limits-20210818/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How Big Can the Quantum World Be? Physicists Probe the Limits</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></span></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Fichte understands human embodiment and finitude as a call to action. So long as we can feel and exist in a community with others, then we can learn and continue becoming better versions of ourselves. To think that we could find the truth that would cease our strivings and settle our worries is to deny the necessary limitations of human existence. Though we cannot know whether what we feel is ‘really’ true (because all we know must come from feelings), we contribute to the collective progression of humanity towards perfection through following where our feelings lead us.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">A pragmatist ethics … aims to cause feelings that lead others to reconsider what they take to be true, or authoritative, rather than convincing them to accept some pre-established truth on our say-so. Authority is not ‘out there’ baked into the world in virtue of it being non-perspectival or objective, just as it is not transparent what God’s commands permit (hence all the disagreement). Pragmatism excises God, Truth and even appeals to the universal authority of science, and begins again with a commitment to unforced social cooperation, an attitude towards others that emulates what Friedrich Nietzsche called ‘the seriousness of a child at play’.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/democracy-should-be-sentimentalist-not-rationalist" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Democracy is sentimental</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">a brain map with neat borders is not just oversimplified — it’s misleading. “Scientists for over 100 years have searched fruitlessly for brain boundaries between thinking, feeling, deciding, remembering, moving and other everyday experiences,” Barrett said. A host of recent neurological studies further confirm that these mental categories “are poor guides for understanding how brains are structured or how they work.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Neuroscientists generally agree about how the physical tissue of the brain is organized: into particular regions, networks, cell types. But when it comes to relating those to the task the brain might be performing — perception, memory, attention, emotion or action — “things get a lot more dodgy,”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Recent work has found, for instance, that two-thirds of the brain is involved in simple eye movements; meanwhile, half of the brain gets activated during respiration. In 2019, several teams of scientists found that most of the neural activity in “perception” areas such as the visual cortex was encoding information about the animals’ movements rather than sensory inputs.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/mental-phenomena-dont-map-into-the-brain-as-expected-20210824/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Brain Doesn’t Think the Way You Think It Does</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">A common theme of this scholarship is that groupings depend more on dominant culture than on ancestry. In Singapore, the government mandates that individuals are identified explicitly as Chinese, Malay, Indian or Other, which affects where they can live and study. In the United States, people with ancestry from the world’s two most populous countries, India and China, along with every other country on the continent, are collapsed into a single racial category called ‘Asian’. Similarly, the term ‘Hispanic’ erases a multitude of cultural and ancestral identities, especially among Indigenous peoples of the Americas.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Erroneous ideas about genetic ‘races’ live on in the broad, ambiguous ‘continental ancestry’ groups such as ‘Black, African’ or ‘African American’, that are used in the US Census and are ubiquitous in biomedical research. These collapse incredible amounts of diversity and erase cultural and ancestral identities. Study participants deemed not to fit within such crude buckets are often excluded from analyses, despite the fact that fewer and fewer individuals identify with a single population of origin.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">One practical way forwards is to move away from having people identify themselves using only checkboxes. I am not calling for an end to the study of genetic ancestry or socio-cultural categories such as self-identified race and ethnicity. These are useful for tracking and studying equity in justice, health care, education and more. The goal is to stop conflating the two, which leads scientists and clinicians to attribute differences in health to innate biology rather than to poverty and social inequality.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02288-x" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Too many scientists still say Caucasian</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /><br /><br /></span><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Human beings find comfort in certainty. We form governments, make calendars, and create organisations; and we structure our activities, strategies and plans around these constructs. These routines give us the satisfaction of knowing that, by having a plan, there’s a means of it coming to fruition.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">But there’s another force, constantly at play in life, that often makes the greatest difference to our futures: the ‘unexpected’ or the ‘unforeseen’. If you think about it, you already look out for the unexpected every day, but perhaps only as a defence mechanism. For example, whenever you use a pedestrian crossing on a busy road, you look out for the unexpected driver who might race through the red light. That ‘alertness’ to, or awareness of, the unexpected is at the centre of understanding the science of (smart) luck and exploiting it to your benefit.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">In my research into what makes individuals and organisations fit for the future, one insight has come up again and again: many of the world’s leading minds have developed a capacity, often unconscious, to turn the unexpected into positive outcomes. Developing this ‘serendipity mindset’, is both a philosophy of life and a capability that you can shape and nurture in yourself. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">You might think of serendipity as passive luck that just happens to you, when actually it’s an active process of spotting and connecting the dots. It is about seeing bridges where others see gaps, and then taking initiative and action(s) to create smart luck. Serendipity is a guiding force in great scientific discoveries but it’s also present in our everyday lives, in the smallest of moments as well as the greatest life-changing events. It’s how we often ‘unexpectedly’ find love, a co-founder, a new job, or a business partner – and it’s how inventions such as Post-it Notes, X-rays, penicillin, microwaves and many other innovations came about.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-open-up-to-serendipity-and-create-your-own-luck" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">How to be lucky</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /><br /><br /></span><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">A signal from the 80’s about the future that’s still coming.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-hL27RxkMY" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Neuromancer --- Radio Drama</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-weight: 700;">A radio play of William Gibson’s breakout novel.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price..</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">If the quest of the ‘Grail’ of knowledge is the journey that all scientists undertake - the natural question they must ask is “Who does the Grail serve?” This is a signal for the choice humanity must face to share knowledge or to let privateers enclose a knowledge commons.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">researchers have taken to Twitter in outrage, calling the blanket ruling “short sighted”, “plain ludicrous”, “cruel”, “astonishing”, “outdated” and “gut-wrenching”.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02318-8" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Preprint ban in grant applications deemed ‘plain ludicrous’</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;">Australia’s major research funder has ruled more than 20 fellowship applications ineligible because they mentioned preprints and other non-peer reviewed materials, sparking an outcry from scientists who say the move is a blow to open science and will stymie careers.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the use of preprints to the fore, researchers say the stance by the Australian Research Council (ARC) — which limits applicants’ ability to refer to the latest research — is out of step with modern publishing practices and at odds with overseas funding agencies that allow or encourage the use of preprints.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">This is an important signal for the future of self-driven transportation. It’s not just the technology that is important - it is the human-centric design and enables easy use and trust. On a personal note I’ve seen the detrimental impact on people when their driving license had to be revoked due to disability or aging. The loss of autonomy can have serious impact on well-being. The question is how do we enable that sense of autonomy and agency - while enabling automation. This is also another signal of the extended mind.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Interestingly, results showed that most people prefer a self-driving car that drives like a less aggressive version of their own driving behaviors. Participants who reported that they trust or somewhat trust artificial intelligence, autonomous technologies, and self-driving cars expected a car with behaviors similar to their personal driving behaviors.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-08-passengers-self-driving-cars-human.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Do passengers want self-driving cars to behave more or less human?</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;">Recent studies have shown that people have negative attitudes about using autonomous systems because they don't trust them. Moreover, research shows a human-centered approach in autonomy is perceived as more trustworthy by users. This begs the question: "Do passengers want self-driving cars to mimic their personal driving behaviors or do they hold these autonomous vehicles to a different standard?"</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">To explore this quandary, researchers from Florida Atlantic University's College of Engineering and Computer Science conducted a study asking 352 participants about their personal driving behaviors such as speed, changing lanes, distance from a car in front of them, accelerating and decelerating and passing other vehicles. They also asked them the same questions about their expectations of a self-driving car performing these very same tasks. The objective of the study was to examine trust and distrust to see if there is a relationship between an individual's driving behaviors and how they expect a self-driving car to behave.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">For the study, published in the proceedings HCI in </span><span style="color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Mobility, Transport and Automotive Systems</span><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">, researchers asked the participants 46 questions to gain a better understanding of driving behavior and driver's expectations of self-driving cars in a variety of driving scenarios. Ultimately, information from this study can be used to construct driving models for self-driving cars.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">The development of the extended mind can also include a new sort of ‘sensorium’ - and in a world filled with all manner of new material this may be important.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-unprecedented-range-potentially-airborne-compounds.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Detecting an unprecedented range of potentially harmful airborne compounds</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;">Many of the products we encounter daily—from deodorant to pesticides to paint—release molecules that drift through the air. Breathing in enough of the wrong ones can cause serious and potentially long-term health problems. However, it can be hard to estimate exposure because current devices are limited in what they can detect. Today, researchers report development of a new personal air-sampling system that can detect an unprecedented range of these compounds from a special badge or pen attached to someone's shirt or placed in a pocket.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">The researchers will present their results today at the fall meeting of the A</span><span style="color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">merican Chemical Society (ACS)</span><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">"In every situation there's a unique set of compounds that could be present in the air, including potential hazards that we do not know about," says Allen Apblett, Ph.D., the project's senior researcher, who is presenting the research. "Using a </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/single+material/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">single material</span></a><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">, we can capture many classes of these compounds, called volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and potentially offer a much more comprehensive picture of exposures."</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">When I was a child my step-grandfather would feed squirrels peanuts in the shell - they became so friendly they would actually go into his pant pockets to pull out peanuts. Who wouldn’t just find them to be sooo cute.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Then as an adult I started growing things like grapes. That’s when I really learned the meaning of varmints - the squirrels would season after season - simply trash the grapes just as they were ripening. I understood the old movie images of an old man on his porch with a shotgun shooting salt - waiting for those varmints to show up.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-gardens-crops-insects.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Protecting gardens and crops from insects using the 'smell of fear'</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;">For home gardeners and farmers, herbivorous insects present a major threat to their hard work and crop yields. The predator insects that feed on these bugs emit odors that pests can sense, which changes the pests' behavior and even their physiology to avoid being eaten. With bugs becoming more resistant to traditional pesticides, researchers now report they have developed a way to bottle the "smell of fear" produced by predators to repel and disrupt destructive insects naturally without the need for harsh substances.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">The researchers will present their results today at the fall meeting of the </span><span style="color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">American Chemical Society (ACS)</span><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">"It is not uncommon to use our senses to avoid risky situations. If a building was on fire, we as humans could use our senses of sight or smell to detect the threat," says Sara Hermann, Ph.D., the project's principal investigator. "There is evidence for such behavioral responses to risk across taxa that suggest prey organisms can detect predation threats, but the mechanisms for detection aren't very well understood, especially with insects."</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">This is definitely a signal to watch in the transformation of global energy geo-politics.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://newatlas.com/energy/worlds-biggest-wind-turbine-mingyang/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">World's biggest wind turbine shows the disproportionate power of scale</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;">China's MingYang Smart Energy has announced an offshore wind turbine even bigger than GE's monstrous Haliade-X. The MySE 16.0-242 is a 16-megawatt, 242-meter-tall (794-ft) behemoth capable of powering 20,000 homes per unit over a 25-year service life.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">The stats on these renewable-energy colossi are getting pretty crazy. When MingYang's new turbine first spins up in prototype form next year, its three 118-m (387-ft) blades will sweep a 46,000-sq-m (495,140-sq-ft) area bigger than six soccer fields.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Every year, each one expected to generate 80 GWh of electricity. That's 45 percent more than the company's MySE 11.0-203, from just a 19 percent increase in diameter. No wonder these things keep getting bigger; the bigger they get, the better they seem to work, and the fewer expensive installation projects need to be undertaken to develop the same capacity.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">these mammoth turbines is the key reason why industry experts are predicting that the cost of offshore wind will drop by between 37 and 49 percent by 2050. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> the MySE 16.0-242 is just the start of its "new 15MW+ offshore product platform," and that it's capable of operating installed to the sea floor or on a floating base. The full prototype will be built in 2022, installed and into operation by 2023. Commercial production is slated to begin in the first half of 2024.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Another signal on the future of global energy geopolitics.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">"It was really exciting when we observed the sodium-ion intercalation with such high capacity. The research is still at an early stage, but the results are very promising. This shows that it's possible to design graphene layers in an ordered structure that suits sodium ions, making it comparable to </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/graphite/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">graphite</span></a><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">,"</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-janus-graphene-doors-sustainable-sodium-ion.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Janus graphene opens doors to sustainable sodium-ion batteries</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black;">In the search for sustainable energy storage, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, present a new concept to fabricate high-performance electrode materials for sodium batteries. It is based on a novel type of graphene to store one of the world's most common and cheap metal ions—sodium. The results show that the capacity can match today's lithium-ion batteries.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Even though lithium ions work well for energy storage, lithium is an expensive metal with concerns regarding its long-term supply and environmental issues.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Sodium, on the other hand, is an abundant low-cost metal, and a main ingredient in seawater (and in kitchen salt). This makes sodium-ion batteries an interesting and sustainable alternative for reducing our need for critical raw materials. However, one major challenge is to increase the capacity.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Typically, the capacity of sodium intercalation in standard graphite is about 35 milliampere hours per gram (mA h g-1). This is less than one tenth of the capacity for lithium-ion intercalation in graphite. With the novel graphene the specific capacity for sodium ions is 332 milliampere hours per gram—approaching the value for lithium in graphite. The results also showed full reversibility and high cycling stability.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Shameless self-promotion</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://reimaginingthelocal.medium.com/re-imagining-the-local-6360d72ef1d1?source=user_profile---------0----------------------------" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Re-imagining the Local</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-weight: 700;">Response-Able action to the challenges of the 21st Century</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Three paradigms enabling response-able action to the challenges of the 21st Century — where everything that can be automated will be.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">And</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">There will never be a shortage of Work and Activity to Do and to Value — When we are Engaged in the enterprise of a Flourishing Life, Community and Ecology.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Paradigm One — Power of a nation with its own currency —</span><a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137265142" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Modern Monetary Theory</span></a><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">. </span><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Paradigm Two — Enabling a person to flourish as a citizen — Universal Basic Assets (UBA) and Guaranteed Job rather than unemployment insurance.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Paradigm Three — Enabling community to be response-able in a changing world —</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset-based_community_development" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Asset-Based Community Development</span></a><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> (ABCD). </span><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">And a signal of our epistemological times.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="http://www.johnverdon.com/2021/05/a-eulogy-to-truth-long-live-honesty.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">A Eulogy to Truth</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-weight: 700;">The Truth is Dead - Long Live Honesty</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Intro - Motif </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">The truth is dead - long live honesty<br /></span><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Entailing honest accounts and holding accounts honest</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Science teaches us skepticism - <br /></span><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Entailing multiple lines of evidence<br /></span><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">For reliable knowledge</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Complexity teaches us relative perspectives - <br /></span><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Entailing multiple ways of reasoning<br /></span><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">For relevant wisdom</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Collective wisdom emerges in our institutions of conversation</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Entailing good faith speaker-hearers - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">with honest accounting - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Entangling complex reasonings - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">For adaptive evolving </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">We barely know what we know – but we don’t even know what we don’t know</span></div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /><br /><br /></span><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">yeah - <br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">the complexity -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">of our challenges -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">drives our evolution -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">even when -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">we are part of -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">our challenges -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1b95e0; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">commons governance -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">social hormones entangle community of I's -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">like organs with an -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">allostasis metric -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">like the price mechanism -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">becoming displaced -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">perhaps -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">by distributed ledgers -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> self-care is other-care -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">other-care is self-care -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">mimesis of entanglement -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1b95e0; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">mhm -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">with distributed ledgers -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">price mechanisms level up -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">in complexity -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">enabling -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> allostatic self-governance -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">and diversity of commons -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">and exchange accounting -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">architectures -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">enabling collective -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">exploration of afford-dancing -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">the valuing of values -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1b95e0; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">#micropoem</span></a></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span><br /></span></span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">mhm - <br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">yes - <br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">the perfect beauty of cubs at play - <br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">a perfecting of moments -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">entangled -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">over the time of memories -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">of one summer - <br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">a time of paying -<br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">without roles - <br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">but with each other - <br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">the beauty enacted - <br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">as we played - <br /></span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">outside the roles - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1b95e0; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">we have no ‘self’ -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">we are allostatic -attractor-processes -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">in-environments -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">enabled to maintain -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">narrationing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">sustaining viable coping -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">crisis-growth emerge -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">narrationing-about-narrationing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">learning to learn about learning -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">en-act-play -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0f1419; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">is wicked hard -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1b95e0; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></span></div><div><br /></div></span>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-24281507968850894622021-08-19T17:36:00.000-07:002021-08-19T17:36:08.910-07:00Friday Thinking 20 Aug 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-63476086-7fff-a6b5-4ddd-8899c14ec97d"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b><i>Quotes:</i></b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/complexity-and-the-evolution-of-software-and-ai-bb0948a21bba" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Complexity, Human Alignment and the Evolution of AI</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/arjun-jayadev-j-w-mason-beyond-neoliberal-trade" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Beyond Neoliberal Trade</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://ccednet-rcdec.ca/en/toolbox/think-big-act-small-elinor-ostroms-radical-vision-community" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Think Big, Act Small: Elinor Ostrom's Radical Vision for Community Power</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX59aMG682A&t=42s" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Introduction to MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) Part 1 (of 2)</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://ccednet-rcdec.ca/en/toolbox/think-big-act-small-elinor-ostroms-radical-vision-community" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Think Big, Act Small: Elinor Ostrom's Radical Vision for Community Power</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apple's Plan to "Think Different" About Encryption Opens a Backdoor to Your Private Life</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-trillions-of-viruses-that-make-up-your-virome-104105" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meet the trillions of viruses that make up your virome</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00260-3" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How gut microbes could drive brain disorders</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-forests-cool-planet-thought.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Planting forests may cool the planet more than thought</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-discover-limits-of-major-research-algorithm-20210817/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Computer Scientists Discover Limits of Major Research Algorithm</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02134-0" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Tortured phrases’ give away fabricated research papers</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-critical-advance-quantum.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Engineers make critical advance in quantum computer design</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-08-codex-ai-natural-language-code.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Codex, an AI system that translates natural language to programming code</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-bcf02d5a-7fff-b8ae-face-4b767e4857c7"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Less than 1% of the world’s population is involved in software development. This is unfortunate because the ideas of managing complexity are the same problems of human governance yet we are ignorant of most of these ideas.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This lack of understanding of software is also pervasive in other scientific fields. Most science is performed using concepts that existed before the invention of the computer. Many are unaware that our immersion with computers generates entirely new universal ideas.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Humanity is involved in many difficult complex governance problems (i.e. climate change, pandemic) where most people involved in these fields are unaware of the concepts and tools invented by software developers to tackle complexity.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Human civilization is critically dependent on humans to express complex ideas. Unfortunately, too many of us have never learned these newer vocabularies. When we are exposed to them, we interpret the expressions of the experts in the wrong ways.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/complexity-and-the-evolution-of-software-and-ai-bb0948a21bba" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Complexity, Human Alignment and the Evolution of AI</span></b></span></a></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The experience of India shows how consequential these agreements can be. In 1972 the nation banned product patents in pharmaceuticals. At the time, medicine prices in the country were among the highest in the world, but critics of the ban warned that the country would lose access to imported medicines. In the decades that followed, however, India established a vast indigenous generics manufacturing industry and reverse engineered most state-of-the-art medicines developed elsewhere. Prices in the country dropped to among the lowest in the world, and by the turn of the century, Indian generic companies had become the largest supplier of affordable essential medicines outside the western world and the largest global supplier of generic medicines. Doctors Without Borders dubbed the country the “pharmacy of the developing world.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The success of this industry was not predictable from standard narratives of export-oriented growth. This was not a case of low wage led industrialization; India did not have a comparative advantage in the labor, knowhow or raw material required for drug production. Instead, a combination of industrial policy, including early public investment, learning by doing as Indian pharmaceutical companies gained technical and technological expertise, a fortuitously large pool of scientists, and critically, no IP restrictions on the adoption of foreign technology combined to allow the country to become a low-cost producer. In theory, countries specialize in the things they are best at making. In reality, what countries are good at depends on what they make—or are allowed to.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/arjun-jayadev-j-w-mason-beyond-neoliberal-trade" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Beyond Neoliberal Trade</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">three important, overlapping arguments from across Ostrom’s scholarship to form a case for decentralisation and enhanced community power:</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The commons: Communities can manage their own resources.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Beyond markets and states, there is a third model where communities establish their own systems without the need for regulation or privatisation. These communities can be found all over the world and are demonstrably capable of managing common resources and assets in a more sustainable and productive way than comparable state or market systems.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Self-governance: Democracy is more meaningful at a local level.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Legitimacy and social trust can only flourish when people have a reasonable expectation of influence over the things that affect their lives. Mobilised communities will tend to benefit from having decision making power and control over resources to develop local services and facilities.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Polycentricity: In complex social and environmental systems there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is needed is a dynamic system that permits experimentation, and which can tolerate the existence of diverse and layered institutions of different kinds. The alternative – where top-down, monolithic systems dominate – diminishes resilience. Rather, it centralises risks and quashes creative, adaptive solutions to problems.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Three Core Conditions of Community Power</span></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Locality:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Systems should be designed for specific places.</span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Systems – including the way that resources are managed, rules are designed, and decisions are made – should be originated within, and appropriate for, the particular places where they operate. Ostrom’s evidence shows this makes it more likely that people will collaborate and cooperate with each other, and that overall outcomes can be improved this way.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Autonomy</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: The rights of communities to create and run local systems must be respected. Communities will have few incentives to come together without a basic expectation that their decisions and participation will have meaning and impact, and will that their decisions will be respected by external parties.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Diversity</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Each community is different – and will take different approaches. Context-driven, autonomous communities will experiment with different systems. Taking different approaches in different places means people have a range of opportunities to get involved, enriching civil society. This diversity should be promoted, as it may reveal strong new approaches.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://ccednet-rcdec.ca/en/toolbox/think-big-act-small-elinor-ostroms-radical-vision-community" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Think Big, Act Small: Elinor Ostrom's Radical Vision for Community Power</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an excellent 5 min introduction of Modern Monetary Theory - the necessary economic paradigm if we are going to meet the challenges of climate change, aging infrastructure and the need for modern infrastructure as well as a social infrastructure that enable all people to flourish.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A <b>MUST</b> view.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX59aMG682A&t=42s" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Introduction to MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) Part 1 (of 2)</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Modern monetary theory, or MMT for short, is a superior framework for understanding how our monetary system functions today. It has been developed since the 1990s by Professor Bill Mitchell, alongside American academics like Professor Randall Wray, Professor Stephanie Kelton, and investment banker and fund manager Warren Mosler. MMT builds on the ideas of a previous generation of economists, such as Hyman Minsky, Wynne Godley and Abba Lerner.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks to Dr. Steven Hail, Prof. Bill Mitchell, Warren Mosler, Patricia Pino & Christian Reily (at The MMT Podcast) for providing the inspiration and feedback for this video.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part 2</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUp_kX64DJw&t=0s" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUp_kX64DJw&t=0s" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUp_kX64DJw&t=0s</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a positive signal of the future - one where we can enable a more participatory democracy to care for our social, economic, political and our ecological commons.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This report draws out Ostrom’s insights for the UK in the context of a growing crisis in the relationship between people and institutions. It adapts and contextualises her work into a new set of practical lessons for ‘self-governance’ – where communities take control over the things that matter to them – and connects these with contemporary examples of community-powered projects in the UK.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://ccednet-rcdec.ca/en/toolbox/think-big-act-small-elinor-ostroms-radical-vision-community" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Think Big, Act Small: Elinor Ostrom's Radical Vision for Community Power</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Elinor Ostrom humanised the study of economics and politics. She discovered what is possible, and the problems that can be solved, when we trust each other. Her work inspires optimism, but she was also a realist, basing her findings on decades of tireless work in the real world. This quietly revolutionary research led her to become the first woman to win a Nobel prize in economics. She demonstrated that people’s motivation and ability to cooperate, participate, and sustainably control their own resources are far greater than is usually assumed.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ostrom’s work offers grounds for ambitiously re-imagining the relationship between people and institutions. It should inform and inspire policy debate about community power, devolution, public service reform, and organisational transformation.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This report draws out Ostrom’s insights for the UK in the context of a growing crisis in the relationship between people and institutions. It adapts and contextualises her work into a new set of practical lessons for ‘self-governance’ – where communities take control over the things that matter to them – and connects these with contemporary examples of community-powered projects in the UK.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A sign of the current state of privacy.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Apple releases these “client-side scanning” functionalities, users of iCloud Photos, child users of iMessage, and anyone who talks to a minor through iMessage will have to carefully consider their privacy and security priorities in light of the changes, and possibly be unable to safely use what until this development is one of the preeminent encrypted messengers.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Apple's Plan to "Think Different" About Encryption Opens a Backdoor to Your Private Life</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apple has announced impending changes to its operating systems that include new “protections for children” features in iCloud and iMessage. If you’ve spent any time following the Crypto Wars, you know what this means: Apple is planning to build a backdoor into its data storage system and its messaging system.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Child exploitation is a serious problem, and Apple isn't the first tech company to bend its privacy-protective stance in an attempt to combat it. But that choice will come at a high price for overall user privacy. Apple can explain at length how its technical implementation will preserve privacy and security in its proposed backdoor, but at the end of the day, even a thoroughly documented, carefully thought-out, and narrowly-scoped backdoor is still a backdoor.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are two main features that the company is planning to install in every Apple device. One is a scanning feature that will scan all photos as they get uploaded into iCloud Photos to see if they match a photo in the database of known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) maintained by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). The other feature scans all iMessage images sent or received by child accounts—that is, accounts designated as owned by a minor—for sexually explicit material, and if the child is young enough, notifies the parent when these images are sent or received. This feature can be turned on or off by parents.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a good signal about something that has the whole globe aware and concerned. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-trillions-of-viruses-that-make-up-your-virome-104105" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Meet the trillions of viruses that make up your virome</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you think you don’t have viruses, think again.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It may be hard to fathom, but the human body is occupied by large collections of microorganisms, commonly referred to as our microbiome, that have evolved with us since the early days of man. Scientists have only recently begun to quantify the microbiome, and discovered it is inhabited by at least 38 trillion bacteria. More intriguing, perhaps, is that bacteria are not the most abundant microbes that live in and on our bodies. That award goes to viruses.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It has been estimated that there are over 380 trillion viruses inhabiting us, a community collectively known as the human virome. But these viruses are not the dangerous ones you commonly hear about, like those that cause the flu or the common cold, or more sinister infections like Ebola or dengue. Many of these viruses infect the bacteria that live inside you and are known as bacteriophages, or phages for short. The human body is a breeding ground for phages, and despite their abundance, we have very little insight into what all they or any of the other viruses in the body are doing.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And a nice account of some recent progress on our bacterial ecologies - this is worth the read.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00260-3" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">How gut microbes could drive brain disorders</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists are starting to work out how the gut microbiome can affect brain health. That might lead to better and easier treatments for brain diseases.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An important signal especially in the context of the massive forest fires of the last decade. It also signal the complex relationship that have to be understood in any natural phenomena.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The main thing is that nobody has known whether planting trees at midlatitudes is good or bad because of the albedo problem," "We show that if one considers that clouds tend to form more frequently over forested areas, then planting trees over large areas is advantageous and should be done for climate purposes."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-forests-cool-planet-thought.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Planting forests may cool the planet more than thought</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Planting trees and replenishing forests are among the simplest and most appealing natural climate solutions, but the impact of trees on atmospheric temperature is more complex than meets the eye.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One question among scientists is whether reforesting midlatitude locations such as North America or Europe could in fact make the planet hotter. Forests absorb large amounts of solar radiation as a result of having a low albedo, which is the measure of a surface's ability to reflect sunlight. In the tropics, low albedo is offset by the higher uptake of carbon dioxide by the dense, year-round vegetation. But in temperate climates, the concern is that the sun's trapped heat could counteract any cooling effect forests would provide by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But a new study from Princeton University researchers found that these concerns may be overlooking a crucial component—</span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/clouds/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">clouds</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. They report in the </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that the denser cloud formations associated with forested areas means that reforestation would likely be more effective at cooling Earth's atmosphere than previously thought.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a sort of Godel type signal of some fundamental knowability in some aspects of mathematical and logical calculus-reasoning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There is a kind of worst-case hardness to it that is worth knowing about,” said Paul Goldberg of the University of Oxford, co-author of the work along with John Fearnley and Rahul Savani of the University of Liverpool and Alexandros Hollender of Oxford. The result received a Best Paper Award in June at the annual </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Symposium on Theory of Computing</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-discover-limits-of-major-research-algorithm-20210817/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Computer Scientists Discover Limits of Major Research Algorithm</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The most widely used technique for finding the largest or smallest values of a math function turns out to be a fundamentally difficult computational problem.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many aspects of modern applied research rely on a crucial algorithm called gradient descent. This is a procedure generally used for finding the largest or smallest values of a particular mathematical function — a process known as optimizing the function. It can be used to calculate anything from the most profitable way to manufacture a product to the best way to assign shifts to workers.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet despite this widespread usefulness, researchers have never fully understood which situations the algorithm struggles with most. Now, new work explains it, establishing that gradient descent, at heart, tackles a fundamentally difficult computational problem. The new result places limits on the type of performance researchers can expect from the technique in particular applications.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is an interesting signal of the state of current technology applications of artificial intelligence - while trusting science is the best way to get reliable knowledge - trusting scientists is often not quite the same thing.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02134-0" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">‘Tortured phrases’ give away fabricated research papers</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Analysis reveals that strange turns of phrase may indicate foul play in science.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In April 2021, a series of strange phrases in journal articles piqued the interest of a group of computer scientists. The researchers could not understand why researchers would use the terms ‘counterfeit consciousness’, ‘profound neural organization’ and ‘colossal information’ in place of the more widely recognized terms ‘artificial intelligence’, ‘deep neural network’ and ‘big data’.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Further investigation revealed that these strange terms — which they dub “tortured phrases” — are probably the result of automated translation or software that attempts to disguise plagiarism. And they seem to be rife in computer-science papers.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Research-integrity sleuths say that Cabanac and his colleagues have uncovered a new type of fabricated research paper, and that their work, posted in a preprint on </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">arXiv</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on 12 July, might expose only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the literature affected.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To get a sense of how many papers are affected, the researchers ran a search for several tortured phrases in journal articles indexed in the citation database Dimensions. They found more than 860 publications that included at least one of the phrases, 31 of which were published in a single journal: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Microprocessors and Microsystems</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Progress in quantum computing continues - this signals a significant advance.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-critical-advance-quantum.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Engineers make critical advance in quantum computer design</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quantum engineers from UNSW Sydney have removed a major obstacle that has stood in the way of quantum computers becoming a reality. They discovered a new technique they say will be capable of controlling millions of spin qubits—the basic units of information in a silicon quantum processor.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Until now, quantum computer engineers and scientists have worked with a proof-of-concept model of quantum processors by demonstrating the control of only a handful of qubits.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But with their latest research, published today in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science Advances</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the team have found what they consider "the missing jigsaw piece" in the quantum computer architecture that should enable the control of the millions of qubits needed for extraordinarily complex calculations.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this decade we are nudged to enact a Star Trek like relationship to a ubiquitous presence of computational support - “Computer - make it so” is morphing into “OK Google - Cortana - Alexis - etc.” This signals a more profound relationship.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-08-codex-ai-natural-language-code.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Codex, an AI system that translates natural language to programming code</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Artificial intelligence research company OpenAI has announced the development of an AI system that translates natural language to programming code—called Codex, the system is being released as a free API, at least for the time being.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Codex is more of a next-step product for OpenAI, rather than something completely new. It builds on Copilot, a tool for use with Microsoft's GitHub code repository. With the earlier product, users would get suggestions similar to those seen in autocomplete in Google, except it would help finish lines of code. Codex has taken that concept a huge step forward by accepting sentences written in English and translating them into runnable code. As an example, a user could ask the system to create a web page with a certain name at the top and with four evenly sized panels below numbered one through four. Codex would then attempt to create the page by generating the code necessary for the creation of such a site in whatever language (JavaScript, Python, etc.) was deemed appropriate. The user could then send additional English commands to build the website piece by piece.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">jeezuz -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> our interfaces -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with the digital habitus - <br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are like the -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wall-o-rules in -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Animal Farm - <br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or a slow acid trip -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where everyday habits -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of perceptions - <br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">change in ways that feel -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like we’re getting Alzheimer’s -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">don’t know the motivation -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> what the search is for ? - <br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to find or -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to get-away ? -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to be for healed - <br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or escaping a shadow ? - <br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">life or -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unconsciousness - <br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what's the matter -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in hand -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-42781956085747470382021-08-12T18:22:00.005-07:002021-08-12T18:22:41.863-07:00Friday Thinking 13 Aug 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-97e2fe4b-7fff-37a6-dc80-273bb14c3cd3"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/particle-detector-matter-subatomic-images-physics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How particle detectors capture matter’s hidden, beautiful reality</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/from-probable-to-possible-the-ideas-of-albert-o-hirschman" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In praise of possibility</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/o-no-canada-fast-moving-proposal-creates-filtering-blocking-and-reporting-rules-1" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">O (No!) Canada: Fast-Moving Proposal Creates Filtering, Blocking and Reporting Rules—and Speech Police to Enforce Them</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/major-uk-science-funder-require-grantees-make-papers-immediately-free-all" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free to all</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/environmental-impact-of-bottled-water-up-to-3500-times-greater-than-tap-water" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Environmental impact of bottled water ‘up to 3,500 times greater than tap water’</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://native-land.ca/about/why-it-matters/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Native Land Digital</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://runemadsen.com/talks/uxcampcph/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THE USER EXPERIENCE OF DESIGN SYSTEMS</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/centenarians-have-distinct-microbiome-may-help-support-longevity" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Centenarians have a distinct microbiome that may help support longevity</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/therapsil-health-canada-psilocybin-1.6128123" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">B.C. non-profit challenges Health Canada to end 50-year prohibition on magic mushrooms</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-08-treatment-covid-infection.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A promising new treatment for COVID-19 infection</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/colliding-photons-matter-particle-physics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Colliding photons were spotted making matter. But are the photons ‘real’?</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-material-ecofriendly-solution-energy.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New material offers ecofriendly solution to converting waste heat into energy</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/11b9gN3fo7b9591KGGwgPG8enZSeOMKbCPw-10F8vTh8/edit#heading=h.xbmagn4efl2j" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers find oxygen spike coincided with ancient global extinction</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-0d192326-7fff-cc1c-e1aa-2f200a849029"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At every moment, subatomic particles stream in unfathomable numbers through your body. Each second, about 100 billion neutrinos from the sun pass through your thumbnail, and you’re bathed in a rain of muons, birthed in Earth’s atmosphere. Even humble bananas emit positrons, the electron’s antimatter counterpart. A whole universe of particles exists, and we are mostly oblivious, largely because these particles are invisible.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/particle-detector-matter-subatomic-images-physics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">How particle detectors capture matter’s hidden, beautiful reality</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead of focusing on comprehensive plans ‘compiled on the basis of “heroic” estimates’, Hirschman posited, less developed countries should focus on the hidden mechanisms – ‘hidden rationalities’ in his parlance – that were already at work, even though perhaps in ‘roundabout and unappreciated fashion’. Development depended not so much on discovering the optimal combinations of given resources and their correct use as on understanding the sequences, pressure mechanisms, and technological and investment linkages that activated processes of change. Crucial for Hirschman was understanding ‘how progress can at times meander strangely through many peripheral areas before it is able to dislodge backwardness from the central positions where it may be strongly entrenched’. The Strategy of Economic Development was devoted to the study of these economic mechanisms, with sophisticated discussions of investment sequences and complementarities, the pros and cons of prioritising social overhead capital or directly productive activities, the role of imports, and that of capital-intensive technology.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But underlying the entire discussion was a non-economic motif: development’s role in the safeguarding of democracy. Hirschman was deeply alive to the ‘grand tension’ that characterises societies undergoing processes of transformation and modernisation, and feared the consequences that frustrated hopes for development might trigger in the event that overly ambitious plans should ultimately fail. Indeed, failure might have worse consequences than ineffectiveness – it might produce violence and destruction. ‘Futility,’ he wrote, ‘can be abruptly replaced by brutality, by utter disregard for human suffering, for acquired rights, for lawful procedures, for traditional values, in short, for [what John Maynard Keynes in 1938 called] the “thin and precarious crust of civilisation”.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was this preoccupation that made Hirschman focus on the process of economic development instead of on specific resources, and on how this process can advance despite allegedly insurmountable obstacles and in the absence of apparently indispensable prerequisites. His major concern was to keep the mirage of development from suddenly turning into a nightmare.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In his youth, Hirschman had been a first-hand witness of how hopes of economic recovery could abruptly turn into the collapse of democratic polities.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it is clearly impossible to specify in advance the optimal doses of … various policies under different circumstances. The art of promoting economic development … consists, then, in acquiring a feeling for these doses </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">…</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Acquiring a feeling for the potential results of policy decisions, as opposed to relying on standard recipes, implied valuing complexity over simplicity and uncertainty over predictability. </span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/from-probable-to-possible-the-ideas-of-albert-o-hirschman" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In praise of possibility</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an important signal for the future of the Internet - and maybe especially important because of the soon to be announced federal election in Canada.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Professor Michael Geist, who has been doing crucial work covering this and other bad internet proposals coming out of Canada, notes that the government has shown little interest in hearing what Canadians think of the plans.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/o-no-canada-fast-moving-proposal-creates-filtering-blocking-and-reporting-rules-1" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">O (No!) Canada: Fast-Moving Proposal Creates Filtering, Blocking and Reporting Rules—and Speech Police to Enforce Them</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Policymakers around the world are contemplating a wide variety of proposals to address “harmful” online expression. Many of these proposals are dangerously misguided and will inevitably result in the censorship of all kinds of lawful and valuable expression. And one of the most dangerous proposals may be adopted in Canada. How bad is it? As Stanford’s Daphne Keller observes, “It's like a list of the worst ideas around the world.” She’s right.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These ideas include:</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- broad “harmful content” categories that explicitly include speech that is legal but potentially upsetting or hurtful</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- a hair-trigger 24-hour takedown requirement (far too short for reasonable consideration of context and nuance)</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- an effective filtering requirement (the proposal says service providers must take reasonable measures which “may include” filters, but, in practice, compliance will require them)</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- penalties of up to 3 percent of the providers' gross revenues or up to 10 million dollars, whichever is higher</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- mandatory reporting of potentially harmful content (and the users who post it) to law enforcement and national security agencies</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- website blocking (platforms deemed to have violated some of the proposal’s requirements too often might be blocked completely by Canadian ISPs)</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">onerous data-retention obligations</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of this is terrible, but perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the proposal is that it would create a new internet speech czar with broad powers to ensure compliance, and continuously redefine what compliance means.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another signal in the growing call to free scientific publishing from the enclosure movement of for-profit privateering of science publications. Imagine if all the research publication related to the development of the Covid vaccine and other treatments had been only accessible behind ‘paywalls’. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/major-uk-science-funder-require-grantees-make-papers-immediately-free-all" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free to all</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">The United Kingdom currently has one of the highest rates of open-access publication in the world, with many researchers posting their research papers on websites that make them publicly available for free. But the country’s leading funding agency today announced a new policy that will push open access even further by mandating that all research it funds must be freely available for anyone to read upon publication.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The policy by the funder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will expand on existing rules covering all research papers produced from its £8 billion in annual funding. About three-quarters of papers recently published from U.K. universities are open access, and UKRI’s current policy gives scholars two routes to comply: Pay journals for “gold” open access, which makes a paper free to read on the publisher’s website, or choose the “green” route, which allows them to deposit a near-final version of the paper on a public repository, after a waiting period of up to 1 year. Publishers have insisted that an embargo period is necessary to prevent the free papers from peeling away their subscribers.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But starting in April 2022, that yearlong delay will no longer be permitted: Researchers choosing green open access must deposit the paper immediately when it is published. And publishers won’t be able to hang on to the copyright for UKRI-funded papers: The agency will require that the research it funds—with some minor exceptions—be published with a Creative Commons Attribution license (known as CC-BY) that allows for free and liberal distribution of the work.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This should be a strong signal (full disclosure - bottled water has been one of my long standing irritations - if we spent the money we spend on the privatization of water into plastic bottles - on public infrastructure we could have the best tasting water everywhere - for way less money).</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/environmental-impact-of-bottled-water-up-to-3500-times-greater-than-tap-water" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Environmental impact of bottled water ‘up to 3,500 times greater than tap water’</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers also find impact of bottled water on ecosystems is 1,400 times higher than that of tap water</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The research is the first of its kind and examined the impact of bottled water in Barcelona, where it is becoming increasingly popular despite improvements to the quality of tap water in recent years.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Research led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) found that if the city’s population were all to drink bottled water, this would result in a 3,500 times higher cost of resource extraction than if they all drank tap water, at $83.9m (£60.3m)a year.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers also found the impact of bottled water on ecosystems is 1,400 times higher than tap water.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a great signal - not only for the documenting of native lands - but of how the digital environment can make unmanageable quantities of information into accessible interactive visuals - that enable us to think new ways about the past, present and future.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://native-land.ca/about/why-it-matters/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Native Land Digital</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Native Land Digital strives to create and foster conversations about the history of colonialism, Indigenous ways of knowing, and settler-Indigenous relations, through educational resources such as our map and Territory Acknowledgement Guide. We strive to go beyond old ways of talking about Indigenous people and to develop a platform where Indigenous communities can represent themselves and their histories on their own terms. In doing so, Native Land Digital creates spaces where non-Indigenous people can be invited and challenged to learn more about the lands they inhabit, the history of those lands, and how to actively be part of a better future going forward together.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the fundamental irritations of the digital environment is the enacting of a ‘Beta World’ - where everything is an early beta version - that will soon be changed again. It is important that we don’t confuse ‘beta’ with better. For the most part getting used to a beta world is not about products and interfaces actually getting better. So much of the beta world is more about designers learning a new programming language - than about designers making things simpler but with more affordances. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a signal of some of these issues as they are working themselves out.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://runemadsen.com/talks/uxcampcph/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">THE USER EXPERIENCE OF DESIGN SYSTEMS</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">On Google’s Material Design and the Templatization of Digital Products</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the last five years, I have also been teaching graduate classes at The Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, which is a two-year graduate program that accepts students from all over the world, and where they explore the creative use of technology. The program have students from pretty much every field, and teach them how to use programming, physical computing, and digital fabrication just to see what happens. One thing that we’re particularly proud of is that it’s a technology program where 60% of the students are women, and we do a lot of work trying to make technology accessible to people who wouldn’t normally be interested. Both the Processing and the Arduino foundation has roots at ITP.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another signal of our relationships with our internal ecologies.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/centenarians-have-distinct-microbiome-may-help-support-longevity" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Centenarians have a distinct microbiome that may help support longevity</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Intestinal microbes in people aged 100 or over produce unique bile acids that might help keep infections at bay.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Centenarians are less susceptible to age-related chronic diseases and more likely to survive infectious diseases. Now, a new study reveals that people who live to be 100 or older have a unique microbiome that may protect them from certain bacterial infections including those caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria. The findings, published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, could help researchers develop new ways to treat chronic inflammation and bacterial disease.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A team of researchers including Yuko Sato, Koji Atarashi, Nobuoshi Hirose, and Kenya Honda at Keio University School of Medicine in Japan, and Damian Plichta and Ramnik Xavier at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, studied microbes found in fecal samples from 160 Japanese centenarians who had an average age of 107. They found that centenarians, compared to people aged 85 to 89 and those between 21 and 55, had higher levels of several bacterial species that produce molecules called secondary bile acids. Secondary bile acids are generated by microbes in the colon and are thought to help protect the intestines from pathogens and regulate the body’s immune responses.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The researchers next treated common infection-causing bacteria in the lab with the secondary bile acids that were elevated in the centenarians. One molecule, called isoalloLCA, strongly inhibited the growth of </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clostridioides difficile</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that causes severe diarrhea and gut inflammation. Feeding mice infected with </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">C. difficile</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> diets supplemented with isoalloLCA similarly suppressed levels of the pathogen. The team also found that isoalloLCA potently inhibited the growth of or killed many other gram positive pathogens, suggesting that isoalloLCA may help the body maintain the delicate equilibrium of microbial communities in a healthy gut.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now that cannabis is finally legal to grow and use - this is another signal that we need to enable research and legalize the use of other useful plant medicines.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/therapsil-health-canada-psilocybin-1.6128123" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">B.C. non-profit challenges Health Canada to end 50-year prohibition on magic mushrooms</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proposal outlines licensing growers and sellers, quality control, security and packaging</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A B.C.-based non-profit organization is challenging Health Canada to end a nearly 50-year prohibition against possessing so-called magic mushrooms and the potent psychedelics they produce.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TheraPsil, which advocates for the therapeutic use of the psychedelic compound psilocybin, spent months drafting proposed regulations for so-called magic mushrooms based on the same ones the federal government first created 20 years ago for medicinal cannabis.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TheraPsil CEO Spencer Hawkswell said his organization sent a 165-page proposal to Health Canada's director general Jennifer Saxe.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The document deals with managing every aspect of licensing growers and sellers, from who can be involved, where they can be located, quality control, security and packaging. There are also provisions in the draft for patients to register to grow their own, as well as a formula for calculating how much an individual can grow, based on the amount of mycelium, the branch-like organism that produces the mushroom as fruit.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An interesting signal of other plant medicines that are non-psychogenic.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The study, was recently published in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-08-treatment-covid-infection.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A promising new treatment for COVID-19 infection</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">A flowering plant native to North Africa and Western Asia could be utilized in the future treatment of COVID-19 infection.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The seeds of the plant, Nigella </span><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/tags/sativa/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sativa</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, have been used for centuries as a traditional remedy for multiple medical conditions, including inflammation and infections. Now, an Australian-first research review article has found it could be used to treat COVID-19.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"There is growing evidence from modeling studies that thymoquinone, an active ingredient of Nigella sativa, more commonly known as the fennel flower, can stick to the COVID- 19 virus spike protein and stop the virus from causing a lung infection.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"It may also block the 'cytokine' storm that affects seriously ill patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19," said Professor Kaneez Fatima Shad, lead author of a recently published comprehensive review article in Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thymoquinone has been extensively studied in laboratories, including animal studies. These studies have shown that thymoquinone can moderate our immune system in a good way, by preventing pro-inflammation chemicals such as interleukins from been released.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This gives thymoquinone a potential role as a treatment for allergic conditions such as asthma, eczema, arthritis conditions including rheumatoid and osteoarthritis and even possibly multiple sclerosis.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A small signal of the possibility of domesticating light to make matter - an alchemy of the future.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/colliding-photons-matter-particle-physics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Colliding photons were spotted making matter. But are the photons ‘real’?</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a demonstration of Einstein’s E=mc2, collisions of light yielded electrons and positrons</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Collide light with light, and poof, you get matter and antimatter. It sounds like a simple idea, but it turns out to be surprisingly hard to prove.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A team of physicists is now claiming the first direct observation of the long-sought Breit-Wheeler process, in which two particles of light, or photons, crash into one another and produce an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron. But like a discussion from an introductory philosophy course, the detection’s significance hinges on the definition of the word “real.” Some physicists argue the photons don’t qualify as real, raising questions about the observation’s implications.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Predicted more than 80 years ago, the Breit-Wheeler process had never been directly observed, although scientists have seen related processes, such as light scattering off of light. New measurements from the STAR experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider match predictions for the elusive transformation, Brookhaven physicist Daniel Brandenburg and colleagues report in the July 30 </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Physical Review Letters</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A small signal of progress in transformation of heat into electricity.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-material-ecofriendly-solution-energy.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New material offers ecofriendly solution to converting waste heat into energy</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A team of scientists from Northwestern University and Seoul National University in Korea now has demonstrated a high-performing </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/thermoelectric+material/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">thermoelectric material</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in a practical form that can be used in device development. The material—purified tin selenide in polycrystalline form—outperforms the single-crystal form in converting </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/heat/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">heat</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to electricity, making it the most efficient thermoelectric system on record. The researchers were able to achieve the high conversion rate after identifying and removing an oxidation problem that had degraded performance in earlier studies.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The polycrystalline tin selenide could be developed for use in solid-state thermoelectric devices in a variety of industries, with potentially enormous energy savings. A key application target is capturing industrial waste heat—such as from power plants, the automobile industry and glass- and brick-making factories—and converting it to electricity. More than 65% of the energy produced globally from fossil fuels is lost as waste heat.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Details of the thermoelectric material and its record-high performance will be published Aug. 2 in the journal Nature Materials.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fragility of our environment and the robustness of life.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-08-oxygen-spike-coincided-ancient-global.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Researchers find oxygen spike coincided with ancient global extinction</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two hundred fifty-two million years ago, much of life on planet Earth was dying.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In an event that marked the end of the Permian period, more than 96 percent of the planet's </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/marine+species/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">marine species</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and 70 percent of its terrestrial life suddenly went extinct. It was the largest </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/extinction/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">extinction</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in Earth's history.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now Florida State University researchers have found that the extinction coincided with a sudden spike and subsequent drop in the ocean's </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/oxygen+content/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oxygen content</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Their findings were published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Geoscience</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"There's previous work that's been done that shows the environment becoming less oxygenated leading into the </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/extinction+event/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">extinction event</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but it has been hypothesized as a </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/gradual+change/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gradual change</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">," said lead author and FSU graduate research assistant Sean Newby. "We were surprised to see this really rapid oxygenation event coinciding with the start of the extinction and then a return to reducing conditions."</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - <br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">anti-science panics - <br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">could it be founded -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">on decades of -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">corporate-marketing complexes -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> leveraging scientism -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to sell bad products -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that vamp-ire on -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">decades of building -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">institutional trust -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by gaslighting -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">experiences of -<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">non-existent benefits -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Am I clear - </span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the very people -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who claim that masks mandates -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">threaten personal rights of freedom of choice -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">want to mandate -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what women can do -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with their own bodies? -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-67246423772526868182021-08-05T18:41:00.005-07:002021-08-05T18:42:03.297-07:00Friday Thinking 6 Aug 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-80a9d49f-7fff-2955-8ba3-8e7ac5f575c2"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-490ceeac-7fff-8a1c-c6d0-db67a9ff838c"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/05/introducing-public-interest-internet" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Introducing the Public Interest Internet</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics-philosophy-religion/simon-torracinta-we-dont-know-lets-try-it" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We Don't Know, But Let's Try It</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/why-some-of-the-smartest-people-can-be-so-very-stupid" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why some of the smartest people can be so very stupid</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-spice-melange-and-free-will-30861886e9cd" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Spice Melange and Free Will</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/energy-guru-is-beyond-disappointed-with-dwindling-u-s-infrastructure-plan-1.1634224" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Energy Guru Is ‘Beyond’ Disappointed With Dwindling U.S. Infrastructure Plan</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/un-climate-panel-confronts-implausibly-hot-forecasts-future-warming" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">U.N. climate panel confronts implausibly hot forecasts of future warming</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-soil-science-revolution-upends-plans-to-fight-climate-change-20210727/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Soil-Science Revolution Upends Plans to Fight Climate Change</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-earth-interior-swallowing-carbon-thought.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Earth's interior is swallowing up more carbon than thought</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The price of batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-energy-iron-air-hour-storage-battery.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Form Energy announces Iron-Air 100-hour storage battery</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.healio.com/news/hematology-oncology/20210729/algorithm-enables-detection-of-anemia-from-smartphone-photos-of-the-inner-eyelid" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Algorithm enables detection of anemia from smartphone photos of the inner eyelid</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-time-crystal-built-using-googles-quantum-computer-20210730/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-9cd819a8-7fff-7181-42a0-e9ab784dd55a"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Say the word “internet” these days, and most people will call to mind images of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, of Google and Twitter: sprawling, intrusive, unaccountable. This tiny handful of vast tech corporations and their distant CEOs demand our online attention and dominate the offline headlines. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But on the real internet, one or two clicks away from that handful of conglomerates, there remains a wider, more diverse, and more generous world. Often run by volunteers, frequently without any obvious institutional affiliation, sometimes tiny, often local, but free for everyone online to use and contribute to, this internet preceded Big Tech, and inspired the earliest, most optimistic vision of its future place in society.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/05/introducing-public-interest-internet" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Introducing the Public Interest Internet</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Although uncertainty presents a persistent headache for central bankers and investors, it has a longstanding place in economic theory. Frank Knight, progenitor of the Chicago School of economics in the 1920s, famously distinguished between risk and uncertainty. While risk could and should be priced in to routine economic activity, Knight thought, only the heroic entrepreneur could steer his business through the shoals of uncertainty in economic life. Profits—otherwise hard to explain within neoclassical theory—were the entrepreneur’s reward. Two decades later, Knight’s friend Friedrich Hayek made a similar argument from the other end of the stick: given the deep imponderables and complexities of economic affairs, the government had better stick to the sidelines. The unifying message was that economic experimentation should be left to private actors, who alone could assume the personal responsibility of uncertainty.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">John Maynard Keynes, by contrast, suggested that it was precisely this inescapable uncertainty that led market participants to favor liquid assets, tilting economies against what neoclassical theory held was a “natural” tendency toward full employment. Correcting the distortion, Keynes thought, required state-led management of aggregate demand, not least for the stability and predictability it would provide. Even in Keynes’s case, though, uncertainty was a disquieting reality to be soberly accommodated rather than embraced.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is one economist from the last century who would have felt rather at home in our moment of uncertainty, however. If any life’s work could be summed up by the mantra “We don’t know, but let’s give it a try,” it was that of Albert O. Hirschman, one of the most prominent and original social scientists of the second half of the twentieth century. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hirschman theorized a uniquely pragmatic approach to economic management that took surprises for granted—quite unlike the macroeconomics of today. In an era when “crisis” rather than “equilibrium” seems the more obvious tendency of the system, the fascinating experiments of both his life and work may yet have something to teach us.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics-philosophy-religion/simon-torracinta-we-dont-know-lets-try-it" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">We Don't Know, But Let's Try It</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. Crudely put, it occurs when you don’t have the right conceptual tools for the job. The result is an inability to make sense of what is happening and a resulting tendency to force phenomena into crude, distorting pigeonholes.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is easiest to introduce with a tragic case. British high command during the First World War frequently understood trench warfare using concepts and strategies from the cavalry battles of their youth. As one of Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s subordinates later remarked, they thought of the trenches as ‘mobile operations at the halt’: ie, as fluid battle lines with the simple caveat that nothing in fact budged for years. Unsurprisingly, this did not serve them well in formulating a strategy: they were hampered, beyond the shortage of material resources, by a kind of ‘conceptual obsolescence’, a failure to update their cognitive tools to fit the task in hand.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stupidity will often arise in cases like this, when an outdated conceptual framework is forced into service, mangling the user’s grip on some new phenomenon. It is important to distinguish this from mere error. We make mistakes for all kinds of reasons. Stupidity is rather one specific and stubborn cause of error. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stupidity is … rather a lack of the necessary means, a lack of the necessary intellectual equipment. Combatting it will typically require not brute willpower but the construction of a new way of seeing our self and our world.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/why-some-of-the-smartest-people-can-be-so-very-stupid" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Why some of the smartest people can be so very stupid</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Dune, there exist concentrations of events in the future that its clairvoyant beings cannot see past. That the density of entanglement of events can’t be separated to see future consequences.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s such a fascinating idea that you can write up an entire sci-fi novel on the idea that quantum computers can become clairvoyant oracles.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The singularities of cognition, where non-intuitionistic logic originates from, are analogous to a kind of inference that C.S. Peirce identified 100 years ago. He conjured up a terrible neologism, which he called abduction.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The business of abduction involves the identification of the patterns that we can observe and extrapolating these to wider domains. It is not the same as bending spacetime, but it’s very useful for predicting the future.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we shut our minds out to the possibility of the enormous diversity and richness of reality, we see only the illusion of a world with absolute predictability. Hence a world without free will. A world that is absolutely monotonous. A world without variety and surprise. Hence we should not fear change but embrace it because it is what makes us human.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-spice-melange-and-free-will-30861886e9cd" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Spice Melange and Free Will</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a very interesting signal in a shift toward more appropriate policies by major powers to coordinate responses to climate change.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/energy-guru-is-beyond-disappointed-with-dwindling-u-s-infrastructure-plan-1.1634224" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Energy Guru Is ‘Beyond’ Disappointed With Dwindling U.S. Infrastructure Plan</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">For almost two decades the U.S. author and climate activist Jeremy Rifkin has advised governments in Europe and China on how to retool their economies for what he calls a third industrial revolution. But never his own.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That seemed to change lately, allowing Rifkin to dream of aligning the digital policies and energy infrastructure of the world’s economic superpowers, a goal he says could one day see electricity traded across continents and help reduce geopolitical tensions.Rifkin met seven times in recent years with now Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to discuss his ideas. That included a dinner Schumer hosted at a Capitol Hill restaurant in July 2019 to persuade seven other Democratic Party senators to support a big ticket reinvention of American infrastructure.Alongside a team that included construction multinational Black & Veatch and Chicago’s Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, Rifkin also wrote a 242-page, 20-year, $16 trillion strategy for Schumer on how the U.S. could reboot productivity growth while meeting climate targets.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At least one proposal that the report’s authors claim as original — to bury a new high voltage direct current grid under federal highways and railways — also appeared in the American Jobs Plan that President Joe Biden unveiled in March, though it's hard to identify the source of any one idea in the sausage-making of legislation.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rifkin’s blueprint “underscores the need to pass big, bold solutions to address climate change through investments in our infrastructure,” Schumer said in a written response to questions. The report, accessible here, was held private until now.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All models are wrong - but some are useful - and most importantly models can be made better because they help reveal errors in assumptions and calculations. This article doesn’t reduce the challenges of climate change - but does warn us about the differences between modeling reality versus modeling databases. We are learning much the same sort of patience in developing our knowledge of Covid.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/un-climate-panel-confronts-implausibly-hot-forecasts-future-warming" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">U.N. climate panel confronts implausibly hot forecasts of future warming</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next month, after a yearlong delay because of the pandemic, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will begin to release its first major assessment of human-caused global warming since 2013. The report, the first part of which will appear on 9 August, will drop on a world that has starkly changed in 8 years, warming by more than 0.3°C to nearly 1.3°C above preindustrial levels. Weather has grown more severe, seas are measurably higher, and mountain glaciers and polar ice have shrunk sharply. And after years of limited action, many countries, pushed by a concerned public and corporations, seem willing to curb their carbon emissions.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But as climate scientists face this alarming reality, the climate models that help them project the future have grown a little too alarmist. Many of the world’s leading models are now projecting warming rates that most scientists, including the modelmakers themselves, believe are implausibly fast. In advance of the U.N. report, scientists have scrambled to understand what went wrong and how to turn the models, which in other respects are more powerful and trustworthy than their predecessors, into useful guidance for policymakers. “It’s become clear over the last year or so that we can’t avoid this,” says Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ahead of each major IPCC report, the world’s climate modeling centers run a set of scenarios for the future, calculating how different global emissions paths will alter the climate. These raw results, compiled in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), then feed directly into the IPCC report. The results live on as other scientists use them to assess the impacts of climate change, insurance companies and financial institutions forecast effects on economies and infrastructure, and economists calculate the true cost of carbon emissions, says Jean-François Lamarque, a lead climate modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and CMIP’s new director. “This is not an ivory tower type of exercise.”</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The world of microbes includes vast diversity in our soils - this is an important signal of how much the small things in life are vital.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I have The Nature and Properties of Soils in front of me — the standard textbook,” said Gregg Sanford, a soil researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “The theory of soil organic carbon accumulation that’s in that textbook has been proven mostly false … and we’re still teaching it.”</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Major climate models such as those produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are based on this outdated understanding of soil. Several recent studies indicate that those models are underestimating the total amount of carbon that will be released from soil in a warming climate.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-soil-science-revolution-upends-plans-to-fight-climate-change-20210727/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A Soil-Science Revolution Upends Plans to Fight Climate Change</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">A centuries-old concept in soil science has recently been thrown out. Yet it remains a key ingredient in everything from climate models to advanced carbon-capture projects.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">over the past 10 years or so, soil science has undergone a quiet revolution, akin to what would happen if, in physics, relativity or quantum mechanics were overthrown. Except in this case, almost nobody has heard about it — including many who hope soils can rescue the climate. “There are a lot of people who are interested in sequestration who haven’t caught up yet,” said Margaret Torn, a soil scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new generation of soil studies powered by modern microscopes and imaging technologies has revealed that whatever humus is, it is not the long-lasting substance scientists believed it to be. Soil researchers have concluded that even the largest, most complex molecules can be quickly devoured by soil’s abundant and voracious microbes. The magic molecule you can just stick in the soil and expect to stay there may not exist.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But then - maybe the earth does swallow huge amounts of carbon. Perhaps a terraforming project could infuse carbon in the earth’s folds.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are a number of ways for carbon to be released back to the atmosphere (as CO2) but there is only one path in which it can return to the Earth's interior: via plate subduction. Here, surface carbon, for instance in the form of seashells and micro-organisms which have locked atmospheric CO2 into their shells, is channeled into Earth's interior. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-earth-interior-swallowing-carbon-thought.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Earth's interior is swallowing up more carbon than thought</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists from Cambridge University and NTU Singapore have found that slow-motion collisions of tectonic plates drag more carbon into Earth's interior than previously thought.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They found that the carbon drawn into Earth's interior at </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/subduction+zones/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">subduction zones</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—where tectonic plates collide and dive into Earth's interior—tends to stay locked away at depth, rather than resurfacing in the form of volcanic emissions.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their findings, published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Communications</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, suggest that only about a third of the carbon recycled beneath volcanic chains returns to the surface via recycling, in contrast to previous theories that what goes down mostly comes back up.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some good news related to the transformation of global energy geopolitics. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The price of batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">To reduce global greenhouse gas emissions we need to shift towards a low-carbon energy system. Large reductions in the cost of renewable technologies such as solar and wind have made them cost-competitive with fossil fuels. But to balance these intermittent sources, and electrify our transport systems we also need low-cost energy storage. Lithium-ion batteries are the most commonly used.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this article I show that lithium-ion battery cells have also seen an impressive price reduction. Since 1991, prices have fallen by around 97%. Prices fall by an average of 19% for every doubling of capacity. Even more promising is that this rate of reduction does not yet appear to be slowing down.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are only at the beginning of creating forms of energy storage and the phase transition in energy geopolitics can likely bring unprecedented energy abundance.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-energy-iron-air-hour-storage-battery.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Form Energy announces Iron-Air 100-hour storage battery</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Officials with battery maker Form Energy have announced the development of the Iron-Air 100-hour storage battery—a battery meant to store electricity created from renewable sources such as solar and wind. As part of their announcement, they note that their new battery is based on iron, not lithium, and thus is much less expensive to produce.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team at Form Energy describe their </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/new+battery/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">new battery</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as a multi-day </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/energy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">energy</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> storage system—one that can feed electricity to the grid for approximately 100 hours at a cost that is significantly lower than </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/lithium-ion+batteries/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lithium-ion batteries</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The basic idea behind the </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/iron/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">iron</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-air </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/battery/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">battery</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is that it takes in oxygen and then uses it to convert iron inside the battery to rust, later converting it back to iron again. Converting back and forth between iron and rust allows the energy that is stored in the battery to be stored longer than conventional batteries.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The batteries are much too big and heavy for use in small applications (or cars)—each battery is approximately the size of a washing machine. Instead, they are meant to be hooked together in massive grids capable of storing enormous amounts of electricity for days at a time. Cells are stacked inside of a water-based, non-flammable electrolyte, which the company claims is similar to that used in standard AA batteries—the cells are made of iron and air electrodes.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A small signal of the trajectory of medical sensors and diagnosis that our mobile devices will enable.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.healio.com/news/hematology-oncology/20210729/algorithm-enables-detection-of-anemia-from-smartphone-photos-of-the-inner-eyelid" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Algorithm enables detection of anemia from smartphone photos of the inner eyelid</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anemia is a global public health problem that carries significant risk for mortality and morbidity, particularly among older adults, children and individuals with chronic conditions.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Diagnosis generally involves a complete blood count test. This requires specific lab equipment and trained personnel, including phlebotomists and technicians. Perhaps for this reason, anemia disproportionately affects individuals who live in rural environments, where access to health care is limited.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In response to the need for affordable, accessible and noninvasive point-of-care testing, researchers have developed an algorithm for anemia detection using an everyday technology: the smartphone camera.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The algorithm, evaluated in a study published in PLoS One, yielded an accuracy rate of 72.6% for detecting anemia using a photo of a patient’s lower eyelid.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perpetual motion and energy seems like an eternal quest like the philosopher’s stone - but maybe there’s more to reality that we have yet to harness. Maybe the ‘heat death’ of the universe is not a foregone conclusion?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The consequence is amazing: You evade the second law of thermodynamics,” said Roderich Moessner, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany, and a co-author on the Google paper. That’s the law that says disorder always increases.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-time-crystal-built-using-googles-quantum-computer-20210730/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy. Physicists claim to have built this new phase of matter inside a quantum computer.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a preprint posted online Thursday night, researchers at Google in collaboration with physicists at Stanford, Princeton and other universities say that they have used Google’s quantum computer to demonstrate a genuine “time crystal.” In addition, a separate research group claimed earlier this month to have created a time crystal in a diamond.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A novel phase of matter that physicists have strived to realize for many years, a time crystal is an object whose parts move in a regular, repeating cycle, sustaining this constant change without burning any energy.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Time crystals are also the first objects to spontaneously break “time-translation symmetry,” the usual rule that a stable object will remain the same throughout time. A time crystal is both stable and ever-changing, with special moments that come at periodic intervals in time.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The time crystal is a new category of phases of matter, expanding the definition of what a phase is. All other known phases, like water or ice, are in thermal equilibrium: Their constituent atoms have settled into the state with the lowest energy permitted by the ambient temperature, and their properties don’t change with time. The time crystal is the first “out-of-equilibrium” phase: It has order and perfect stability despite being in an excited and evolving state.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more wasted time - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">still no working f9 key - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this effort to find a driver </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and get it working - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s like operating -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in a dozen + - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">different standards of </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">railway lines & tracks - and -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">paying an exponential -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">increase in transaction-costs - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/holistic?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#holistic</span></a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/design?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#design</span></a></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more wasted time - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">still no working f9 key - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this effort to find a driver </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and get it working - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s like operating -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in a dozen + - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">different standards of </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">railway lines & tracks - and -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">paying an exponential -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">increase in transaction-costs - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that’s why - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">DNA enables - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">flourishing diversities</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/holistic?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#holistic</span></a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/design?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#design</span></a></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s the beating heart -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of Harlequin - </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s not the love -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that frees you - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s the possession -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that breaks you - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-39981519732498872962021-07-29T18:32:00.000-07:002021-07-29T18:32:54.072-07:00Friday Thinking 30 July, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-80a9d49f-7fff-2955-8ba3-8e7ac5f575c2"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-language-turn-metaphor-and-agi-19916a7b8a86" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Language-Turn Metaphor and AGI</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/tracking-realitys-fuckedness-quotient-an-interview-with-william-gibson/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tracking Reality’s “Fuckedness Quotient”: An Interview with William Gibson</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01947-3" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Massive DNA ‘Borg’ structures perplex scientists</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01994-w" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Single-cell analysis enters the multiomics age</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-rna-breakthrough-crops-potatoes-rice.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50% more potatoes, rice</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02034-3" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Single chip tests thousands of enzyme mutations at once</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-microbially-fibers-stronger-steel-tougher.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Microbially produced fibers: Stronger than steel, tougher than Kevlar</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/16/openai-disbands-its-robotics-research-team/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">OpenAI disbands its robotics research team</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-swarms-tiny-dumb-robots-sophisticated.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Swarms of tiny dumb robots found to carry out sophisticated actions</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-gaming-graphics-card-faster-precise.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gaming graphics card allows faster, more precise control of fusion energy experiments</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://sciencex.com/news/2021-07-electromagnetism-property-spacetime.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Electromagnetism is a property of spacetime itself, study finds</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-33b51b02-7fff-cdf1-990a-5dddeaa0a933"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wittgenstein said, “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.” We have the same problem when we attempt to express our understanding of biology and ultimately brains. We don’t understand general intelligence because of the limits of our language. “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” according to Wittgenstein.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wittgenstein introduced the ‘language-turn’ to philosophy. The language-turn was introduced into biology via biosemiotics. Recently, the language-turn has had an immense contribution to the field of Deep Learning in the impressive capabilities of language models like GPT-3. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Metaphors that are intuitive to grasp by humans are the kinds that we can assimilate via our daily experiences. The fortunate thing about language is that we are immersed in it and thus we have an intuitive understanding of its nuances.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Metaphors are like models. All metaphors are wrong, but some are more useful than others. I propose then that the metaphor of language be the primary metaphor used to understand general intelligence.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-language-turn-metaphor-and-agi-19916a7b8a86" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Language-Turn Metaphor and AGI</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve long assumed that historical fiction is fundamentally speculative. We revise factual history as we learn more about the past, and we alter our sense of how the past was in accordance. Our sense of what the Victorians were about bears little resemblance to our parents’ sense of that. If the Victorians were able to see what we think of them now, they’d consider us mad. Given that, the creation of an imagined past is like the creation of an imagined future, but even more demanding. The most demanding form of science fiction, it seems to me, is alternate history, of which I’d offer Kingsley Amis’s The Alteration as a singularly successful example.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have a nagging suspicion that evolution (a wholly random process, though too few of us understand that) has left most of us unable to grasp the idea of an actual apocalypse being possibly of several centuries’ duration. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m yet to discover any record of a culture whose imagined apocalypse was a matter of centuries. I doubt anyone has ever stood out on a street corner wearing a sandwich board reading, “THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END IN A FEW HUNDRED YEARS.” Even before we became as aware as some of us now are of climate change, and of the fact that our species has inadvertently caused it, we seemed to be losing our sense of a capital-F Future. Few phrases were as common throughout the 20th century as “the 21st century,” yet how often do we see “the 22nd century”? Effectively, never.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/tracking-realitys-fuckedness-quotient-an-interview-with-william-gibson/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Tracking Reality’s “Fuckedness Quotient”: An Interview with William Gibson</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is another fascinating signal in our understanding - not only of DNA but of an evolutionary agent.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their vast size, ranging between more than 600,000 and about 1 million DNA base pairs in length, is one feature that distinguishes Borgs from many other ECEs. In fact, Borgs are so huge that they are up to one-third of the length of the main chromosome in their host microbes,</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01947-3" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Massive DNA ‘Borg’ structures perplex scientists</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers say they have discovered unique and exciting DNA strands in the mud — others aren’t sure of their novelty.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Borg have landed — or, at least, researchers have discovered their counterparts here on Earth. Scientists analysing samples from muddy sites in the western United States have found novel DNA structures that seem to scavenge and ‘assimilate’ genes from microorganisms in their environment, much like the fictional Star Trek ‘Borg’ aliens who assimilate the knowledge and technology of other species.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These extra-long DNA strands, which the scientists named in honour of the aliens, join a diverse collection of genetic structures — circular plasmids, for example — known as extrachromosomal elements (ECEs). Most microbes have one or two chromosomes that encode their primary genetic blueprint. But they can host, and often share between them, many distinct ECEs. These carry non-essential but useful genes, such as those for antibiotic resistance.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Borgs are a previously unknown, unique and “absolutely fascinating” type of ECE, says Jill Banfield, a geomicrobiologist at the University of California, Berkeley. She and her colleagues describe their discovery of the structures in a preprint posted to the server bioRxiv</span><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01947-3?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=a2c8d8ab23-briefing-dy-20210719&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-a2c8d8ab23-43585533#ref-CR1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The work is yet to be peer-reviewed.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another signal of new science capabilities emerging with combinatorial innovations. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01994-w" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Single-cell analysis enters the multiomics age</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">A rapidly growing collection of software tools is helping researchers to analyse multiple huge ‘-omics’ data sets.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It takes about 20 days for a mouse to grow from fertilized egg to newborn pup. Ricard Argelaguet and his colleagues were interested in what exactly happens inside the cells of a mouse embryo between days 4.5 and 7.5, when the stem cells shift into three layers: the ectoderm, which develops into the nervous system; the mesoderm, which develops into muscle and bone; and the endoderm, which develops into the gut and internal organs.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers can easily distinguish between these three layers by looking at which genes are expressed in individual cells. But the team wanted a more nuanced picture. So, in 2019, the researchers combined the gene-expression data with two other sources of information</span><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01994-w?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=b8fd7fd827-briefing-dy-20210720&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-b8fd7fd827-43585533#ref-CR1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The first was methylation, a chemical modification that alters how genes are expressed. The second was chromatin accessibility: how modifications to chromatin, the knotty complex of proteins and DNA in eukaryotic nuclei, affect which parts of the DNA are accessible for transcription into RNA. Both are factors in epigenetics, the non-genetic elements that influence how genes are expressed.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Combining the three data sources revealed something unexpected: in the absence of external stimuli, embryonic stem cells will become ectoderm. “This was the most essential contribution of the paper,” Argelaguet says. It showed “that there is kind of a hierarchy of cell fate specification at the epigenetic level”. Argelaguet, a computational biologist at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, UK, was one of four first authors on the study, which was supervised by Babraham investigator Wolf Reik, as well as John Marioni at the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute in nearby Hinxton, and Oliver Stegle at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their result explains the decades-old observation that embryonic stem cells in culture will preferentially differentiate into neurons. And it’s a finding, says Argelaguet, that would have been impossible to make using just a single type of data.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A small signal of our domestication of DNA is offering much needed possibilities of increasing our agricultural productivity - which will be vital in handling the transformation of how we and the planet can flourish together. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The change really is dramatic," said University of Chicago Prof. Chuan He, who together with Prof. Guifang Jia at Peking University, led the research. "What's more, it worked with almost every type of plant we tried it with so far, and it's a very simple modification to make."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-rna-breakthrough-crops-potatoes-rice.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50% more potatoes, rice</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Manipulating RNA can allow plants to yield dramatically more crops, as well as increasing drought tolerance, announced a group of scientists from the University of Chicago, Peking University and Guizhou University.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In initial tests, adding a gene encoding for a protein called FTO to both rice and </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/potato+plants/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">potato plants</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> increased their yield by 50% in </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/field+tests/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">field tests</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/plants/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">plants</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> grew significantly larger, produced longer root systems and were better able to tolerate drought stress. Analysis also showed that the plants had increased their rate of photosynthesis.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And in the same channel of signals - this one suggests more acceleration in science progress.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02034-3" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Single chip tests thousands of enzyme mutations at once</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The technique vastly speeds up understanding of how the proteins function and how to target drugs.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Figuring out how a protein or enzyme works, and understanding how genetic mutations affect these molecules that are fundamental to life, can often take years. Researchers must alter hundreds of the molecule’s amino acid building blocks one by one, produce each mutated enzyme in the lab and test how each mutation affects the enzyme’s ability to carry out its job.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, a glass chip etched with tiny channels could reduce that time to mere hours by allowing researchers to test more than 1,000 mutations at a time. A 22 July paper</span><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02034-3?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=23b19f0fcb-briefing-dy-20210726&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-23b19f0fcb-43585533#ref-CR1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in Science describes how the new system, called High-Throughput Microfluidic Enzyme Kinetics (HT-MEK), could provide a faster way for scientists to study disease-causing proteins, develop enzymes that break down environmental toxins and understand the evolutionary relationships between different species.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To develop HT-MEK, bioengineer Polly Fordyce and biochemist Daniel Herschlag at Stanford University in California and their colleagues worked for six years, ending up with a US$10 chip about 7 cm2 in size. The chip contains 1,568 tiny wells that can each contain a mutated version of the enzyme, and a microfluidic system that delivers reagents to all the mutants at the same time.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another signal of our progress in developing new materials with biotechnologies. While efforts to manufacture commercial quantities of spider silk are decades old - so much more is known.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"After our previous work, I wondered if we could create something better than spider silk using our synthetic biology platform," Zhang said.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-microbially-fibers-stronger-steel-tougher.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Microbially produced fibers: Stronger than steel, tougher than Kevlar</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Spider silk is said to be one of the strongest, toughest materials on the Earth. Now engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have designed amyloid silk hybrid proteins and produced them in engineered bacteria. The resulting fibers are stronger and tougher than some natural spider silks.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their research was published in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ACS Nano</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be precise, the artificial </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/silk/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">silk</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—dubbed "polymeric amyloid" fiber—was not technically produced by researchers, but by bacteria that were genetically engineered in the lab of Fuzhong Zhang, a professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a very interesting signal - related to robotics, AI and data.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">OpenAI first widely demonstrated its robotics work in October 2019, when it published research detailing a five-fingered robotic hand guided by an AI model with 13,000 years of cumulative experience. The best-performing system could successfully unscramble Rubik’s Cubes about 20% to 60% of the time, which might not seem especially impressive. But the model notably discovered techniques to recover from challenges, like when the robot’s fingers were tied together and when the hand was wearing a leather glove.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The sad thing is, if we were a robotics company, the mission of the company would be different, and I think we would continue. I believe quite strongly in the approach that [the] robotics [team] took and the direction,” Zaremba added. “But from the perspective of what we want to achieve, which is to build [artificial general intelligence], there were some components missing.”</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/16/openai-disbands-its-robotics-research-team/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">OpenAI disbands its robotics research team</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">OpenAI has disbanded its robotics team after years of research into machines that can learn to perform tasks like solving a Rubik’s Cube. Company cofounder Wojciech Zaremba quietly revealed on a podcast hosted by startup Weights & Biases that OpenAI has shifted its focus to other domains, where data is more readily available.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“So it turns out that we can make a gigantic progress whenever we have access to data. And I kept all of our machinery unsupervised, [using] reinforcement learning — [it] work[s] extremely well. There [are] actually plenty of domains that are very, very rich with data. And ultimately that was holding us back in terms of robotics,” Zaremba said. “The decision [to disband the robotics team] was quite hard for me. But I got the realization some time ago that actually, that’s for the best from the perspective of the company.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson told VentureBeat: “After advancing the state of the art in reinforcement learning through our Rubik’s Cube project and other initiatives, last October we decided not to pursue further robotics research and instead refocus the team on other projects. Because of the rapid progress in AI and its capabilities, we’ve found that other approaches, such as reinforcement learning with human feedback, lead to faster progress in our reinforcement learning research.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s an open secret that robotics is a capital-intensive field. Industrial robotics company Rethink Robotics closed its doors months after attempting unsuccessfully to find an acquirer. Boston Dynamics, considered among the most advanced robotics firms, was acquired by Google and then sold to SoftBank before Hyundai agreed to buy a controlling stake for $1.1 billion. And Honda retired its Asimo robotics project after over a decade in development.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And on the other hand - if anyone saw the opening of the Tokyo Olympics one wonders how soon the drone cloud demonstrated there will be weaponized by someone.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-swarms-tiny-dumb-robots-sophisticated.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Swarms of tiny dumb robots found to carry out sophisticated actions</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Europe has found that swarms of tiny dumb vibrating robots are capable of carrying out sophisticated actions such as transporting objects or squeezing through tunnels. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes experiments they conducted with tiny dumb robots they called "bugs."</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team became interested in the movements of small objects in a closed setting through </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/vibration/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">vibration</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The Electric Football Game is one example. Players move about a small metal table painted to look like a football field when vibrations are applied from below. In their work, the researchers used small, plastic, buglike objects outfitted with a device that made them vibrate instead of using a vibrating base (they are currently for sale as a children's toy). They then created a variety of courses for the bugs to traverse by changing the positioning of the walls. Then they added the bugs and sat back to watch what would happen.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are a number of overlaps between the technologies of gaming and the applications of technology for science. This one may provide a pathway to abundant energy.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"You need this level of speed and precision with plasmas because they have such complex dynamics that evolve at very high speeds. If you cannot keep up with them, or if you mispredict how plasmas will react, they have a nasty habit of going in the totally wrong direction very quickly," </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-gaming-graphics-card-faster-precise.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Gaming graphics card allows faster, more precise control of fusion energy experiments</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nuclear fusion offers the potential for a safe, clean and abundant energy source.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This process, which also occurs in the sun, involves plasmas, fluids composed of charged particles, being heated to extremely high temperatures so that the atoms fuse together, releasing abundant energy.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One challenge to performing this reaction on Earth is the dynamic nature of plasmas, which must be controlled to reach the required temperatures that allow fusion to happen. Now researchers at the University of Washington have developed a method that harnesses advances in the computer gaming industry: It uses a gaming graphics card, or GPU, to run the control system for their prototype fusion reactor.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team published these results May 11 in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Review of Scientific Instruments</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a small signal of the possible trajectory of our understanding of reality - and also our capacity to eventually manipulate reality on fundamentally deeper levels - worms holes, warp drives? Who knows.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://sciencex.com/news/2021-07-electromagnetism-property-spacetime.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Electromagnetism is a property of spacetime itself, study finds</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">The link between general relativity and electromagnetism becomes clear by assuming that the so-called four-potential of electromagnetism directly determines the metrical properties of the spacetime. In particular, our research shows how electromagnetism is an inherent property of spacetime itself. In a way, spacetime itself is therefore the aether. Electric and magnetic fields represent certain local tensions or twists in the spacetime fabric. Our research shows that the Lagrangian of electrodynamics is just the Einstein-Hilbert action of general relativity; it reveals how Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism are an optimality condition for the metric of spacetime to be sufficiently flat. As Einstein's theory of general relativity provides that the metric is optimal in a sense, electromagnetism is hidden in the nonlinear differential equations of general relativity. On the other hand, this means that general relativity is a generalized theory of nonlinear electromagnetism.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">John Wheeler, the famous physicist, put forward the idea that all of the material world is constructed from the geometry of the spacetime. Our research strongly supports this kind of natural philosophy. It means that the material world always corresponds to some geometric structures of spacetime. Tensions in spacetime manifest themselves as electric and magnetic fields. Moreover, electric charge relates to some compressibility properties of spacetime. Electric current seems to be a re-balancing object, which transports charge in order to keep the spacetime manifold Ricci-flat. This is aesthetically pleasing, as nature seems to strive for harmony, efficiency and simplicity.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pondering - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">child-parent - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dynamics - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from the wonder of her -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as a baby-mine - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">infant-toddler-mine - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to adolescent - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">young-adult - middle-age-professional - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">authority - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so many new - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I - eyes - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to keep entangled - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /></span></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-49441445708132185642021-07-22T17:37:00.000-07:002021-07-22T17:37:18.762-07:00Friday Thinking 23 July, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-006d7c34-7fff-8e05-b1db-cebc597e47e0"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/techno-feudalism-replacing-market-capitalism-by-yanis-varoufakis-2021-06" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Techno-Feudalism Is Taking Over</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/the-sink-in-the-hall-how-pandemics-transform-architecture" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The sink in the hall: how pandemics transform architecture</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-kind-of-information-coding-seen-in-the-human-brain-20210707/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Neurons Unexpectedly Encode Information in the Timing of Their Firing</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/how-deep-brain-stimulation-changes-a-persons-sense-of-confidence" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">World wide open</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-tragedy-of-hierarchy-and-authority-b7c93d59e92f" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Tragedy of Hierarchy and Authority</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://twitter.com/bruces/status/1416286841310007296" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bruce Sterling - Tweet</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-disagreement-is-vital-to-advancing-human-understanding" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A good scrap</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Articles:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/new-access-act-good-start-heres-how-make-sure-it-delivers" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The New ACCESS Act Is a Good Start. Here’s How to Make Sure It Delivers.</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/public-sector/inclusive-smart-cities.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inclusive smart cities</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://gizmodo.com/amazon-wins-approval-to-track-your-sleep-with-iot-devic-1847271874" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amazon Gets the Go-Ahead to Track Your Sleep With Radar</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/only-a-tiny-fraction-of-our-dna-is-uniquely-human" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Only a tiny fraction of our DNA is uniquely human</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01968-y" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">DeepMind’s AI for protein structure is coming to the masses</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-021-00980-x" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Super-antibodies’ could curb COVID-19 and help avert future pandemics</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-common-denominator-linking-cancers.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New research finds common denominator linking all cancers</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-chinese-milestone-qubit.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chinese achieve new milestone with 56 qubit computer</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-cannabis-domesticated-years.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cannabis first domesticated 12,000 years ago: study</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-6cf949d0-7fff-b6f1-36ee-d687a5d0e8c2"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The claim that capitalism is being toppled by a new economic model comes on the heels of many premature forecasts of capitalism’s demise, especially from the left. But this time it may well be true, and the signs that it is have been visible for a while.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is how capitalism ends: not with a revolutionary bang, but with an evolutionary whimper. Just as it displaced feudalism gradually, surreptitiously, until one day the bulk of human relations were market-based and feudalism was swept away, so capitalism today is being toppled by a new economic mode: techno-feudalism.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps the clearest sign that something serious is afoot appeared on August 12 last year. On that day, we learned that, in the first seven months of 2020, the United Kingdom’s national income had tanked by over 20%, well above even the direst predictions. A few minutes later, the London Stock Exchange jumped by more than 2%. Nothing comparable had ever occurred. Finance had become fully decoupled from the real economy.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">after 2008, everything changed. Ever since the G7’s central banks coalesced in April 2009 to use their money printing capacity to re-float global finance, a deep discontinuity emerged. Today, the global economy is powered by the constant generation of central bank money, not by private profit. Meanwhile, value extraction has increasingly shifted away from markets and onto digital platforms, like Facebook and Amazon, which no longer operate like oligopolistic firms, but rather like private fiefdoms or estates.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That central banks’ balance sheets, not profits, power the economic system explains what happened on August 12, 2020. Upon hearing the grim news, financiers thought: “Great! The Bank of England, panicking, will print even more pounds and channel them to us. Time to buy shares!” All over the West, central banks print money that financiers lend to corporations, which then use it to buy back their shares (whose prices have decoupled from profits). Meanwhile, digital platforms have replaced markets as the locus of private wealth extraction. For the first time in history, almost everyone produces for free the capital stock of large corporations. That is what it means to upload stuff on Facebook or move around while linked to Google Maps.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/techno-feudalism-replacing-market-capitalism-by-yanis-varoufakis-2021-06" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Techno-Feudalism Is Taking Over</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Modernist architecture and town planning bolstered this new obsession, doing away with what architects saw as dark, filthy, disease-infested city centres to replace them with open squares and light-infused, gleaming white buildings both public and private. The 19th-century’s dust-filled carpets, heavy curtains and intricately carved furniture were ousted from interiors to be replaced with low-maintenance, easy-clean linoleum and furniture that was functional and sculptural.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the early 1920s, the visual and written language of architecture was directly reflecting current medical practice. Without antibiotics, and with viruses barely understood, the millions of tuberculosis and influenza sufferers could only pin their hopes on the contemporary belief that exposure to sunlight and fresh air would save them. Pure white, light-reflecting, visibly sterile walls, sun-drenched balconies, big windows and sleeping porches replaced the dingy closed wards of the Victorian infirmaries; even their name, ‘sanatoriums’, held promise of health and recuperation. Their design features were echoed in domestic dwellings and holiday resorts.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/the-sink-in-the-hall-how-pandemics-transform-architecture" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The sink in the hall: how pandemics transform architecture</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the brain may be more like a musical instrument. When you play the piano, how often you hit the keys matters, but the precise timing of the notes is also essential to the melody.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-kind-of-information-coding-seen-in-the-human-brain-20210707/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Neurons Unexpectedly Encode Information in the Timing of Their Firing</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In his magnum opus Being and Time (1927), Martin Heidegger used the notion of ‘projection’ (Entwurf) to describe the two dimensions to self-confidence we distinguished in patients receiving DBS. In ordinary German usage, the noun Entwurf and the verb entwerfen refer to the sketching of some project to be carried out (for instance, an architect drawing a new building in a sketchbook). Heidegger points out that projection is not a matter of thinking up and carrying out a plan. Instead, it refers to the freedom a person has to press forward into a range of possibilities; it means taking a stand on who we are. With Entwurf, Heidegger hoped to capture a forward momentum to the living of life.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Human beings can seize hold of possibilities and embark on projects that shape their self-understanding – the person’s understanding of who they are. For Heidegger, a person’s self-understanding of who they are comes from an openness to the world and its possibilities. </span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/how-deep-brain-stimulation-changes-a-persons-sense-of-confidence" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">World wide open</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately, Bayesian theory and its statistical underpinnings also fall into the same trap of truth via authority. Certainly, humans perform hypothesis generation and empirical testing, but to label this and the scientific method Bayesian borders on the absurd. Because Bayesianism adopts methods we’ve created to predict games of chance and made it gospel. The bait in the scientific method is essential, the switch is that Bayesian theory depicts the scientific method therefore Bayesian method must be valuable.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately, Bayesian theory is the flat earth theory of the scientific method. As an analogy, AI believed that formulating programs that played chess would lead to AI. But like games of chance, games of chess are closed problems. Reality in contrast is open-ended.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The scientific method works because there are many minds that criticize the hypotheses that are made. A key cognitive bias of humans is that we are very poor at criticizing our own thoughts. We are however very good at criticizing other thoughts. The scientific method works because it is a collective method. It took 9,700 generations to accept it because you needed to convince a majority in society to shun the hierarchical structure of civilization and to embrace an alternative.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To convince all of humanity requires scalable technology. That was writing and scaled further with the invention of the printing press. The scientific method would not be so prevalent without a mechanism for the distribution of information.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One cannot formulate intelligence that is in vats. That is because intelligence requires learning and learning demands engagement with an environment that can change independently of the mind that interacts with it. Therefore, if we are to reverse engineer minds, we have to understand environments that lead to learning and not to stagnation.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Collective deliberative thinking is an innate capability in humans. However, hierarchical organizations were invented to effectively coordinate civilizations at scale.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The scientific method is a civilization-scale learning method that rests on decentralized criticisms of existing practices.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Goodhart’s law reminds us that the hierarchical structure that we invented to scale civilization for our benefit will be reimagined to protect the hierarchy and not the living beings in the hierarchy.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-tragedy-of-hierarchy-and-authority-b7c93d59e92f" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Tragedy of Hierarchy and Authority</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*Artificial Intelligence isn't what science fiction writers called artificial intelligence and the machines called "robots" aren't what science fiction writers called robots either</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*You marry those two fantasies and hope for some clarity, it'll cost ya</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://twitter.com/bruces/status/1416286841310007296" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Bruce Sterling - Tweet</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilbur Wright</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No truth is without some mixture of error, and no error so false but that it possesses no element of truth. If a man is in too big a hurry to give up an error, he is liable to give up some truth with it, and in accepting the arguments of the other man he is sure to get some errors with it. Honest argument is merely a process of mutually picking the beams and motes out of each other’s eyes so both can see clearly…</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reason didn’t evolve to help individuals reach truths, but to facilitate group communication and cooperation. Reasoning makes us smarter only when we practise it with other people in argument.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-disagreement-is-vital-to-advancing-human-understanding" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A good scrap</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a great signal of a turn in Tech policy thinking and implementation. We must all understand this concept to better shape the future of our - of-by-for Internet.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">interoperability can enhance privacy by giving users more choice and making it easier to switch away from services that are built on surveillance.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/new-access-act-good-start-heres-how-make-sure-it-delivers" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The New ACCESS Act Is a Good Start. Here’s How to Make Sure It Delivers.</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ACCESS Act is one of the most exciting pieces of federal tech legislation this session. Today’s tech giants grew by taking advantage of the openness of the early Internet, but have designed their own platforms to be increasingly inhospitable for both user freedom and competition. The ACCESS Act would force these platforms to start to open up, breaking down the high walls they use to lock users in and keep competitors down. It would advance the goals of competition and interoperability, which will make the internet a more diverse, more user-friendly place to be.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We’ve praised the ACCESS Act as “a step towards a more interoperable future.” However, the bill currently before Congress is just a first step, and it’s far from perfect. While we strongly agree with the authors’ intent, some important changes would make sure that the ACCESS Act delivers on its promise.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the inevitables is the digital city - the smart city. The question is - Are we going to let tech companies colonize our digital future the way we are letting urban, for-profit developers colonize the architecture of our future cities? The focus on renewing our infrastructure should include a fiber-optic strategy for every home and business as part of our public infrastructure - to prevent a future where for-profit rent-seeking corporations determine what is possible. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in Kolkata, India, a startup has provided postal addresses to more than 120,000 slum residents using geocoding technology, helping them obtain documentation to access government services, open bank accounts, and register to vote.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Smart city initiatives that shift from being technology-centric to citizen-centric put engagement and inclusion at the center. Using this framework, cities have more tools to engage diverse stakeholders in solution creation and share the benefits of smart cities—quality of life, economic growth, and sustainability—with all residents. Six enablers work around these core principles to bring smart cities to life: data and security, digital and technology, ecosystem, finance and funding, internal organization, and policy and regulation.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/public-sector/inclusive-smart-cities.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Inclusive smart cities</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Delivering digital solutions for all</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As inclusion becomes integral to urban centers, how can it be extended to smart city programs? And how can technology better enable inclusion across city services, public engagement, and economic opportunities?</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moving from technology-centric to citizen-centric smart cities</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AS urban populations grow increasingly diverse, many cities are turning to technology and smart city solutions to build more livable environments and improve the delivery of public services.</span><a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/public-sector/inclusive-smart-cities.html#endnote-1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> These initiatives have the potential to expand access to city services, improve public engagement, and spur economic growth. However, smart city design and implementation shortcomings, coupled with the digital divide between different population segments, might unintentionally leave some communities behind. This is forcing cities to confront the question: How can digital solutions advance, rather than impede, inclusion?</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This article explores the relationship between technological innovation and inclusion in today’s cities. Based on research, interviews, and engagement with city leaders around the world, we outline approaches that municipal governments can apply to make digital solutions more accessible and useful for their residents.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a good signal of two things the continued emergence of the quantified self - and the willingness of the MAGA-F (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, et al) companies to use everything about our lives to make themselves more money.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://gizmodo.com/amazon-wins-approval-to-track-your-sleep-with-iot-devic-1847271874" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Amazon Gets the Go-Ahead to Track Your Sleep With Radar</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">As you might expect, it's all about piling on more ads.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission gave the e-commerce giant clearance to create bedside radar devices meant to track how we toss and turn at night. And while Amazon’s putting the best face possible on the innovation, it’s still all about those ad dollars.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bloomberg was first to notice the agency had quietly filed a memo that authorized the ecommerce giant to develop and deploy an “unlicensed radar device” meant to track any nearby movement. This was in response to an initial request that Amazon filed with the agency nearly three weeks ago, where the company described its vision for “Radar Sensors”. These devices, Amazon said, would fire high-frequency radio waves to map out movements from anyone nearby.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And because the FCC is the federal body responsible for policing the airwaves, Amazon was legally obligated to get their go-ahead before they began marketing this yet-to-be-licensed radar device.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When considering complex and living systems in the light of sensitivity to initial conditions - we can’t know how small a difference will make a difference (and if it does we won’t know when and what difference it will make). Nor do we know how big a difference will be that makes no difference. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/only-a-tiny-fraction-of-our-dna-is-uniquely-human" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Only a tiny fraction of our DNA is uniquely human</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The result underscores how big of a hand interbreeding among ancient hominids had in shaping us</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Only 1.5 percent to 7 percent of the collective human genetic instruction book, or genome, contains uniquely human DNA, researchers report July 16 in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science Advances</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That humans-only DNA, scattered throughout the genome, tends to contain genes involved in brain development and function, hinting that brain evolution was important in making humans human. But the researchers don’t yet know exactly what the genes do and how the exclusively human tweaks to DNA near those genes may have affected brain evolution.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to say what makes us uniquely human,” says Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, a population geneticist at Brown University in Providence, R.I., who was not involved in the study. “We don’t know whether that makes us think in a specific way or have specific behaviors.” And Neandertals and Denisovans, both extinct human cousins, may have thought much like humans do.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everything that can be automated will be - and now the protein folding game played by thousands of humans called FoldIt may face a different future.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01968-y" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">DeepMind’s AI for protein structure is coming to the masses</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Machine-learning systems from the company and from a rival academic group are now open source and freely accessible.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s protein-structure prediction for the people. Software that accurately determines the 3D shape of proteins is set to become widely available to scientists.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On 15 July, the London-based company DeepMind released an open-source version of its deep-learning neural network AlphaFold 2 and described its approach in a paper in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The network dominated a protein-structure prediction competition last year.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meanwhile, an academic team has developed its own protein-prediction tool inspired by AlphaFold 2, which is already gaining popularity with scientists. That system, called RoseTTaFold, performs nearly as well as AlphaFold 2, and is described in a </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> paper also published on 15 July.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The open-source nature of the tools means that the scientific community should be able to build on the advances to create even more powerful and useful software, says Jinbo Xu, a computational biologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, who was not involved in either effort.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Covid has accelerated some aspects of medical treatment - new forms of vaccine and treatment - perhaps this is a next phase.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-021-00980-x" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">‘Super-antibodies’ could curb COVID-19 and help avert future pandemics</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Companies are designing next-generation antibodies modeled on those taken from unique individuals whose immune systems can neutralize any COVID-19 variant—and related coronaviruses, too.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in late May to sotrovimab, providing a new therapeutic weapon in the fight against SARS-CoV-2—and future coronaviruses with pandemic potential.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to analysts and researchers alike, so-called super-antibodies such as sotrovimab should have an edge over first-generation monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapies for COVID-19 because of their broad neutralization capacity in the face of emerging virus variants. “Physicians aren’t going to sequence what version of the virus people have, so they’ll go for the antibodies that have the higher barrier to resistance or the ones that work on [known] variants,” says Phil Nadeau, an analyst at Cowen.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The antibody therapy from Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline, a recombinant human immunoglobulin G1 mAb, is now the </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-00791-6" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">third</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> mAb-based treatment marketed for individuals with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who are at high risk for progression to severe disease. (Eli Lilly and Regeneron each have a two-mAb cocktail with EUAs for the same indication.) And although sales opportunities should diminish for all these products as vaccination rates increase worldwide, Nadeau anticipates there will be a sustained market for COVID-19 mAbs to help treat individuals who, for medical reasons, can’t mount an appropriate immune response to vaccination or, for whatever reason, elect not to get the shot.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a very exciting signal of the progress being made in understanding cancer.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-common-denominator-linking-cancers.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New research finds common denominator linking all cancers</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">All cancers fall into just two categories, according to new research from scientists at Sinai Health, in findings that could provide a new strategy for treating the most aggressive and untreatable forms of the disease.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In new research out this month in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cancer Cell</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, scientists at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI), part of Sinai Health, divide all cancers into two groups, based on the presence or absence of a protein called the Yes-associated protein, or YAP.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rod Bremner, senior scientist at the LTRI, said they have determined that all cancers are present with YAP either on or off, and each classification exhibits different drug sensitivities or resistance. YAP plays an important role in the formation of malignant tumours because it is an important regulator and effector of the Hippo signaling pathway.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Not only is YAP either off or on, but it has opposite pro- or anti-</span><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/tags/cancer/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cancer</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> effects in either context," Bremner said. "Thus, YAPon cancers need YAP to grow and survive. In contrast, YAPoff cancers stop growing when we switch on YAP."</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another small signal of progress in quantum computing.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-chinese-milestone-qubit.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Chinese achieve new milestone with 56 qubit computer</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China, working at the University of Science and Technology of China, has achieved another milestone in the development of a usable quantum computer. The group has written a paper describing its latest efforts and have uploaded it to the arXiv preprint server.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back in 2019, a team at Google announced that they had achieved "quantum supremacy" with their Sycamore machine—a 54 </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/qubit/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">qubit</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> processor that carried out a calculation that would have taken a traditional </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/computer/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computer</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> approximately 10,000 years to complete. But that </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/achievement/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">achievement</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was soon surpassed by other teams from Honeywell and a team in China. The team in China used a different technique, one that involved the use of photonic qubits—but it was also a one-trick pony. In this new effort, the new team in China, which has been led by Jian-Wei Pan, who also led the prior team at the University of Science and Technology has achieved another milestone.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an interesting signal of a plant recently legalized. :)</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cannabis has been used for millennia for textiles and for its medicinal and recreational properties.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The evolution of the cannabis genome suggests the plant was cultivated for multipurpose use over several millennia.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-cannabis-domesticated-years.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Cannabis first domesticated 12,000 years ago: study</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cannabis was first domesticated around 12,000 years ago in China, researchers found, after analyzing the genomes of plants from across the world.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The study, published in the journal Science Advances on Friday, said the genomic history of cannabis </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/domestication/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">domestication</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> had been under-studied compared to other crop species, largely due to </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/legal+restrictions/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">legal restrictions</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The researchers compiled 110 whole genomes covering the full spectrum of wild-growing feral plants, landraces, historical cultivars, and modern hybrids of plants used for </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/hemp/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hemp</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and drug purposes.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The study said it identified "the time and origin of domestication, post-domestication divergence patterns and present-day genetic diversity".</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">most singular of experien-sense - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is the wayfinding -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we do with our e-motions - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nano moments of -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘taking account’ - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for response-ability - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">width the -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">faith of one step -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in-sighting - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">any part-whole relationship - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">requires - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">both anticipathory </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-and -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">empathory -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">quality or mode - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">response-ability - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to what is whole - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">through -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">webs and scales -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of local contexts -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - no - empathy no interaction - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no empathy no interaction - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">even to the extent that -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a metal gear must have -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an ‘empathy’ for -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the metal cog -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and vice versa -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that determines -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the degree of -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">interaction that can -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> occur - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">some thing magical -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in money as anonymous - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘impartial’ exchange - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that intends to support -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the stewarding and the growing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of community - </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">anonymity is the -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">absence of community - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> depending on social presence -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of unknown others -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to experience it - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-32032981844298964192021-07-15T17:37:00.000-07:002021-07-15T17:37:58.367-07:00Friday Thinking 16 July, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div><div><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-03c20fe5-7fff-5c65-3d61-a8a4af807d76"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01749-7" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Beyond coronavirus: the virus discoveries transforming biology</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/homeostasis-and-a-definition-of-intelligence-62ac2b8a274f" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Homeostasis and a Definition of Intelligence</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-mass-appeal-of-reductionist-metaphors-65cd987230f1" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Mass Appeal of Reductionist Metaphors</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-designs-quantum-physics-experiments-beyond-what-any-human-has-conceived/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AI Designs Quantum Physics Experiments Beyond What Any Human Has Conceived</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hans-berger-telepathy-neuroscience-brain-eeg" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How Hans Berger’s quest for telepathy spurred modern brain science</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/dna-has-four-bases-some-viruses-swap-in-a-fifth-20210712/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">DNA Has Four Bases. Some Viruses Swap in a Fifth.</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-combination-parents-gene-indefinitely.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Match matters: The right combination of parents can turn a gene off indefinitely</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-team-quantum-simulator-qubits-largest.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Team develops quantum simulator with 256 qubits, largest of its kind ever created</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-production-method-vital-fertilizer-element.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New production method makes vital fertilizer element in a more sustainable way</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://newatlas.com/energy/western-green-energy-hub/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">World's biggest green hydrogen hub announced for Western Australia</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-singapore-unveils-world-biggest-solar.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Singapore unveils one of world's biggest floating solar farms</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-swarm-autonomous-tiny-drones-localize.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Swarm of autonomous tiny drones can localize gas leaks</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-488eeba6-7fff-00dc-0fc8-0bcf0b9b66c5"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s becoming clear that ecosystems and organisms rely on viruses. Tiny but mighty, they have fuelled evolution for millions of years by shuttling genes between hosts. In the oceans, they slice open microorganisms, spilling their contents into the sea and flooding the food web with nutrients. “Without viruses,” says Curtis Suttle, a virologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, “we would not be alive.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are minuscule circoviruses with only two or three genes, and massive mimiviruses that are bigger than some bacteria and carry hundreds of genes. There are lunar-lander-looking phage that infect bacteria and, of course, the killer spiky balls the world is now painfully familiar with. There are viruses that store their genes as DNA, and others that use RNA; there’s even a phage that uses an alternative genetic alphabet, replacing the chemical base A in the standard ACGT system with a different molecule, designated Z.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...many scientists’ suspicion that there’s no one common ancestor for virus-kind. “There is no single root for all viruses,” says Koonin. “It simply does not exist.” That means that viruses probably arose several times in the history of life on Earth — and there’s no reason to think such emergence can’t happen again. “The de novo origin of new viruses, it’s still ongoing,” says Mart Krupovic, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris who was involved in both the ICTV decisions and Koonin’s taxonomy team.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Viruses can also influence other organisms by stirring up their genomes. For example, when viruses transfer antibiotic-resistance genes from one bacterium to another, drug-resistant strains can take over. Over time, this kind of transfer can create major evolutionary shifts in a population, says Camarillo-Guerrero. And not just in bacteria — an estimated 8% of human DNA is of viral origin. For example, our mammalian ancestors acquired a gene essential for placental development from a virus.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01749-7" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Beyond coronavirus: the virus discoveries transforming biology</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anil Seth enumerates five different kinds of self-models: bodily, perspectival, volitional, narrative and social selves. These selves are not orthogonal and perhaps partially ordered in what is a prerequisite over another. In his essay “The Real Problem”:</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is the bodily self, which is the experience of being a body and of having a particular body. There is the perspectival self, which is the experience of perceiving the world from a particular first-person point of view. The volitional self involves experiences of intention and of agency — of urges to do this or that, and of being the causes of things that happen. At higher levels, we encounter narrative and social selves.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all the world models involve the inclusion of self-models. These self-modes are all ‘Inside Out’ architectures. To understand compositionality, an agent needs an intuitive understanding of the body. To predict physics requires an intuitive awareness of where and what direction one is looking at when one makes an observation. To understand how to learn, one needs to know how to interact with the world.. To understand causality, one needs the capability of following stories. To understand psychology, one needs an understanding of oneself. In summary, you cannot develop any of the skills that Brendan Lake describes without a previous grounding with a model of the self. Self-models are a necessary requirement for the stepping stones of AGI [</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Artificial General Intelligence</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">].</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I find it more informative to frame consciousness in terms of self-models. The reason for this is that living things are primarily driven by homeostasis. Antonio Damasio in “The Strange Order of Things” argues that the brain’s function at its core is driven by homeostasis. Damasio writes:</span></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feelings are the mental expressions of homeostasis, acting under the cover of feeling, is the functional thread that links early life-forms to the extraordinary partnership of bodies and nervous systems.</span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It ensures that life is regulated within a range that is not just compatible with survival but also conducive to flourishing.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/homeostasis-and-a-definition-of-intelligence-62ac2b8a274f" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Homeostasis and a Definition of Intelligence</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To understand physics you need to invent a lot of new languages (see: calculus for Newton). It should be no surprise that understanding cognition requires the invention of a new language.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem with our natural language is that it is noun-centric. Unfortunately, all of reality is process-centric. Thus, when we stick exclusively to a noun-centric language, we cannot properly map the complexity of reality.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-mass-appeal-of-reductionist-metaphors-65cd987230f1" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Mass Appeal of Reductionist Metaphors</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is a truism of technological progress that whatever can be automated will be - of course there will always be lots of work to do and activity to engage in. But this is a great signal for how things that we didn’t imagine being automated can be.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-designs-quantum-physics-experiments-beyond-what-any-human-has-conceived/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">AI Designs Quantum Physics Experiments Beyond What Any Human Has Conceived</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Originally built to speed up calculations, a machine-learning system is now making shocking progress at the frontiers of experimental quantum physics</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quantum physicist Mario Krenn remembers sitting in a café in Vienna in early 2016, poring over computer printouts, trying to make sense of what MELVIN had found. MELVIN was a machine-learning algorithm Krenn had built, a kind of artificial intelligence. Its job was to mix and match the building blocks of standard quantum experiments and find solutions to new problems. And it did find many interesting ones. But there was one that made no sense.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The first thing I thought was, ‘My program has a bug, because the solution cannot exist,’” Krenn says. MELVIN had seemingly solved the problem of creating highly complex entangled states involving multiple photons. Krenn, Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna and their colleagues had not explicitly provided MELVIN the rules needed to generate such complex states, yet it had found a way. Eventually, he realized that the algorithm had rediscovered a type of experimental arrangement that had been devised in the early 1990s. But those experiments had been much simpler. MELVIN had cracked a far more complex puzzle.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their latest effort, an AI called THESEUS, has upped the ante: it is orders of magnitude faster than MELVIN, and humans can readily parse its output. While it would take Krenn and his colleagues days or even weeks to understand MELVIN’s meanderings, they can almost immediately figure out what THESEUS is saying.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A fascinating signal for how affordances can enable something very useful from innovation aimed at imaginary possibilities.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hans-berger-telepathy-neuroscience-brain-eeg" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">How Hans Berger’s quest for telepathy spurred modern brain science</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead of finding long-range signals, he invented EEG</span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A brush with death led Hans Berger to invent a machine that could eavesdrop on the brain.</span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1893, when he was 19, Berger fell off his horse during maneuvers training with the German military and was nearly trampled. On that same day, his sister, far away, got a bad feeling about Hans. She talked her father into sending a telegram asking if everything was all right.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To young Berger, this eerie timing was no coincidence: It was a case of “spontaneous telepathy,” he later wrote. Hans was convinced that he had transmitted his thoughts of mortal fear to his sister — somehow.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So he decided to study psychiatry, beginning a quest to uncover how thoughts could travel between people. Chasing after a scientific basis for telepathy was a dead end, of course. But in the attempt, Berger ended up making a key contribution to modern medicine and science: He invented the electroencephalogram, or EEG, a device that could read the brain’s electrical activity.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Berger’s machine, first used successfully in 1924, produced a readout of squiggles that represented the electricity created by collections of firing nerve cells in the brain.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a signal of the emerging understanding that life itself has been playing around with DNA.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Here was this wonderful validation that right under our noses, nature has been expanding,”</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It really speaks to the adaptability of the genetic alphabet,”</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Z and other modified DNA bases seem to have evolved to help viruses evade the defenses with which bacteria degrade foreign genetic material. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/dna-has-four-bases-some-viruses-swap-in-a-fifth-20210712/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">DNA Has Four Bases. Some Viruses Swap in a Fifth.</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The DNA of some viruses doesn’t use the same four nucleotide bases found in all other life. New work shows how this exception is possible and hints that it could be more common than we think.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All life on Earth rests on the same foundation: a four-letter genetic alphabet spelling out a repertoire of three-letter words that specify 20 amino acids. These basic building blocks — the components of DNA and their molecular interpreters — lie at biology’s core. “It’s hard to imagine something more fundamental,” said Floyd Romesberg, a synthetic biologist at the pharmaceutical company Sanofi.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet life’s foundational biochemistry can be full of surprises. A few decades ago, researchers found viruses that had swapped one of the four bases in their DNA for a novel fifth one. Now, in a trio of papers published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in April, three teams have identified dozens of other viruses that make this substitution, as well as the mechanisms that make it possible. The discoveries raise the thought-provoking possibility that this kind of fundamental genomic change could be much more widespread and important in biology than anyone imagined.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The scientists have now reported finding the Z substitution in more than 200 phages. Further analysis of the viral genomes allowed the research groups to uncover a key enzyme for making Z, as well as an enzyme that degrades free-floating A nucleotides, making Z more likely to be taken up during DNA synthesis.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was a significant debate during the early years of the theory of Evolution between Darwin and Lamark concerning whether acquired characteristic (e.g. big muscles) could be passed from acquiring parent to children - in recent decades we’ve learned about the working of epigenetics. This is an interesting signal about our progress in understanding epigenetics.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the new study, Jose and his team found while breeding nematode worms that some matings led to epigenetic changes in offspring that continued to be passed down through as many generations as the scientists continued to breed them. This discovery will enable scientists to explore how epigenetic changes are passed to future generations and what characteristics make genes susceptible to permanent epigenetic changes.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-combination-parents-gene-indefinitely.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Match matters: The right combination of parents can turn a gene off indefinitely</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Evidence suggests that what happens in one generation—diet, toxin exposure, trauma, fear—can have lasting effects on future generations. Scientists believe these effects result from epigenetic changes that occur in response to the environment and turn genes on or off without altering the genome or DNA sequence.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But how these changes are passed down through generations has not been understood, in part, because scientists have not had a simple way to study the phenomenon. A new study by researchers at the University of Maryland provides a potential tool for unraveling the mystery of how experiences can cause inheritable changes to an animal's biology. By mating nematode worms, they produced permanent epigenetic changes that lasted for more than 300 generations. The research was published on July 9, 2021, in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Communications</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"There's a lot of interest in heritable epigenetics," said Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at UMD and senior author of the study. "But getting clear answers is difficult. For instance, if I'm on some diet today, how does that affect my children and grandchildren and so on? No one knows, because so many different variables are involved. But we've found this very simple method, through mating, to turn off a </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/single+gene/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">single gene</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for multiple generations. And that gives us a huge opportunity to study how these stable epigenetic changes occur."</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who knows when quantum computing will emerge as a viable alternate computational paradigm? This is a small signal of progress.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it is the combination of system's unprecedented size and programmability that puts it at the cutting edge of the race for a quantum computer, which harnesses the mysterious properties of matter at extremely small scales to greatly advance processing power.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The number of quantum states that are possible with only 256 qubits exceeds the number of atoms in the solar system,"</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-team-quantum-simulator-qubits-largest.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Team develops quantum simulator with 256 qubits, largest of its kind ever created</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">A team of physicists from the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms and other universities has developed a special type of quantum computer known as a programmable quantum simulator capable of operating with 256 quantum bits, or "qubits."</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The system marks a major step toward building large-scale quantum machines that could be used to shed light on a host of complex quantum processes and eventually help bring about real-world breakthroughs in </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/material+science/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">material science</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/communication+technologies/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">communication technologies</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, finance, and many other fields, overcoming research hurdles that are beyond the capabilities of even the fastest supercomputers today. Qubits are the fundamental building blocks on which quantum computers run and the source of their massive processing power.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"This moves the field into a new domain where no one has ever been to thus far," said Mikhail Lukin, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics, co-director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative, and one of the senior authors of the study published today in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. "We are entering a completely new part of the quantum world."</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A good small signal of new agricultural processes that are more ecological.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-production-method-vital-fertilizer-element.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New production method makes vital fertilizer element in a more sustainable way</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Urea is a critical element found in everything from fertilizers to skin care products. Large-scale production of urea, which is naturally a product of human urine, is a massive undertaking, making up about 2% of global energy use and emissions today.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For decades, scientists and engineers have sought to make this process more </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/energy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">energy</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> efficient as demand for fertilizer grows with increased population. An international research team that includes scientists and engineers from The University of Texas at Austin has devised a new method for making urea that is more environmentally friendly than today's process and produces enough to be competitive with energy-intensive industrial methods.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Making urea today involves a two-step thermal process that requires high levels of heat and pressure under controlled harsh environments. But this new process requires just one step and relies on a concept called electrocatalysis that uses electricity—and potentially sunlight—to trigger chemical reactions in a solution at room temperature in ambient conditions.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Around the world we need to lower emissions. That's why we want to develop these more sustainable pathways to produce urea using electrocatalysis instead of this energy-intensive two-step process," said Guihua Yu, an associate professor of materials science in the Cockrell School of Engineering's Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering who co-led the team that published a new milestone paper about the process in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Sustainability</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It seems like a couple of decades have passed since the ‘hydrogen economy’ was a salient buzz in the news. But significant progress towards the use of hydrogen for renewable energy and maybe especially energy storage has continued.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://newatlas.com/energy/western-green-energy-hub/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">World's biggest green hydrogen hub announced for Western Australia</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Western Australia could soon be home to the world's biggest green hydrogen project. The Western Green Energy Hub (WGEH) wants to deploy 50 GW of solar and wind generation to produce up to 3.5 million tons of green hydrogen or 20 million tons of ammonia a year.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This monster project edges out the 45-GW Svevind project in Kazakhstan that was announced just a couple of weeks ago. It underscores the huge paydays the energy industry is foreseeing in green energy exports.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, hydrogen is inefficient and borderline wasteful compared to storing and releasing green energy in batteries. But the world is aiming to decarbonize completely by 2050, and batteries simply don't have the energy density for many applications, such as long-haul trucking, shipping and aviation. Hydrogen will also be key in decarbonizing steel production – and it represents and energy export opportunity in a post-coal and oil world that doesn't look like it's getting a global energy grid any time soon to share renewable power without putting it on boats.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The new hub would take advantage of Western Australia's excellent solar potential and solid wind potential, occupying some 15,000 square kilometers (5,800 sq mi) of largely red, rocky desert near Kalgoorlie in the south-east of the state. Construction would be in phases, to ramp up as expected demand for these green fuels grows.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not to be outdone but here’s what a small, very advanced country is up to.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-singapore-unveils-world-biggest-solar.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Singapore unveils one of world's biggest floating solar farms</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Singapore Wednesday unveiled one of the world's biggest floating solar power farms, covering an area the size of 45 football pitches, as part of the city-state's push to cut greenhouse gas emissions.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The project is the country's most ambitious yet, comprising 122,000 panels on Tengeh Reservoir that will produce enough electricity to run its five </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/water+treatment+plants/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">water treatment plants</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Singapore is among the biggest per capita carbon dioxide emitters in Asia and its land scarcity makes boosting </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/renewable+energy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">renewable energy</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> sources a challenge.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The prosperous financial hub has turned to setting up plants off its coasts and in reservoirs, and aims to quadruple </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/solar+energy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">solar energy</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> production by 2025.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The new farm can produce up to 60 megawatts of electricity, and will lead to carbon emissions reductions equivalent to removing 7,000 cars from roads, according to Sembcorp Industries and national water agency PUB.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A weak signal - that any and every technology can be weaponized. This has glimpses of quite a few speculative fiction scenarios - but this intended use is pretty cool too - what could go wrong?</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-swarm-autonomous-tiny-drones-localize.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Swarm of autonomous tiny drones can localize gas leaks</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">When there is a gas leak in a large building or at an industrial site, human firefighters currently need to go in with gas sensing instruments. Finding the gas leak may take considerable time, while they are risking their lives. Researchers from TU Delft (the Netherlands), University of Barcelona, and Harvard University have now developed the first swarm of tiny—and hence very safe—drones that can autonomously detect and localize gas sources in cluttered indoor environments.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The main challenge the researchers needed to solve was to design the Artificial Intelligence for this complex task that would fit in the tight computational and memory constraints of the tiny drones. They solved this challenge by means of bio-inspired navigation and search strategies. The scientific article has now been made public on the ArXiv article server, and it will be presented at the renowned IROS robotics conference later this year. The work forms an important step in the intelligence of small robots and will allow finding gas leaks more efficiently and without the risk of human lives in real-world environments.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">these old movies - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i get a deja vu -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with so many of them </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> yet i’m sure i never -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">had a chance to see them </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">weird - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we-aired - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we-erred - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we-ared - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we-eared - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we-were’d - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we-were-d - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we---- </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we are -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">death-walkers -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> i am feeling -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">grateful in this moment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this space-flight of a life - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from mystery to mystery - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pondering the effort - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the sadness -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of always an imagining - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so randomly actual - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-80149019027597490572021-07-08T17:33:00.001-07:002021-07-08T17:33:05.744-07:00Friday Thinking 9 July, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div><div><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-d66020b3-7fff-52bc-1271-00f9febc3989"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0c343d;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-empathy-prior-and-agi-e4dc99598b99" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AGI and the Empathy Prior</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-fluid-nature-of-individuality-b7c5e19de8f4" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Fluid Nature of Individuality</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/medieval-bureaucracies-are-paper-clip-maximizers-b11e0c2756bb" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Medieval Bureaucracies are Paper Clip Maximizers</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="http://locusmag.com/Features/2007/07/cory-doctorow-progressive-apocalypse.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Progressive Apocalypse and Other Futurismic Delights</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://nautil.us/issue/11/light/early-humans-made-animated-art" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Early Humans Made Animated Art</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/malaria-vaccine-live-parasites-drugs-results-small-trial" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A malaria vaccine with live parasites shows promise in a small trial</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-microfluidic-device-mrna-nanoparticles-faster.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New microfluidic device delivers mRNA nanoparticles a hundred times faster</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-molecule-chestnut-dangerous-staph-bacteria.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New molecule found in chestnut leaves disarms dangerous staph bacteria</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-world-thinnest-technologyonly-atoms-thick.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-nwletter" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The world's thinnest technology—only two atoms thick</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-earth-cryosphere-square-kilometers-year.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Earth's cryosphere is shrinking by 87,000 square kilometers per year</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/sub-zero-water-splitting-marks-a-new-dawn-for-solar-hydrogen-production/4013887.article" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sub-zero water splitting marks a new dawn for solar hydrogen production</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydbzrun3opk" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Suzanne Simard | Mother Trees and the Social Forest</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-battery-powered-climate-game-changer-aboard.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Battery-powered trains could be a climate game changer. Is everyone all aboard?</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-7f51b53f-7fff-73e8-4c43-563d3d623bdb"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, the general intelligence that is unique in humans can be found in the complexity of interactions between humans. Language is but a shadow of that interaction. The essence of it is in the language games we play.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The nature of human learning is equally odd. We learn because we participate. We learn because we are embedded in a sensory-motor loop. We learn because we are engaged and it manifested in the engagement of our attention. Unlike a computer where new skills can be downloaded, humans learn by participatory experience. As Feynman said, what we cannot create we cannot understand. We learn by recreating. We learn by doing.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is not a bug of general intelligence, rather it is a feature. Skills are only learned when an agent is able to recreate for itself the skills.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-empathy-prior-and-agi-e4dc99598b99" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">AGI and the Empathy Prior</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Physics we seek out symmetries so as to find invariances in nature and ultimately laws of nature. In Biology, these invariances are expressed on the notion of individuality or self. Invariance in biology is not just a consequence of causational invariance as found in Physics. But rather a consequence of intentionality enabled by actions forged by causality. Intentions however are a compositional thing. But they only scale if there is shared intentionality across the individuals of the collective.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Civilizations and societies scale and eventually take over the world as a consequence of consensus mechanisms that coordinate the many individuals in their respective collectives. The same robustness that private property renders in a free economy is represented in the individual subject stance of members of a species. Decision-making is local but there is an emergent behavior of the collective that preserves its identity.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-fluid-nature-of-individuality-b7c5e19de8f4" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Fluid Nature of Individuality</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fear of AI alignment focuses on the wrong problem. The real problem is that our society treats people like replaceable parts. Until society treats people like a mother treats their child, we are never going to achieve a society that aligns with humanity.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/medieval-bureaucracies-are-paper-clip-maximizers-b11e0c2756bb" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Medieval Bureaucracies are Paper Clip Maximizers</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an old (207) but brief article that explores futuristic literature.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="http://locusmag.com/Features/2007/07/cory-doctorow-progressive-apocalypse.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Progressive Apocalypse and Other Futurismic Delights</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science fiction writers aren't the only people in the business of predicting the future. Futurists — consultants, technology columnists, analysts, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurial pitchmen — spill a lot of ink, phosphors, and caffeinated hot air in describing a vision for a future where we'll get more and more of whatever it is they want to sell us or warn us away from. Tomorrow will feature faster, cheaper processors, more Internet users, ubiquitous RFID tags, radically democratic political processes dominated by bloggers, massively multiplayer games whose virtual economies dwarf the physical economy.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There's a lovely neologism to describe these visions: "futurismic." Futurismic media is that which depicts futurism, not the future. It is often self-serving — think of the antigrav Nikes in Back to the Future III — and it generally doesn't hold up well to scrutiny.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The non-futurismic version of NCC-1701 would be the size of a softball (or whatever the minimum size for a warp drive, transporter, and subspace radio would be). It would zip around the galaxy at FTL speeds under remote control. When it reached an interesting planet, it would beam a stored copy of a landing party onto the surface, and when their mission was over, it would beam them back into storage, annihilating their physical selves until they reached the next stopping point. If a member of the landing party were eaten by a green-skinned interspatial hippie or giant toga-wearing galactic tyrant, that member would be recovered from backup by the transporter beam. Hell, the entire landing party could consist of multiple copies of the most effective crew member onboard: no redshirts, just a half-dozen instances of Kirk operating in clonal harmony.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It seems like the graphic novel - or even the short animation may have been a human form of communication even before writing was. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What’s more, a flickering flame in the cave may have conjured impressions of motion like a strobe light in a dark club. In low light, human vision degrades, and that can lead to the perception of movement even when all is still - The trick may occur at two levels; one when the eye processes a dimly lit scene, and the second when the brain makes sense of that limited, flickering information.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://nautil.us/issue/11/light/early-humans-made-animated-art" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Early Humans Made Animated Art</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">How Paleolithic artists used fire to set the world’s oldest art in motion.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Artists at Lascaux used fire to see inside caves, but the glow and flicker of flames may also have been integral to the stories the paintings told. “Today, when you light the whole cave, it is very stupid because you kill the staging,” says Jean-Michel Geneste, Lascaux’s curator, the director of France’s National Center of Prehistory, and the head of the archaeological project I worked on that summer. Worse yet, most people only see cave paintings in cropped photographs that are evenly lit with lights that are strong and white. According to Geneste, this removes the images from the context of the story they were meant to tell and makes the colors in the paintings colder, or bluer, than Paleolithic people would have seen them.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reconstructions of the original grease lamps produce a circle of light about 10 feet in diameter, which is not much larger than many images in the cave. Geneste believes that early artists used this small area of light as a story-telling device. “It is very important: the presence of the darkness, the spot of yellow light, and inside it one, two, three animals, no more,” Geneste says. “That’s a tool in a narrative structure,” he explains. Just as a sentence generally describes a single idea, the light from a grease lamp would illuminate a single part of a story. Whatever tales may have been told inside Lascaux have been lost to history, but it is easy to imagine a person moving their fire-lit lamp along the walls as they unraveled a story step-by-step, using the darkness as a frame for the images inside a small circle of firelight.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Geneste supports his hypothesis by pointing to the various sizes of animals. “If you want to have several animals in a narrative relationship it is necessary to have them small,” he says. “If you want only one animal, you make them big.” If Geneste is right, the paintings I saw in the Hall of Bulls could have been read like a comic strip, as a series of frames: first the bison, then two black horses, more horses, a focus on the bison, and so on down the length of the chamber.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The complexity of the problems life presents may be the portals to progress - and certainly evolution. However - this is a weak signal in relation to malaria.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/malaria-vaccine-live-parasites-drugs-results-small-trial" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A malaria vaccine with live parasites shows promise in a small trial</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next steps include figuring out whether the results hold up in larger trials</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a one-two punch, a malaria vaccine in development pairs a shot of the live parasite that causes the disease with a whammy of infection-fighting drugs to immediately quell it.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The candidate is the latest vaccine to show promise against a formidable foe, bolstering hopes that an effective shot might be on the horizon. Malaria, a disease caused by the parasite </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Plasmodium falciparum</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, affects more than 200 million people around the world every year. In 2019, an estimated 409,000 people died from the mosquito-borne disease, 67 percent of whom were children younger than 5.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The live parasite vaccine and drug combo showed 87.5 percent efficacy in a small group of healthy adult participants, researchers reported June 30 in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The live parasite shot — which is followed by a dose of one of two anti-malarial drugs to eliminate the infection — not only protected people from the same strain included in the vaccine, but most people could also fend off a different parasite strain that circulates in Brazil. </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Covid has revealed the wonder of mRNA approaches to developing effective vaccines and the promises of other treatments. This is a good signal of ongoing progress.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This increased speed may not be the only benefit; more precisely controlling the </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/nanoparticles/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nanoparticles</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">' size could make treatments more effective. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"We believe that this microfluidic technology has the potential to not only play a key role in the formulation of current COVID vaccines," says Mitchell, "but also to potentially address the immense need ahead of us as mRNA technology expands into additional classes of therapeutics."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-microfluidic-device-mrna-nanoparticles-faster.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New microfluidic device delivers mRNA nanoparticles a hundred times faster</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">The COVID vaccines currently being deployed were developed with unprecedented speed, but the mRNA technology at work in some of them is an equally impressive success story. Because any desired mRNA sequence can be synthesized in massive quantities, one of the biggest hurdles in a variety of mRNA therapies is the ability to package those sequences into the lipid nanoparticles that deliver them into cells.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, thanks to manufacturing technology developed by bioengineers and </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/medical+researchers/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">medical researchers</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at the University of Pennsylvania, a hundred-fold increase in current microfluidic production rates may soon be possible.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The researchers' advance stems from their design of a proof-of-concept microfluidic device containing 128 mixing channels working in parallel. The channels mix a precise amount of lipid and mRNA, essentially crafting individual </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/lipid+nanoparticles/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lipid nanoparticles</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on a miniaturized assembly line.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The complexity of our biosphere has much to teach us about how new molecules can be found, produced and ultimately manufactured. An amazing part of this signal is that children’s toys have become so sophisticated that afford themselves to be parts in more specialized tools. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an extract from the leaves disarms even the hyper-virulent MRSA strains capable of causing serious infections in healthy athletes. Experiments also showed the extract did not disturb normal, healthy bacteria on skin cells.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, the researchers demonstrated how the extract works, by inhibiting the ability of MRSA bacteria to communicate with one another, a process known as quorum sensing. MRSA uses this sensing signaling system to make toxins and ramp up its virulence.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Our homemade piece of equipment really helped accelerate the pace of our discovery," Quave says. "We were able to isolate this molecule and derive pure crystals of it, even though it only makes up a mere .0019 percent of the chestnut leaves."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-molecule-chestnut-dangerous-staph-bacteria.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New molecule found in chestnut leaves disarms dangerous staph bacteria</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists have isolated a molecule, extracted from the leaves of the European chestnut tree, with the power to neutralize dangerous, drug-resistant staph bacteria. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Frontiers in Pharmacology</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has published the finding, led by scientists at Emory University.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The researchers dubbed the molecule Castaneroxy A, after the genus of the European chestnut, Castanea. The use of chestnut leaves in traditional folk remedies in rural Italy inspired the research.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"We were able to isolate this molecule, new to science, that occurs only in very tiny quantities in the chestnut leaves," says Cassandra Quave, senior author of the paper and associate professor in Emory's Center for the Study of Human Health and the School of Medicine's Department of Dermatology. "We also showed how it disarms Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus by knocking out the bacteria's ability to produce toxins."</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"We're trying to fill the pipeline for antimicrobial drug discovery with compounds that work differently from traditional antibiotics," Quave says. "We urgently need these new strategies." She notes that antimicrobial infections kill an estimated 700,000 globally each year, and that number is expected to grow exponentially if new methods of treatment are not found.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the researchers wanted to isolate these active ingredients from the plant extract. The process is painstaking when done manually, because plant extracts typically contain hundreds of different chemicals. Each chemical must be separated out and then tested for efficacy. Large scale fraction collectors, coupled to high-performance liquid chromatographic systems, automate this separation process, but they can cost tens of thousands of dollars and did not have all the features the Quave lab needed.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marco Caputo, a research specialist in the lab, solved the problem. Using a software device from a child's toy, the LEGO MINDSTORMS robot creator, a few LEGO bricks, and some components from a hardware store, Caputo built an automated liquid separator customized to the lab's needs for $500. The lab members dubbed the invention the LEGO MINDSTORMS Fraction Collector. They published instructions for how to build it in a journal so that other researchers can tap the simple, but effective, technology.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hacking matter is a concept that’s been around for a couple of decades at least. It seems that new signals of the future of matter emerge everyday. Here’s a small signal of new devices, sensors and computational capacity in the next few decades.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"are excited about discovering what can happen in other states we force upon nature and predict that other structures that couple additional degrees of freedom are possible. We hope that miniaturization and flipping through sliding will improve today's electronic devices, and moreover, allow other original ways of controlling information in future devices. In addition to computer devices, we expect that this technology will contribute to detectors, energy storage and conversion, interaction with light, etc. Our challenge, as we see it, is to discover more crystals with new and slippery degrees of freedom."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-world-thinnest-technologyonly-atoms-thick.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-nwletter" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The world's thinnest technology—only two atoms thick</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers from Tel Aviv University have engineered the world's tiniest technology, with a thickness of only two atoms. According to the researchers, the new technology proposes a way for storing electric information in the thinnest unit known to science, in one of the most stable and inert materials in nature. The allowed quantum-mechanical electron tunneling through the atomically thin film may boost the information reading process much beyond current technologies.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The ability to force a crystalline and electronic arrangement in such a thin system, with unique polarization and inversion properties resulting from the weak Van der Waals forces between the layers, is not limited to the boron and nitrogen crystal," adds Dr. Shalom. "We expect the same behaviors in many layered crystals with the right symmetry properties. The concept of interlayer sliding as an original and efficient way to control advanced electronic devices is very promising, and we have named it Slide-Tronics."</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The world is changing everywhere in and in all ways. This is not good news.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The cryosphere holds almost three-quarters of Earth's fresh water, and in some mountainous regions, dwindling glaciers threaten drinking water supplies.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-earth-cryosphere-square-kilometers-year.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Earth's cryosphere is shrinking by 87,000 square kilometers per year</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">The global cryosphere—all of the areas with frozen water on Earth—shrank by about 87,000 square kilometers (about 33,000 square miles, an area about the size of Lake Superior) per year on average between 1979 and 2016, as a result of climate change, according to a new study. This research is the first to make a global estimate of the surface area of the Earth covered by sea ice, snow cover and frozen ground.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The extent of land covered by frozen water is just as important as its mass because the bright white surface reflects sunlight so effectively, cooling the planet. Changes in the size or location of ice and snow can alter air temperatures, change the sea level and even affect ocean currents worldwide.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The new study is published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Earth's Future</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, AGU's journal for interdisciplinary research on the past, present and future of our planet and its inhabitants.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A good signal supporting renewable energy generation for the earth’s colder climates.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/sub-zero-water-splitting-marks-a-new-dawn-for-solar-hydrogen-production/4013887.article" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sub-zero water splitting marks a new dawn for solar hydrogen production</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers have developed a solar-powered system that splits water at -20°C. The technology could serve as a renewable fuel source in high altitude and polar environments.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Using hydrogen as a fuel source is preferable to fossil fuels as it is renewable and contributes very little, if at all, to the greenhouse effect. In areas where the temperature is regularly below freezing, hydrogen fuel stores easily in tanks, so a method that produces hydrogen locally would go a long way to fulfilling the energy needs of remote populations. A problem with this is that most conventional methods for producing hydrogen do not work well at sub-zero temperatures.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, a team of researchers in Germany, led by Matthias May of the University of Ulm, has devised a technology that would allow hydrogen production at low temperatures. The method works by using electrolytes with low freezing points, such as dilute sulfuric acid, to allow the use of water at lower temperatures. This is combined with strict thermal control of the whole device to prevent loss of heat to the environment and to transfer additional heat energy from the solar cell to the electrolyte, resulting in an interior working temperature of around 10°C.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is a wonderful 1 hour Youtube from the Long Now Foundation about the Great Mothers of our forests and the plant Internet provided by mycelial networks.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydbzrun3opk" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Suzanne Simard | Mother Trees and the Social Forest</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forest Ecologist Suzanne Simard reveals that trees are part of a complex, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground mycorrhizal networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities, and share and exchange resources and support. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Simard's extraordinary research and tenacious efforts to raise awareness on the interconnectedness of forest systems, both above and below ground, has revolutionized our understanding of forest ecology. This increasing knowledge is driving a call for more sustainable practices in forestry and land management, ones that develop strategies based on the forest as a whole entity, not on trees as isolated individuals.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dr. Suzanne Simard is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and the author of "Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest" (pub. 5/4/21). An active field researcher for decades, her scientific studies and observations built the foundations for our new understanding of the complexity of forest systems. Simard's current collaboration The Mother Tree Project, is investigating forest renewal practices that will protect biodiversity, carbon storage and forest regeneration as the climate changes.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another good signal of the emerging transformation of global energy politics.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-07-battery-powered-climate-game-changer-aboard.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Battery-powered trains could be a climate game changer. Is everyone all aboard?</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Colossal freight locomotives are a fixture of the American landscape, but their 4,400-horsepower engines collectively burn 3.5 billion gallons of diesel annually, at a time when railroads and other fossil fuel users face pressure to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With little fanfare, however, the industry has begun operating locomotives that run on stored </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/electrical+power/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">electrical power</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, moving toward a future in which toy shops are not the only source of battery trains. American passenger lines could also be transformed by the technology, though California rail officials say it will not work for the state's bullet train.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a just-completed test, BNSF ran a freight train from Barstow to Stockton with an experimental battery locomotive, coupled with two diesel locomotives, and achieved an 11% reduction in fuel consumption, along with similar reductions in emissions of nitrogen oxides, small particulates and greenhouse gasses. An upgraded future operational version is expected to improve fuel efficiency by 30%.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The test was a "defining moment for freight rail," accelerating the industry to eventual zero-emission locomotives, said Eric Gebhardt, chief technology officer at Wabtec, which developed the system at its research center near Lake Erie in northern Pennsylvania.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Battery- and hydrogen fuel cell-powered trains are among the rail industry's only viable options for reducing greenhouse gasses. Every battery locomotive that replaces a diesel will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3,000 tons per year, Wabtec estimates.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">difference between -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that moment-in-sight - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and the after that - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">leveling-up - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is just that - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bigger bandwidth - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but with -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">emergents of spectral-turbulences - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my style is -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what i’m comfortable with - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my growth - well being is -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">becoming comfortable with -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more complexity of choice-afford-dancing - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more complex - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dimensional - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">homeostasing - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a sense of meta-social-selfing - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-34860422413837023282021-07-01T18:23:00.001-07:002021-07-01T18:23:31.545-07:00Friday Thinking 2 July, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div><div><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3de82b05-7fff-826f-376f-f0eeb43397c4"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-many-doctrines-of-agi-research-af6d37feca47" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Map of Doctrines in AGI Research</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/same-or-different-ai-cant-tell-20210623/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Same or Different? The Question Flummoxes Neural Networks</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2021-06-22/robber-barons-beijing" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Robber Barons of Beijing</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/robert-pollin-gerald-epstein-neoliberalism%E2%80%99s-bailout-problem?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=bc836dfd45-MC_Newsletter_6_24_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-bc836dfd45-41149737&mc_cid=bc836dfd45&mc_eid=9d144c2ab4" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Neoliberalism’s Bailout Problem</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-illusion-of-the-ungameable-objective-538a96a53efe" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fooled by the Ungameable Objective</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/vaccine-immunity-stronger-than-natural-infection-covid/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why COVID-19 vaccines can provide stronger immunity than natural infection</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.gjopen.com/challenges/56-the-world-ahead-what-if" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The World Ahead: What If?</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01759-5" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Impact factor abandoned by Dutch university in hiring and promotion decisions</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/quantum-mechanics-compass-songbird-physics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A proposed ‘quantum compass’ for songbirds just got more plausible</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-food-air-solar-power-efficient.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Growing food with air and solar power: More efficient than planting crops</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-nuclear-batteries-approach-carbon-free-energy.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why 'nuclear batteries' offer a new approach to carbon-free energy</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-ultralight-material-supersonic-microparticle-impacts.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ultralight material withstands supersonic microparticle impacts</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210622-how-shipwrecked-yeasts-could-change-the-taste-of-your-beer" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The treasure inside beer lost in a shipwreck 120 years ago</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-eb581197-7fff-3ffb-fe1e-469ffdb1048c"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Varela’s narrative, cognitive science originated from Cybernetics. The first phase which he describes as Cognitivism is based on the notion of cognition as information processing. The second phase is the notion of cognition as a dynamical system with emergent properties. The final phase is that of an enactive system where agents deriving semantics through its coupling with its environment. Varela’s paper argues for a progression from Cybernetics into a more enlightened Enactive approach. This progress is related to the progression across the fields of AI, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, linguistics and philosophy. The chart above is two dimensional in that it locates researchers that straddle between pairs of these fields.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the notion of levels of complexity is shared across fields of inquiry. However, the methodology to deal with complexity will eventually be shared in common between different fields. It is just an unfortunate situation today that knowledge of complex adaptive systems is noticeably absent in the various disciplines of cognitive science.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Francisco Varela who noticed that when one finds a dichotomy, one can find a relationship between the two conflicting concepts via a part-whole relationship. In a part-whole relationship, we can find an emergent phenomenon as a consequence of the interactions of the parts. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even in quantum mechanics, we have a dichotomy revealed in the wave-particle duality. The wave is dispersed like the whole and the particle is localized like the part. They are however paradoxically the same thing. This mirrors the representation and anti-representation debate. One could argue that representation implies localized signs while non-representation implies distributed signs. We are all too often hindered by dualistic thinking and ignore triadic thinking.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-many-doctrines-of-agi-research-af6d37feca47" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A Map of Doctrines in AGI Research</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">getting any machine to learn same-different distinctions will require a breakthrough in the understanding of learning itself. Kids understand the rules of “One of These Things Is Not Like the Other” after a single Sesame Street episode, not extensive training. Birds, bees and people can all learn that way — not just when learning to tell “same” from “different,” but for a variety of cognitive tasks. “I think that until we figure out how you can learn from a few examples and novel objects, we’re pretty much screwed,”</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/same-or-different-ai-cant-tell-20210623/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Same or Different? The Question Flummoxes Neural Networks</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Different types of corruption harm countries in different ways. Petty theft and grand theft are like toxic drugs; they directly and unambiguously hurt the economy by draining public and private wealth while delivering no benefits in return. Speed money is akin to painkillers; it may relieve a headache but doesn’t improve one’s strength. Access money, on the other hand, is like steroids. It spurs muscle growth and allows one to perform superhuman feats, but it comes with serious side effects, including the possibility of a complete meltdown.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2021-06-22/robber-barons-beijing" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Robber Barons of Beijing</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The most basic tenet undergirding neoliberal economics is that free market capitalism—or at least some close approximation to it—is the only effective framework for delivering widely shared economic well-being. On this view, only free markets can increase productivity and average living standards while delivering high levels of individual freedom and fair social outcomes: big government spending and heavy regulations are simply less effective.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This neoliberal ascendency has been undergirded by the full-throated support of the overwhelming majority of professional economists, including such luminaries as Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In reality neoliberalism has depended on huge levels of government support for its entire existence. The global neoliberal economic order could easily have collapsed into a 1930s-level Great Depression multiple times over in the absence of massive government interventions. Especially central to its survival have been government bailouts, including emergency government spending injections financed by borrowing—that is, deficit spending—as well as central bank actions to prop up financial institutions and markets teetering on the verge of ruin.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As bailouts have prevented full-scale market crashes—and thereby allowed market speculators to escape the full consequences of their excesses—financial institutions and market trading have, accordingly, grown exponentially under neoliberalism. </span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/robert-pollin-gerald-epstein-neoliberalism%E2%80%99s-bailout-problem?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=bc836dfd45-MC_Newsletter_6_24_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-bc836dfd45-41149737&mc_cid=bc836dfd45&mc_eid=9d144c2ab4" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Neoliberalism’s Bailout Problem</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No super intelligent AI is going to bother with a task that is harder than hacking its reward function.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-illusion-of-the-ungameable-objective-538a96a53efe" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Fooled by the Ungameable Objective</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have now had both shots - and feel great. This may help anyone with vaccine hesitancy feel better about getting vaccinated.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/vaccine-immunity-stronger-than-natural-infection-covid/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why COVID-19 vaccines can provide stronger immunity than natural infection</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">A recent preprint study, led by scientists from the University of Oxford, offers the most thorough account of immune responses in recovered COVID-19 patients to date. Nearly 80 healthcare worked were closely followed for six months post-infection and the researchers used a novel machine-learning approach to analyze immune biomarkers.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We found that individuals showed very different immune responses from each other following COVID-19, with some people from both the symptomatic and asymptomatic groups showing no evidence of immune memory six months after infection or even sooner,” explains study author Christina Dold.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In general the research saw a correlation between disease severity and lasting immune response. Over 90 percent of asymptomatic cases showed no measurable immune response six months later. A quarter of symptomatic cases lacked lasting immunity six months after infection.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A little more worrying, however, was the finding that very few serum samples from infected subjects mounted antibody responses against newer variants of the virus. Dold says this seems to suggest those infected with the original SARS-CoV-2 strain in 2020 may have little protection from some of the newer variants beginning to circulate.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Our concern is that these people may be at risk of contracting COVID-19 for a second time, especially with new variants circulating,” says Dold. “This means that it is very important that we all get the COVID vaccine.”</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For every foresight practitioner - and we all do foresight when ever we take a mortgage, embark on a course of studies, have a child - this ask people to participate in providing your best assessment to some longer term questions. Anyone could become a superforcaster.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.gjopen.com/challenges/56-the-world-ahead-what-if" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The World Ahead: What If?</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">CLOSING</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oct 1, 2021 03:01AM</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The World Ahead: What If?</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is The Economist’s annual collection of speculative scenarios in the fields of politics, business, science and technology, and history.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this associated Challenge, we’re asking you to share your predictions on these forward-looking questions. Not all of them will come to pass, but thinking about possible futures can help us understand the present and catch glimpses of the world ahead.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Join this Challenge to share your perspective on the world ahead and help answer the question, “What If?”</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a good signal of the shift in recognition that all breakthroughs in science come as a result of either an combinations of teams or assembling the work of others in useful ways - perhaps our schools should also expand their focus and grading collective team work - to enhance collective intelligence.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The new scheme is part of Utrecht’s Open Science programme, a multi-track effort to make research more transparent and cooperative. Open-science fellows embedded within each department will assess progress towards open-access publishing, public engagement and data sharing.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01759-5" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Impact factor abandoned by Dutch university in hiring and promotion decisions</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Faculty and staff members at Utrecht University will be evaluated by their commitment to open science.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Dutch university says it is formally abandoning the impact factor — a standard measure of scientific success — in all hiring and promotion decisions. By early 2022, every department at Utrecht University in the Netherlands will judge its scholars by other standards, including their commitment to teamwork and their efforts to promote open science, says Paul Boselie, a governance researcher and the project leader for the university’s new Recognition and Rewards scheme. “Impact factors don’t really reflect the quality of an individual researcher or academic,” he says. “We have a strong belief that something has to change, and abandoning the impact factor is one of those changes.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A scientist’s impact factor is a score that takes into account the number of publications and the citation rate of the journals where those papers are published. In this system, articles in highly cited journals such as </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cell</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> count for more than articles in journals whose content is cited less frequently. Boselie says that impact factors — as well as a related measure called the h-index — contribute to a ‘product-ification’ of science that values sheer output over good research. “It has become a very sick model that goes beyond what is really relevant for science and putting science forward,” he says.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A 2018 report called the impact factor “an inadequate measure for assessing the impact of scientists” and concluded that failure to modify the current assessment system is likely to lead to “continued bandwagon behaviour that has not always resulted in positive societal behaviour”</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a good signal adding support for the emerging exploration into how quantum phenomena have been incorporated into biological systems. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/quantum-mechanics-compass-songbird-physics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A proposed ‘quantum compass’ for songbirds just got more plausible</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">A protein in European robins’ retinas showed sensitivity to magnetic</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists could be a step closer to understanding how some birds might exploit quantum physics to navigate.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers suspect that some songbirds use a “quantum compass” that senses the Earth’s magnetic field, helping them tell north from south during their annual migrations. New measurements support the idea that a protein in birds’ eyes called cryptochrome 4, or CRY4, could serve as a magnetic sensor. That protein’s magnetic sensitivity is thought to rely on quantum mechanics, the math that describes physical processes on the scale of atoms and electrons. If the idea is shown to be correct, it would be a step forward for biophysicists who want to understand how and when quantum principles can become important in various biological processes.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In laboratory experiments, the type of CRY4 in retinas of European robins (</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Erithacus rubecula</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) responded to magnetic fields, researchers report in the June 24 </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. That’s a crucial property for it to serve as a compass. “This is the first paper that actually shows that birds’ cryptochrome 4 is magnetically sensitive,” says sensory biologist Rachel Muheim of Lund University in Sweden, who was not involved with the research.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another small signal of an emerging new agricultural framework for providing our food in the future.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">they suggested that a 10-square-kilometer piece of land in the Amazon used to grow soybeans could be converted to a one-square-kilometer piece of land for growing food from the air, with the other nine square kilometers turned back to wild forest growth. They also note that the protein produced using the food-from-air approach had twice the caloric value as most other crops such as corn, wheat and rice.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-food-air-solar-power-efficient.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Growing food with air and solar power: More efficient than planting crops</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, the University of Naples Federico II, the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences has found that making food from air would be far more efficient than growing crops. In their paper published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the group describes their analysis and comparison of the efficiency of growing crops (soybeans) and using a food-from-air technique.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For several years, researchers around the world have been looking into the idea of growing "</span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/food/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">food</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from air," combining a renewable fuel resource with carbon from the air to create food for a type of bacteria that create edible protein. One such project is Solar Foods in Finland, where researchers have the goal of building a demonstration plant by 2023. In this new effort, the researchers sought to compare the efficiency of growing a staple crop, soybeans, with growing food from air.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While renewable energy is definitely the future - other forms of non-carbon energy may be required - this is a good signal of one of those possibilities.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it becomes sort of energy on demand. If the customer wants either heat or electricity, they can get it within a couple of months, or even weeks, and then it's plug and play. This machine arrives on the site, and just a few days later, you start getting your energy. So, it's a product, it's not a project.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-nuclear-batteries-approach-carbon-free-energy.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why 'nuclear batteries' offer a new approach to carbon-free energy</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">We may be on the brink of a new paradigm for nuclear power, a group of nuclear specialists suggested recently in The Bridge, the journal of the National Academy of Engineering. Much as large, expensive, and centralized computers gave way to the widely distributed PCs of today, a new generation of relatively tiny and inexpensive factory-built reactors, designed for autonomous plug-and-play operation similar to plugging in an oversized battery, is on the horizon, they say.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These proposed systems could provide heat for industrial processes or electricity for a military base or a neighborhood, run unattended for five to 10 years, and then be trucked back to the factory for refurbishment. The authors—Jacopo Buongiorno, MIT's TEPCO Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering; Robert Frida, a founder of GenH; Steven Aumeier of the Idaho National Laboratory; and Kevin Chilton, retired commander of the U.S. Strategic Command—have dubbed these small power plants "nuclear batteries." Because of their simplicity of operation, they could play a significant role in decarbonizing the world's electricity systems to avert catastrophic climate change, the researchers say. MIT News asked Buongiorno to describe his group's proposal.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NASA and Los Alamos National Laboratory have done a similar demonstration project, which they called a microreactor, for space applications. It took them just three years from the start of design to fabrication and testing. And it cost them $20 million. It was orders of magnitude smaller than traditional large nuclear plants that easily cost a billion-plus and take a decade or more to build.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As we domestic matter the ability to assemble-manufacture new materials at the nanoscale level is emerging. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A nanoarchitected material consists of patterned nanometer-scale structures that, depending on how they are arranged, can give materials unique properties such as exceptional lightness and resilience. As such, nanoarchitected materials are seen as potentially lighter, tougher impact-resistant materials.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-ultralight-material-supersonic-microparticle-impacts.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ultralight material withstands supersonic microparticle impacts</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new study by engineers at MIT, Caltech, and ETH Zürich shows that "nanoarchitected" materials—materials designed from precisely patterned nanoscale structures—may be a promising route to lightweight armor, protective coatings, blast shields, and other impact-resistant materials.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The researchers have fabricated an ultralight material made from nanometer-scale carbon struts that give the material toughness and mechanical robustness. The team tested the material's resilience by shooting it with microparticles at </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/supersonic+speeds/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">supersonic speeds</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and found that the material, which is thinner than the width of a human hair, prevented the miniature projectiles from tearing through it.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The researchers calculate that compared with steel, Kevlar, aluminum, and other impact-resistant </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/materials/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">materials</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of comparable weight, the new material is more efficient at absorbing impacts.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an important signal - emulating explorations of nature for new forms of life, new types of chemical, proteins and other ‘stuff’ for medicine, manufacturing and other purposes. It also signals how some microbes can evolve very quickly.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">About four years ago, Nueno-Palop and her colleagues conducted an experiment in which they brewed 33 beers that were all basically identical – save for the yeast. The team chose a different strain for each beer and began by analysing the strains' DNA, which turned out to be unexpectedly diverse.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The resulting beers also varied greatly in terms of their flavour profiles.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This idea, that historic yeasts can impart heritage as well as interesting flavours, is catching on outside of the beer world. Alan Bishop has the title of alchemist and lead distiller at Spirits of French Lick, a distillery in Indiana, in the US. The company makes a range of boutique spirits, including bourbon, apple brandy, rum and gin.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210622-how-shipwrecked-yeasts-could-change-the-taste-of-your-beer" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The treasure inside beer lost in a shipwreck 120 years ago</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Long-forgotten yeast strains are being sought out from shipwrecks, abandoned breweries and other locations in the hope they could be put to good use if resurrected.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since he began diving to the Wallachia in the 1980s, Hickman has retrieved dozens of bottles containing whisky, gin and beer. But his recent visit, a team effort with several companion divers, led to something unusual. The bottles they retrieved were handed to scientists at a research firm called Brewlab, who, along with colleagues from the University of Sunderland, were able to extract live yeast from the liquid inside three of the bottles. They then used that yeast in an attempt to recreate the original beer.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 2018, a similar project in Tasmania used yeast from 220-year-old beer bottles found on a shipwreck to approximate a beverage from the 1700s. But the study of the Wallachia yeast revealed a surprise. Those beers contained an unusual type of yeast and the team behind the work is now evaluating whether this long-lost strain could have applications in modern brewing or could even improve beers today.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is just one example of a growing field of research among brewers and other fermenters of liquids who are seeking forgotten strains of yeast in the hope they can be put to good use. That means hunting for them in old bottles found on shipwrecks, scouring ancient pots, and collecting samples from ruined distilleries where fabled strains may yet linger. This kind of search is called bioprospecting and resurrecting historic yeasts could have many applications, from cleaning up pollution to assisting in the production of aromas for the perfume industry.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ooo - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">yah i hear - but i don’t listen - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">yah i listen - but i don’t hear - </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">however you understand it - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it pretty well nails it - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what’s fascinating -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">about attractors - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is groundhog day -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is never identical -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but is always the same -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any moment -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we think we can find a ‘solution’ -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that we comprehend -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the situation - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is an opening </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for magical reasoning - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-18521232839183452392021-06-24T17:54:00.000-07:002021-06-24T17:54:38.701-07:00Friday Thinking 25 June, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div><div><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3e27619c-7fff-878d-c6a3-f78958f114de"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/for-97-of-human-history-equality-was-the-norm-what-happened" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How equality slipped away</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-pandemic-disproved-philosophy-of-ayn-rands-atlas-shrugged-2021-3" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' has been completely unraveled by the pandemic</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://onezero.medium.com/consent-theater-a32b98cd8d96" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consent Theater</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/caley-horan-our-insurance-dystopia" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our Insurance Dystopia</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/birthrates-declining-global-fertility-decline-empty-planet-covid-19-urbanization-migration-population/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bye, bye, baby? Birthrates are declining globally – here's why it matters</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2021/04/04/book-review-mission-economy-a-moonshot-guide-to-changing-capitalism-by-mariana-mazzucato/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-first-mobile-phone-call-was-75-years-ago-what-it-takes-for-technologies-to-go-from-breakthrough-to-big-time-162753" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first mobile phone call was 75 years ago</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-goodbye-camera-miniaturized-optics-counterpart.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Say goodbye to your camera bump: Miniaturized optics through new counterpart to lens</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-super-resolution-microscopy-method-approaches-atomic.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New super-resolution microscopy method approaches the atomic scale</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-ultra-high-density-hard-graphene-ten.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ultra-high-density hard drives made with graphene store ten times more data</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-discovery-human-cells-rna-sequences.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New discovery shows human cells can write RNA sequences into DNA</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-06-mrna-vaccine-yields-full-malaria.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mRNA vaccine yields full protection against malaria in mice</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-vegan-spider-silk-sustainable-alternative.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'Vegan spider silk' provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cosmetics-makeup-pfas-chemicals" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many cosmetics contain hidden, potentially dangerous ‘forever chemicals’</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-6312e38f-7fff-ff68-6034-3e2efe3ff78d"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The viability of farming depends not just on access to the few wild species that can be shaped into crops and flocks, but on predictable weather patterns. The Holocene is not just warmer and wetter than the Pleistocene glacial that preceded it. It’s much more stable. Grain agriculture never developed in Aboriginal Australia in part because of the marked annual variation in many Australian climates. Without industrial storage and transport, dependence on crops would have been suicidal. Whatever the causes of this revolutionary change, its consequences were immense. Farming and storage make inequality possible, perhaps even likely, because they tend to undermine sharing norms, establish property rights and the coercion of labour, amplify intercommunal violence, and lead to increases in social scale.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/for-97-of-human-history-equality-was-the-norm-what-happened" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">How equality slipped away</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There's a reason why libertarians have been so quiet since COVID arrived on our shores a year ago, and why Republican hyper-conservatives were bleating about Dr. Seuss when Democrats were passing an incredibly popular pandemic relief package.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The pandemic is proof of the single inescapable fact that destroys Ayn Rand's philosophy: We live in a society, and nobody is truly a self-made master of their own destiny. The sooner we understand the American ideal of sovereign individualism is the stuff of science-fiction, the faster we can get to work building a world that's better for everyone.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-pandemic-disproved-philosophy-of-ayn-rands-atlas-shrugged-2021-3" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' has been completely unraveled by the pandemic</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you take a Facebook post with you to a new platform, do you get to take other peoples’ comments, too? On the one hand, it sure feels like “things people said to me about my stuff” is part of “my data,” but at the same time, “things I said to other people about their stuff” is also “my data.” Do you need to get all your friends’ consent before you can take their comments? What if they’ve left Facebook already? What if they’re dead? What if the comment you want to take with you is from your enemy, who left a comment so exquisitely stupid that you want to make sure it’s preserved for all eternity? Do you need your enemy’s permission to preserve a copy of their insults?</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These aren’t just good, chewy questions for privacy advocates — questions smart people have been pondering for a long time — they’re also fast becoming a favored talking point of Big Tech, its shills, simps, and lobbyists.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You can’t make us give people their own data back,” Big Tech says, “because it’s not their data! It’s data whose title is so entangled that we alone are entitled to control it.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s an awfully convenient argument. But it raises an inconvenient question: If this data is so gnarly that no one can hope to untangle it, how did Big Tech come to take possession of it in the first place?</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consent theater is a sociopath’s charter: “Yes, I stabbed you 11 times, but you agreed that I could when you came close enough to read my ‘By reading this sign, you give consent for me to stab you’ sign.”</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://onezero.medium.com/consent-theater-a32b98cd8d96" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Consent Theater</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1914, on the eve of World War I, Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce celebrated the utopian promise of insurance. In an address delivered at the University of California at Berkeley, Royce welcomed what he called “the coming social order of the insurer”—a new system of global governance based on the model of mutual insurance. Building on the work of fellow philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, Royce imagined on the horizon a global “community of insurance” made up of all the nations of the world.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Under this new system, Royce predicted, every nation would contribute to a large insurance pool overseen by an independent world body. The result would not only insure the peoples of the world against future disasters, natural and manmade. It would also help bring them closer together by encouraging a spirit of interdependence and mutual aid—a “genuine community of mankind” that would contribute “to peace, to loyalty, to social unity, to active charity, as no other community of interpretation has ever done.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forty years later, American science fiction authors Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey imagined a vastly different insurance future. Their 1955 novel, Preferred Risk, depicts a dystopian insurance era ruled by “The Company,” a massive insurance firm that achieves total global domination, displacing state governments. The Company rises to power by distributing insurance for everything imaginable: hunger, natural disasters, reproduction, war. It rules over humanity by refining every action and consequence down to a scale of precise probabilities, represented in complex actuarial tables decipherable only by experts. Most people embrace the new era, despite being permanently segregated into risk classes that dictate what they eat, where they live, how they work, and who they meet. Others struggle simply to survive. A desperate group of outcasts—the “uninsurables”—live miserably on the outskirts of society, shunned as deviants by those lucky enough to be classified as “preferred risks.”</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/caley-horan-our-insurance-dystopia" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Our Insurance Dystopia</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An important signal that is not new - but gaining recognition - one reason to anticipate huge flocks of robots. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most children these days are wanted or planned children, especially in the developed world. Deciding to have a baby is contingent on being optimistic about the future</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/birthrates-declining-global-fertility-decline-empty-planet-covid-19-urbanization-migration-population/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bye, bye, baby? Birthrates are declining globally – here's why it matters</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">China has experienced a fertility collapse. According to the latest census released in May, China is losing roughly 400,000 people every year. China still claims its population is growing, but even if these projections are taken at face value, the population decline previously projected to start by midcentury may now begin as early as 2030. This means China could lose between 600 and 700 million people from its population by 2100.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s right: 600 and 700 million people, or about half of its total population today.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">China’s population changes are not unique among the superpowers. According to the United States’ most recent census, the US birthrate has declined for six straight years and 19% since 2007 in total. Like China, the US birthrate is now well below replacement rate at 1.6. (China is now at 1.3.) For a country to naturally replace its population, its birthrate needs to be at least 2.1.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can also add the world’s second-most populous country, India, to the list of low-fertility countries, with a birthrate at replacement rate (2.1). Also include Japan (1.3), Russia (1.6), Brazil (1.8), Bangladesh (1.7) and Indonesia (2.0).</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are still big countries with high birthrates, such as Pakistan (3.4) and Nigeria (5.1). But even these numbers are lower than they were in 1960 – when Pakistan was at 6.6 and Nigeria at 6.4 – and declining every year.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A great signal of the emerging of a new economic paradigm to displace the dysfunctions of neoliberalism - along with the rise of Modern Monetary Theory.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2021/04/04/book-review-mission-economy-a-moonshot-guide-to-changing-capitalism-by-mariana-mazzucato/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the UK prepares to host November’s crucial COP26 climate summit, international governments are under pressure to deepen their carbon-reduction targets amidst a worsening climate crisis. The mood music seems to finally be shifting on green issues, with financial markets going green, the UK Treasury reporting on biodiversity and even Bill Gates weighing into the conversation. However emissions continue to rise, and a gnawing feeling remains that central governments are dragging their feet on actions that meet the scale of the challenge.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enter Mariana Mazzucato, and her timely new book </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Part policy critique, part manifesto, Mission Economy reinvigorates the role of the state for tackling today’s complex problems, demanding vision, ambition and public purpose in economic strategy. The book is short, accessible and written with an urgency befitting this time of crises. But as persistent constraints continue to limit green policy at national and international levels, can Mazzucato’s approach unlock much needed systemic transitions, and work at the global scale?</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mazzucato starts by diagnosing our dysfunctional form of contemporary capitalism, fuelled by and fuelling climate crisis. She identifies four drivers of this dysfunction: 1) finance sector short-termism; 2) the financialisation of business and value; 3) fossil fuel dependency; and 4) slow or absent governments. Lamenting the UK’s ‘infantilised’ civil service and the depletion of Western governments through dereglation and outsourcing, Mazzucato highlights a toxic, self-fulfilling prophecy at play: ‘the less government does, the less it takes risks and manages, the less capacity it develops, and the more boring it is to work for’ (49). The resulting drain limits public sector leadership, and possibilities for green strategy.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Seeing a weak signal in technology development and imagining the possible is hard and the timeline for a possible to manifest as a public or consumer good - is most often long and winding. There are 3 short videos as well including one from the 40s illustrating and explaining the capability. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first handheld mobile phone was demonstrated in 1973, nearly three decades after the introduction of the first mobile phone service. It was nearly three decades after that before half the U.S. population had a mobile phone.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your cellphone is a result of over a hundred years of commercial and government investment in research and development in all of its components and related technologies.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-first-mobile-phone-call-was-75-years-ago-what-it-takes-for-technologies-to-go-from-breakthrough-to-big-time-162753" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first mobile phone call was 75 years ago</span></a><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">– what it takes for technologies to go from breakthrough to big time</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have a cellphone built into my watch. People now take this type of technology for granted, but not so long ago it was firmly in the realm of science fiction. The transition from fantasy to reality was far from the flip of a switch. The amount of time, money, talent and effort required to put a telephone on my wrist spanned far beyond any one product development cycle.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The people who crossed a wristwatch with a cellphone worked hard for several years to make it happen, but technology development really occurs on a timescale of decades. While the last steps of technological development capture headlines, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it takes thousands of scientists and engineers working for decades on myriad technologies to get to the point where blockbuster products begin to capture the public’s imagination</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first mobile phone service, for 80-pound telephones installed in cars, was demonstrated on June 17, 1946, 75 years ago. The service was only available in major cities and highway corridors and was aimed at companies rather than individuals. The equipment filled much of a car’s trunk, and subscribers made calls by picking up the handset and speaking to a switchboard operator. By 1948, the service had 5,000 customers.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not just the mobile phone - but the mobile universal tool that is now ubiquitous - it is amazing to reflect that 20 years ago photography still generally required us to process physical film in order to view and collect our pictures. Today basically everyone is a photographer of some sort and the number of pictures being taken and stored continues to increase exponentially.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is exciting because this device will let us shrink down all sorts of very large devices that we thought were impossible to miniaturize in optics. In order to design it, we need to come up with a new set of rules that is incompatible with that used in lens design. Nobody knows what they are, it's like the wild west.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-goodbye-camera-miniaturized-optics-counterpart.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Say goodbye to your camera bump: Miniaturized optics through new counterpart to lens</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Can you imagine one day using a telescope as thin as a sheet of paper, or a much smaller and lighter high-performance camera? Or no longer having that camera bump behind your smartphone?</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a paper published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Communications</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, researchers from the University of Ottawa have proposed a new optical element that could turn these ideas into reality by dramatically miniaturizing optical devices, potentially impacting many of the applications in our lives.</span></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To learn more about this project, we talked to lead author Dr. Orad Reshef, a senior postdoctoral fellow in the Robert Boyd Group, and research lead Dr. Jeff Lundeen, who is the Canada Research Chair in Quantum Photonics, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Ottawa, and head of the Lundeen Lab.</span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The article An optic to replace space and its application towards ultra-thin imaging systems is published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Communications</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What we are becoming able to see is amazing.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-super-resolution-microscopy-method-approaches-atomic.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New super-resolution microscopy method approaches the atomic scale</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed a computational technique that greatly increases the resolution of atomic force microscopy, a specialized type of microscope that "feels" the atoms at a surface. The method reveals atomic-level details on proteins and other biological structures under normal physiological conditions, opening a new window on cell biology, virology and other microscopic processes.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a study, published June 16 in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the investigators describe the new technique, which is based on a strategy used to improve resolution in </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/light+microscopy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">light microscopy</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To study proteins and other biomolecules at high resolution, investigators have long relied on two techniques: X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/microscopy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">microscopy</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. While both methods can determine molecular structures down to the resolution of individual atoms, they do so on molecules that are either scaffolded into crystals or frozen at ultra-cold temperatures, possibly altering them from their normal physiological shapes. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) can analyze biological molecules under normal physiological conditions, but the resulting images have been blurry and low resolution.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And storage itself also continues to increase in capacity.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-ultra-high-density-hard-graphene-ten.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ultra-high-density hard drives made with graphene store ten times more data</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Graphene can be used for ultra-high density hard disk drives (HDD), with up to a tenfold jump compared to current technologies, researchers at the Cambridge Graphene Center have shown.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The study, published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Communications</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, was carried out in collaboration with teams at the University of Exeter, India, Switzerland, Singapore, and the US.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">HDDs first appeared in the 1950s, but their use as </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/storage+devices/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">storage devices</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in personal computers only took off from the mid-1980s. They have become ever smaller in size, and denser in terms of the number of stored bytes. While solid state drives are popular for mobile devices, HDDs continue to be used to store files in desktop computers, largely due to their favorable cost to produce and purchase.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The data density of HDDs has quadrupled since 1990, and the COC thickness has reduced from 12.5nm to around 3nm, which corresponds to one terabyte per square inch. Now, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">graphene</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has enabled researchers to multiply this by ten.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We continue to learn more and more as we progress in our domestication of DNA - this is a significant signal that may change our understanding of evolution. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Our research suggests that polymerase theta's main function is to act as a reverse transcriptase," says Dr. Pomerantz. "In healthy cells, the purpose of this molecule may be toward RNA-mediated DNA repair. In unhealthy cells, such as cancer </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/cells/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cells</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, polymerase theta is highly expressed and promotes cancer cell growth and drug resistance. It will be exciting to further understand how polymerase theta's activity on RNA contributes to DNA repair and cancer-cell proliferation."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-discovery-human-cells-rna-sequences.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New discovery shows human cells can write RNA sequences into DNA</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cells contain machinery that duplicates DNA into a new set that goes into a newly formed cell. That same class of machines, called polymerases, also build RNA messages, which are like notes copied from the central DNA repository of recipes, so they can be read more efficiently into proteins. But polymerases were thought to only work in one direction DNA into DNA or RNA. This prevents RNA messages from being rewritten back into the master recipe book of genomic DNA. Now, Thomas Jefferson University researchers provide the first evidence that RNA segments can be written back into DNA, which potentially challenges the central dogma in biology and could have wide implications affecting many fields of biology.</span></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"This work opens the door to many other studies that will help us understand the significance of having a mechanism for converting RNA messages into DNA in our own cells," says Richard Pomerantz, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Thomas Jefferson University. "The reality that a human </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/polymerase/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">polymerase</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> can do this with high efficiency, raises many questions." For example, this finding suggests that RNA messages can be used as templates for repairing or re-writing genomic DNA.</span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The work was published June 11th in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science Advances</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Covid is bad - and yet it has accelerated some science that may bring huge benefits for other diseases.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Our vaccine achieved high levels of protection against malaria infection in mice," said Katherine Mallory, a WRAIR researcher at the time of the article's submission and lead author on the paper. "While more work remains before clinical testing, these results are an encouraging sign that an effective, mRNA-based </span><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/tags/malaria/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">malaria</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> vaccine is achievable."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-06-mrna-vaccine-yields-full-malaria.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">mRNA vaccine yields full protection against malaria in mice</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and Naval Medical Research Center partnered with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Acuitas Therapeutics to develop a novel vaccine based on mRNA technology that protects against malaria in animal models, publishing their findings in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">npj Vaccines</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 2019, there were an estimated 229 million cases of malaria and 409,000 deaths globally, creating an extraordinary cost in terms of human morbidity, mortality, economic burden, and regional social stability. Worldwide, Plasmodium falciparum is the parasite species which causes the vast majority of deaths. Those at highest risk of severe disease include pregnant women, children and malaria naïve travelers. Malaria countermeasures development has historically been a priority research area for the Department of Defense as the disease remains a top threat to U.S. </span><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/tags/military+forces/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">military forces</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> deployed to endemic regions.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A safe, effective malaria </span><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/tags/vaccine/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">vaccine</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has long been an elusive target for scientists. The most advanced malaria vaccine is RTS,S, a first-generation product developed in partnership with WRAIR. RTS,S is based on the circumsporozoite protein of P. falciparum, the most dangerous and widespread species of malaria parasite. While RTS,S is an impactful countermeasure in the fight against malaria, field studies have revealed limited sterile efficacy and duration of protection. The limitations associated with RTS,S and other first-generation malaria vaccines have led scientists to evaluate new platforms and second-generation approaches for malaria vaccines.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is another signal of the emerging transformation of plastic to support a metabolic consumer economy - where plastics and be used everywhere and safely composted or re-manufactured.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-vegan-spider-silk-sustainable-alternative.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">'Vegan spider silk' provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers have created a plant-based, sustainable, scalable material that could replace single-use plastics in many consumer products.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, created a polymer film by mimicking the properties of spider silk, one of the strongest materials in nature. The new material is as strong as many common plastics in use today and could replace plastic in many common household products.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The material was created using a new approach for assembling </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/plant+proteins/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">plant proteins</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> into materials which mimic silk on a molecular level. The energy-efficient method, which uses sustainable ingredients, results in a plastic-like free-standing film, which can be made at industrial scale. Non-fading 'structural' color can be added to the polymer, and it can also be used to make water-resistant coatings.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The material is home compostable, whereas other types of bioplastics require industrial composting facilities to degrade. In addition, the Cambridge-developed material requires no chemical modifications to its natural building blocks, so that it can safely degrade in most natural environments.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The cost of glamor involves a lot more than whether cosmetics are tested on animals or not.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peaslee’s team measured the amount of fluorine, a key component of PFAS, in 231 cosmetics. Sixty-three percent of foundations, 55 percent of lip products and 82 percent of waterproof mascara contained high levels of fluorine — at least 0.384 micrograms of fluorine per square centimeter of product spread on a piece of paper. Long-lasting or waterproof products were especially likely to contain lots of fluorine. That makes sense, since PFAS are water-resistant.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cosmetics-makeup-pfas-chemicals" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Many cosmetics contain hidden, potentially dangerous ‘forever chemicals’</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists found signs of long-lasting PFAS compounds in about half of tested makeup products</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new chemical analysis has revealed an ugly truth about beauty products: Many may contain highly persistent, potentially harmful “forever chemicals” called PFAS.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, include thousands of chemicals that are so sturdy they can linger in the body for years and the environment for centuries. The health effects of only a few PFAS are well known, but those compounds have been linked to high cholesterol, thyroid diseases and other problems.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There is no known good PFAS,” says chemist and physicist Graham Peaslee of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the first large screening of cosmetics for PFAS in the United States and Canada, Peaslee and colleagues found that 52 percent of over 200 tested products had high fluorine concentrations, suggesting the presence of PFAS, the researchers report online June 15 in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Environmental Science & Technology Letters</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are such social beings - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">only able to 'be' because of 'we' - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but also the paradox of - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">only 'me' - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can enact a choice -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to see reality as it is - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and to enable -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a flourishing of all of 'we' -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s homeostasis itself - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that’s the boss - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the general will of the parts reflecting -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as whole - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">homeostasis is self-governance of viable ecology -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">homeostasis is - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">accounting - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">credits-debts -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of viable social -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">chemistry - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fabric - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">entanglement - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-76910419530669571002021-06-17T17:30:00.004-07:002021-06-17T17:30:55.678-07:00Friday Thinking 18 June, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-47decb10-7fff-b84b-70c6-9ced19a44ef7"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01512-y" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It takes a wood to raise a tree: a memoir</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/chris-hong-robert-manduca-nic-johnson-common-interest" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the Common Interest</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-mystery-at-the-heart-of-physics-that-only-math-can-solve-20210610/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/fast-company/see-googles-expressive-new-design-language-built-by-billions-of-users-cf716d0a215a" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See Google’s Expressive New Design Language, Built by Billions of Users</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://digital-lab.consumerreports.org/2021/06/15/inside-the-clock-tower/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inside the Clock Tower: An Interoperability Story</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://e-estonia.com/estonias-levercode-sets-out-to-deliver-the-next-generation-of-data-governance/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Estonia’s Levercode – the next generation of data governance?</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/dna-jumps-between-animal-species-no-one-knows-how-often-20210609/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">DNA Jumps Between Animal Species. No One Knows How Often.</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/staghorn-fern-colonies-first-plants-share-work-ants" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These ferns may be the first plants known to share work like ants</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/brain-map-neurons-connections-google-harvard" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A deep look at a speck of human brain reveals never-before-seen quirks</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://newatlas.com/physics/charm-meson-particle-matter-antimatter/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Particle seen switching between matter and antimatter at CERN</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/galaxy-giant-arc-3-billion-light-years-long-cosmology-space" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An arc of galaxies 3 billion light-years long may challenge cosmology</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://newatlas.com/transport/gm-battery-hydrogen-fuel-cells-wabtec-trains/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">GM batteries and hydrogen fuel cells to be adapted for low-carbon trains</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/06/14/solar-makes-a-lot-of-sense-at-ground-level-too/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Solar makes a lot of sense at ground level, too</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="color: #444444; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-00b65dff-7fff-edc7-e7e8-b9f2efd0ed5b"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After publishing her Nature paper, Simard showed that trees direct more resources to their offspring than they do to unrelated seedlings. The finding suggests that trees maintain a level of control through the network that one might call intelligence. As she argues, plants seem to have agency. They perceive, relate and communicate, make decisions, learn and remember, she writes: “qualities we normally ascribe to sentience, wisdom”. For Simard, that implies that they are due a certain respect.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01512-y" target="_blank">It takes a wood to raise a tree: a memoir</a></span></span></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In an influential 1943 essay, Polish economist Michał Kalecki staged a contest between capitalism’s pursuit of profit and its pursuit of power. While the benefits of government-sponsored full employment would benefit capitalists economically, Kalecki argued, it would also fundamentally threaten their social position—and the latter mattered more. If wide sections of the country came to believe that the government could replace the private sector as a source of investment and even hiring, capitalists would have to relinquish their role as the ultimate guardians of national economic health, and along with it their immense power over workers. Kalecki thus saw how the desire to maintain political dominance could override purely economic considerations.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in 1969, Jacobs describes in The Economy of Cities how close connections between many mutually dependent consumers and suppliers are the key to technological innovation and economic growth: they allow new economic niches to be continuously identified and filled with new companies and products.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/chris-hong-robert-manduca-nic-johnson-common-interest" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In the Common Interest</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s common to think of the universe as being built from fundamental particles: electrons, quarks, photons and the like. But physics long ago moved beyond this view. Instead of particles, physicists now talk about things called “quantum fields” as the real warp and woof of reality.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These fields stretch across the space-time of the universe. They come in many varieties and fluctuate like a rolling ocean. As the fields ripple and interact with each other, particles emerge out of them and then vanish back into them, like the fleeting crests of a wave.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Particles are not objects that are there forever,” said Tong. “It’s a dance of fields.”</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-mystery-at-the-heart-of-physics-that-only-math-can-solve-20210610/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging phase of the digital environment certainly requires better, more comprehensive and more transparent design.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After toiling away with how to fix this issue for years, the company believes it has found the antidote. With the upcoming release of Android 12, Google will launch the evolution of Material Design dubbed Material You.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most of all, the new Android will be easily customizable. (That’s the “You” part.) Think of Material You as a coded, Google design consultant. But the user is still the creative director.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/fast-company/see-googles-expressive-new-design-language-built-by-billions-of-users-cf716d0a215a" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">See Google’s Expressive New Design Language, Built by Billions of Users</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Called Material You, Google believes the future of interface should be shaped by its users</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s hard to remember now, but once upon a time, Google was terrible at design. Android was ugly. Google sites were ugly. And the company lacked a serious industrial design program. But in 2014, Google revealed a unified approach to design to help fix it all. Called Material Design, it reimagined all of Google’s apps with a new visual metaphor of digital paper and ink. Ugly pages were replaced by clear, clean cards. Supporting animations were simple and effective. Google got design, and shared this design language with any developer who wanted to adopt it.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem was that the language didn’t leave much room for expression and creativity. And nearly a decade later, Google VP of Design Matias Duarte looks back at the language he helped create, and sees its shortcomings. “The material metaphor was maybe too good, and the paper has come to dominate our interfaces,” says Duarte. “They are consistent…but they’ve gotten a little stale, boring, too tied to a modernist same-ism that is spread everywhere.” That’s especially problematic today, as design is trending maximal and customizable while Google has perfected the stoic and functional.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While design language is vital - design principles are equally so - especially if we want a digital and physical environment that enables a flourishing level playing field for cooperation and productive competition. The point of competition is to incentivize the capacity for any player to enter the field easily with better ideas, products and services. Enclosing our physical, digital and creative commons - produces monopolies and monopsonies.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://digital-lab.consumerreports.org/2021/06/15/inside-the-clock-tower/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Inside the Clock Tower: An Interoperability Story</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last week, the House Judiciary Committee introduced a </span><a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4591" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">package</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4591" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of bills </span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to address concerns with the market power exerted by large online platforms. One of these is the ACCESS Act. It would mandate interoperability for large online platforms, meaning, in part, that a consumer could still connect with her friends through Facebook even if she moved to another social media platform and deleted her own Facebook account.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It can be difficult to visualize all the ways a concept like interoperability really matters. So we asked Cory Doctorow for a piece of short fiction to explore how the online world might evolve with interoperability. Doctorow is a master of speculative tech fiction who has published a bookshelf’s worth of novels and nonfiction works, as well as a technology activist and a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Although this may seem like an ad for Estonia - it’s an important signal about the world of secure communication and Identities. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://e-estonia.com/estonias-levercode-sets-out-to-deliver-the-next-generation-of-data-governance/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Estonia’s Levercode – the next generation of data governance?</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Surprisingly enough, 80 percent of data encryption services used today rely on a system that dates back five decades. Levercode is out to change it with a new encryption system. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flexible and scalable, the Tallinn-based company is building its tools for the long haul, but it still has to replace legacy encryption systems that have been in use for decades.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“LeverID was built in a way that we could interchange cryptography standards in a relatively easy way,” noted Poola. “If we were to arrive at a post-quantum computing standard, we could integrate that into our solution,” he says. “That is a large advantage, having that modularity.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Levercode doesn’t use RSA in its current offering but instead uses Edwards elliptic curve cryptography, which relies on a different mathematical equation that is even more difficult to solve than RSA. “Looking forward, we are preparing a system that if you implement it and use it in the next five to 10 years, we can provide security immediately for our clients,” says Poola.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another significant signal about the mystery of horizontal gene transfer. This is not a bug or an accident but a key ‘affordance’ of living complex systems. It also challenges the idea of what sort of change is ‘transgenically’ natural and what’s not.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Recent studies of a range of animals — other fish, reptiles, birds and mammals — point to a similar conclusion: The lateral inheritance of DNA, once thought to be exclusive to microbes, occurs on branches throughout the tree of life.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/dna-jumps-between-animal-species-no-one-knows-how-often-20210609/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">DNA Jumps Between Animal Species. No One Knows How Often.</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The discovery of a gene shared by two unrelated species of fish is the latest evidence that horizontal gene transfers occur surprisingly often in vertebrates.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To survive in the frigid ocean waters around the Arctic and Antarctica, marine life evolved many defenses against the lethal cold. One common adaptation is the ability to make antifreezing proteins (AFPs) that prevent ice crystals from growing in blood, tissues and cells. It’s a solution that has evolved repeatedly and independently, not just in fish but in plants, fungi and bacteria.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It isn’t surprising, then, that herrings and smelts, two groups of fish that commonly roam the northernmost reaches of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, both make AFPs. But it is very surprising, even weird, that both fish do so with the same AFP gene — particularly since their ancestors diverged more than 250 million years ago and the gene is absent from all the other fish species related to them.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A March paper in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trends in Genetics</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> holds the unorthodox explanation: The gene became part of the smelt genome through a direct horizontal transfer from a herring. It wasn’t through hybridization, because herring and smelt can’t crossbreed, as many failed attempts have shown. The herring gene made its way into the smelt genome outside the normal sexual channels.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even if transmissible elements are sometimes dismissed as “junk” DNA, they can have dramatic impacts. Transposable elements are “the most exciting, dynamic and potentially influential sector of the genome,” said Schaack, especially because they represent “an internal source of mutagenesis in every genome.” Not only do they alter DNA when they’re pasted in, but because they consist of repetitive sequences, their very presence increases the likelihood of genetic recombination.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Plant socialality may be a more widespread phenomena - than simply cooperating-competing in an ecological niche.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/staghorn-fern-colonies-first-plants-share-work-ants" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">These ferns may be the first plants known to share work like ants</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The plants may form a type of communal lifestyle never seen outside of the animal kingdom</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">High in the forest canopy, a mass of strange ferns grips a tree trunk, looking like a giant tangle of floppy, viridescent antlers. Below these fork-leaved fronds and closer into the core of the lush knot are brown, disk-shaped plants. These, too, are ferns of the very same species.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ferns — and possibly similar plants — may form a type of complex, interdependent society previously considered limited to animals like ants and termites, researchers report online May 14 in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ecology</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kevin Burns, a biologist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, first became familiar with the ferns while conducting fieldwork on Lord Howe Island, an isolated island between Australia and New Zealand. He happened to take note of the local epiphytes — plants that grow upon other plants — and one species particularly caught his attention: the staghorn fern (</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Platycerium bifurcatum</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), also native to parts of mainland Australia and Indonesia.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The shrubby apparatus reminded Burns of a termite mound, with a communal store of resources and the segregation of different jobs in the colony. Scientists call these types of cooperative groups, where overlapping generations live together and form castes to divide labor and reproductive roles, “eusocial.” The term has been used to describe certain insect and crustacean societies, along with two mole rat species as the only mammalian examples. Burns wondered if the ferns could also be eusocial.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have made such tremendous advances in understanding the human brain and the connectome - it is easy to think we are close to a full understanding - this is a small signal of the tremendous distance we have yet to go.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/brain-map-neurons-connections-google-harvard" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A deep look at a speck of human brain reveals never-before-seen quirks</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Extra-strong connections, whorled tendrils and symmetrical cells hint at deep brain mysteries</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new view of the human brain shows its cellular residents in all their wild and weird glory. The map, drawn from a tiny piece of a woman’s brain, charts the varied shapes of 50,000 cells and 130 million connections between them.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This intricate map, named H01 for “human sample 1,” represents a milestone in scientists’ quest to provide evermore detailed descriptions of a brain</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists at Harvard University, Google and elsewhere prepared and analyzed the brain tissue sample. Smaller than a sesame seed, the bit of brain was about a millionth of an entire brain’s volume. It came from the cortex — the brain’s outer layer responsible for complex thought — of a 45-year-old woman undergoing surgery for epilepsy. After it was removed, the brain sample was quickly preserved and stained with heavy metals that revealed cellular structures. The sample was then sliced into more than 5,000 wafer-thin pieces and imaged with powerful electron microscopes.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Computational programs stitched the resulting images back together and artificial intelligence programs helped scientists analyze them. A short description of the resulting view was published as a preprint May 30 to bioRxiv.org. The full dataset is freely available online.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I keep imagining that just over 100 years ago Einstein changed physics - and ushered in a new world of light-matter. The basic science emerging today makes me wonder what magical alchemy will be commonplace in 2121. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://newatlas.com/physics/charm-meson-particle-matter-antimatter/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Particle seen switching between matter and antimatter at CERN</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antimatter is kind of the “evil twin” of normal matter, but it’s surprisingly similar – in fact, the only real difference is that antimatter has the opposite charge. That means that if ever a matter and antimatter particle come into contact, they will annihilate each other in a burst of energy.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To complicate things, some particles, such as photons, are actually their own antiparticles. Others have even been seen to exist as a weird mixture of both states at the same time, thanks to the quantum quirk of superposition (illustrated most famously through the thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat.) That means that these particles actually oscillate between being matter and antimatter.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And now, a new particle has joined that exclusive club – the charm meson. This subatomic particle is normally made up of a charm quark and an up antiquark, while its antimatter equivalent consists of a charm antiquark and an up quark. Normally those states are kept separate, but the new study shows that charm mesons can spontaneously switch between the two.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the every smaller to as large as we have been able to scan - more challenges to our fundamental understandings.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/galaxy-giant-arc-3-billion-light-years-long-cosmology-space" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">An arc of galaxies 3 billion light-years long may challenge cosmology</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The discovery is a “big deal” if true, but still needs to be confirmed</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A giant arc of galaxies appears to stretch across more than 3 billion light-years in the distant universe. If the arc turns out to be real, it would challenge a bedrock assumption of cosmology: that on large scales, matter in the universe is evenly distributed no matter where you look.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It would overturn cosmology as we know it,” said cosmologist Alexia Lopez at a June 7 news conference at the virtual American Astronomical Society meeting. “Our standard model, not to put it too heavily, kind of falls through.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lopez, of the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, England, and colleagues discovered the purported structure, which they call simply the Giant Arc, by studying the light of about 40,000 quasars captured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Quasars are the luminous cores of giant galaxies so distant that they appear as points of light. While en route to Earth, some of that light gets absorbed by atoms in and around foreground galaxies, leaving specific signatures in the light that eventually reaches astronomers’ telescopes.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another strong signal of the emerging phase transition in energy geopolitics and a strong use case for hydrogen fuel cells.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://newatlas.com/transport/gm-battery-hydrogen-fuel-cells-wabtec-trains/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">GM batteries and hydrogen fuel cells to be adapted for low-carbon trains</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">As it eyes the future of sustainable transport through the development of advanced batteries and hydrogen fuel cell technologies, General Motors is now expanding these ambitions to include the world of freight. The automaker has entered a new agreement with rail technology outfit Wabtec to develop new eco-friendly powertrains for locomotives, building on the company's recent groundbreaking moves in the area.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last month, Wabtec showed off the world's first battery-electric locomotive, which was demonstrated as part of a hybrid system that cut diesel use of the entire vehicle by 11 percent. The company is looking to build on its early success with a bigger and better version it says could can fuel consumption and carbon emissions by up to 30 percent, and which could enter use in the coming years.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It will now have access to GM's expertise in powertrain technology as it pushes ahead with its vision. The pair will work together to develop train-oriented versions of GM's Ultium battery technology, which will underpin the forthcoming all-electric Hummer, and its Hydrotec hydrogen fuel cell power cubes.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And this is a good signal about an enhancement of our we harvest solar energy.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/06/14/solar-makes-a-lot-of-sense-at-ground-level-too/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Solar makes a lot of sense at ground level, too</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Solar projects that support native grasses can sequester more carbon than farmland alone.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Minnesota and Iowa used to be home to an estimated </span><a href="https://www.fws.gov/midwest/News/219.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">25 million acres of tallgrass</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> prairie. Due to agriculture, these ecologically diverse habitats are almost functionally extinct, as barely 1% of those tallgrass acres remain. From an emissions-capturing standpoint, these native grassland habitats are important because they sequester almost </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800912001887" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">60% more carbon per acre</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> than modern agricultural activities.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the University of Minnesota analyzed solar power facilities that integrate natural grasses.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The study modeled and averaged solar facilities in seven states in the Upper Midwest. Their modeling suggests that native grasses planted as part of 10 GW of solar generation capacity would sequester 129.3 tons of carbon per hectare; that is 65% and 35% greater than either an agriculture or a solar-turfgrass scenario, respectively.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The researchers said that this volume of emission sequestration is equivalent to the emission savings of 5,000 GWh of fossil generation shifting to solar power, which would correspond to greater than 3 GW of solar capacity.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The lineage of baggage -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> our inherited baggage -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is not our fault - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it pre-seeded us - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">living-out of us -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">until we - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">become aware that life -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can be different - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and start wayfinding -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> instead of navigating -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with a map of a given world -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Discounting narratives -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as 'conspiracy theories' -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">misdirects attention -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">there are real conspiracies -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tobacco - oil - climate change -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">magical thinking -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can give coherent social causes -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to the ills of now -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">conspiracies are a reality -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">while magic isn't -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">experience Is ever changing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pain-to-pleasure-turns-indifference -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">flown-chaotic -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to be alive is to -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">anticipate changes -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">required to enact-state-as-change -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">life is an attractor of active -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">homeostating-fluency -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to be is to be changing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no changing - no be-ing</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-28631325071145870872021-06-10T17:38:00.000-07:002021-06-10T17:38:09.028-07:00Friday Thinking 11 June, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><div><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-e8822cbd-7fff-1edb-6851-b7eccc01f5fa"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/germany-became-a-tolerant-nation-only-by-painful-small-steps" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Exit the Fatherland</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/treasure-your-friends-the-top-of-your-love-hierarchy" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Treasure them</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/dare-to-speak-your-mind-and-together-we-flourish" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dare to speak your mind and together we flourish</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-google-quic-transmission-protocol-internet.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google's Quic transmission protocol speeds up the Internet's flagship TCP</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01512-y" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It takes a wood to raise a tree: a memoir</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF_nm0axBzo" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why AI is harder than we think. Melanie Mitchell. Santa Fe Institute</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nuclear-clock-atomic-most-precise-time-physics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nuclear clocks could outdo atomic clocks as the most precise timepieces</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-filter-membrane-viruses-harmless.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Filter membrane renders viruses harmless</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gut-microbe-food-malnourished-children" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Food that boosts gut microbes could be a new way to help malnourished kids</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-culture-human-evolution-genetics.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers: Culture drives human evolution more than genetics</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-light-shrinking-material-ordinary-microscope-super.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Light-shrinking material lets ordinary microscope see in super resolution</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-analyses-relationship-cats-owners.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New research analyses the relationship between cats and their owners</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-dd41a3fb-7fff-60a2-a82b-65afecb5421d"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with a wider aperture, we now know that prosperity, and the absence of war, is the fundamental precondition of the global transition to democracy, most of which has transpired in the postwar era. In 1939, roughly 12 per cent of the population of the world lived in democracies, but by the end of the 20th century nearly 60 per cent did.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/germany-became-a-tolerant-nation-only-by-painful-small-steps" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Exit the Fatherland</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">our society has profoundly changed in the past 50 years, putting the established hierarchy of love on shaky ground. It’s no longer the case that you have to be ‘coupled up’ to fit society’s norms, to have children or, as a woman, to make sure you’re economically provided for. As a consequence, within the West – although not necessarily elsewhere – romantic love has become a choice rather than a necessity. If children aren’t your thing, then greater control of your own fertility means that you can also dispense with parental love. But you discard the love that exists within your friendships at your peril, because, new findings show, friends are your key to a long, happy and chilled life.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being within a supportive social network reduced the risk of mortality by 50 per cent. That places it on a par with quitting smoking, and of more influence than maintaining a healthy BMI measure. Since Holt-Lunstad and colleagues reported their findings, study after study has reinforced this conclusion, to the extent that we can now argue that the nature of your social network, and the strength and health of the relationships within it, is the biggest single factor influencing your health, happiness and longevity. They are your survival.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The term ‘chosen family’ was first coined in the US during the 1970s and ’80s to describe the networks of friends that provided emotional support and nurture to those who’d been rejected by their own family or who were excluded from legally sanctioned methods of creating a family such as marriage or parenthood. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These families were bound by a shared identity rather than shared blood – they were fictive kin. While those who pioneered this new form of ‘friend’ family in the 1970s have now grown old within the bosom of their chosen family, recent work among younger communities in the US has shown that chosen families are as important to the lives and as vital to the security and development of young people as they’ve always been</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/treasure-your-friends-the-top-of-your-love-hierarchy" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Treasure them</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Decades of research suggest that reason is lazy and biased in our favour. In the interactionist picture, these are features, not bugs – they allow for an elegant division of cognitive labour, enabling us to arrive at the truth by working together. Our legal system, though predating these arguments by hundreds of years, embraces the biased nature of reason. Each lawyer is, in a way, meant to be biased. But that’s not a problem, because justice is meant to emerge from the interaction between each side’s lawyers, the jury and the judge – it’s not up to the individual lawyer to decide. Similarly, truth can emerge as a result of each side giving their reasons, because, although we’re biased when evaluating our own reasons, we’re relatively good at evaluating the reasons of others.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If the interactionist picture is right</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, then the development of our rational capacities requires outward expression and engagement. Good reasoning, then, is much more like tennis than like mountain climbing – one can, in principle, do the latter alone, but to become better at tennis, one must find someone else to play with, preferably of a similar skill level. Analogously, in order to develop our rational capacities, we must find others who can challenge our ideas and expose us to different ways of thinking about things. We can’t reason well if we surround ourselves with people who think exactly like us. Indeed, a large body of social scientific research suggests that groups of like minded individuals, no matter how smart or educated they are, often reason very poorly, especially if they have affective ties to one another.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as John Stuart Mill emphasised more than a century and a half ago, legal protections often aren’t enough – as social creatures, we’re very sensitive to ostracism as well as the professional costs that might accompany our speech. Given recent trends then, there’s a pressing need for further enquiry into how we might promote and cultivate habits of speaking our minds, and how we might (re)structure our intellectual institutions to allow multiple perspectives to exist and engage with each other. If Aristotle is right, these might be necessary, but perhaps underappreciated, conditions for our flourishing.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/dare-to-speak-your-mind-and-together-we-flourish" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dare to speak your mind and together we flourish</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a good signal of the transformation of the Internet.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google has already reported that Quic promises to decrease the wait time for web search results by eight percent on PCs and by four percent on phones. Similarly, Quic also appears to lessen the buffering time for YouTube videos by 18 percent on PCs and 15 percent on mobile devices.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-google-quic-transmission-protocol-internet.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Google's Quic transmission protocol speeds up the Internet's flagship TCP</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the horizon for eight years now, Google's planned replacement for Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), Quic, seems to be finally underway. In fact, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) published Quic as a standard for the worldwide network earlier this week. If successful, this protocol might replace TCP, which has dominated the Internet transmission space since 1974.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Indeed, online services and web browsers have already been experimenting with this technology for years. However, now that the IETF has officially released the standard, global users might be more inclined to fully transition to Quic.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google first revealed Quic as a trial addition to its Chrome browser back in 2013. </span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That said, given the intricate amount of data, devices, programs and services involved in legacy Internet transmission protocols and infrastructure, Quic has taken a fair amount of time to develop. Still, as the world advances and our Internet must adapt to manage more and more data, upgrades like Quic, HTTPS for secure communications and post-quantum cryptography to safeguard data from potential future quantum computers, as well as the updated IPv6, have all been initiatives to accommodate a fast-growing virtual world with both increasing users and devices.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a great warning about the dangers of the enclosure of the Internet into Feudal platforms - a few months old - but worth the pondering.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apple has now arrogated to itself the power to know, with a reasonable degree of granularity, which programs its customers are using, and to decide whether customers should be permitted to do so. … The only thing that stops Apple from blocking you from running legitimate apps – or from gathering information about your movements and social activities – is its goodwill and good judgment, and therein lies the problem.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I write this in mid-November 2020, there’s quite a stir over the new version of Apple’s Mac OS, the operating system that runs on its laptops. For more than a year, Apple has engaged in a covert, global surveillance of its users through its operating system, which automatically sent information about which apps you were running to Apple, and which gave Apple a remote veto over whether that program would launch when you double-clicked it. Most Apple customers don’t know about this, but the kind of Apple user who does know about it is also likely to be the kind of security-conscious person who doesn’t like it and even takes steps to block it.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A confluence of events has tipped this obscure “feature” into global notoriety: first, Apple suffered an outage in the servers that received this information and okayed the launch of its customers’ programs, meaning that Mac OS users couldn’t run the programs they relied on to do their work. To make things worse, the outage coincided with the release of “Big Sur,” the latest version of Mac OS, which locks out the aftermarket additions that privacy- and security-conscious Apple customers use to block Apple’s OS-level surveillance. In other words, at the very same moment that millions of Apple device owners were discovering why they might want to switch off this hidden “feature,” Apple made it all but impossible to do so.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All this was written up in “</span><a href="http://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your Computer Isn’t Yours</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,” ( </span><a href="http://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ) an excellent article by Jeffrey Paul, a Berlin-based technologist. Paul makes the point that the latest Apple hardware will only run the new, more-surveillant version of Mac OS, so, barring a change in Apple’s corporate philosophy, this is the future of Mac OS. Paul also namechecked me at the start of his essay, which means that I got a look at it early and have had occasion to follow along with the commentary it provoked.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The security researcher (and Hugo Award-nominee) Bruce Schneier has a name for this arrangement: he calls it </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">feudal security</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A good book review - illuminating the plant internet - the systems and networks of exchange that are the foundation of viable and flourishing ecologies.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01512-y" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">It takes a wood to raise a tree: a memoir</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">An ecologist traces forests’ support networks — and finds parallels in her own life.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1997, ecologist Suzanne Simard made the cover of </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with the discovery of a subterranean lace of tree roots and fungal filaments, or hyphae, in British Columbia. It was “a network as brilliant as a Persian rug”, she recalls in her memoir </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finding the Mother Tree</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> — a network through which multiple tree species were exchanging carbon. The trees were cooperating.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The discovery of this fungal network, or ‘wood wide web’, as it came to be known, upended a dominant scientific narrative — that competition is the primary force shaping forests. Forest ecology is instead a much more nuanced dance, in which species sometimes fight and sometimes get along. This calls into question the way that most foresters manage trees. Clear-cutting, weeding and planting single species in well-spaced rows makes sense only if trees do best when they have all the resources they need to themselves.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a nice account - a 54 min Youtube - of why AI is hard - harder than we continue to imagine.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF_nm0axBzo" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why AI is harder than we think. Melanie Mitchell. Santa Fe Institute</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Abstract</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since its beginning in the 1950s, the field of artificial intelligence has cycled several times between periods of optimistic predictions and massive investment (“AI Spring”) and periods of disappointment, loss of confidence, and reduced funding (“AI Winter”). Even with today’s seemingly fast pace of AI breakthroughs, the development of long-promised technologies such as self-driving cars and housekeeping robots has turned out to be much harder than we thought. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One reason for these repeating cycles is a lack of understanding of the nature and complexity of intelligence itself. In this talk I will discuss some fallacies in common assumptions made by AI researchers, which can lead to overconfident predictions about the field. I will also speculate on what is needed for the grand challenge of making AI systems more robust, general, and adaptable—in short, more intelligent. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Speaker Bio: Melanie Mitchell is the Davis Professor of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, and Professor of Computer Science (currently on leave) at Portland State University. </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think most people would agree we live in ‘interesting times’ - and just as interesting we continue to progress with interesting time. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nuclear-clock-atomic-most-precise-time-physics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nuclear clocks could outdo atomic clocks as the most precise timepieces</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">But first, physicists need to figure out how to build them</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If physicists can build them, nuclear clocks would be a brand-new type of clock, one that would keep time based on the physics of atoms’ hearts. Today’s most precise clocks, called atomic clocks, rely on the behavior of atoms’ electrons. But a clock based on atomic nuclei could reach 10 times the precision of those atomic clocks, researchers estimate.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Better clocks could improve technologies that depend on them, such as GPS navigation, physicist Peter Thirolf said June 3 during an online meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics. But “it’s not just about timekeeping.” Unlike atoms’ electrons, atomic nuclei are subject to the strong nuclear force, which holds protons and neutrons together. “A nuclear clock sees a different part of the world,” said Thirolf, of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany. That means nuclear clocks could allow new tests of fundamental ideas in physics, including whether supposedly immutable numbers in physics known as fundamental constants are, in fact, constant.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A very good signal for ensuring clean drinking water anywhere.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The membrane eliminates a wide range of water-borne viruses, including nonenveloped adenoviruses, retroviruses and enteroviruses. This third group can cause dangerous gastrointestinal infections, which kill around half a million people—often young children in developing and emerging countries—every year. Enteroviruses are extremely tough and acid-resistant and remain in the water for a very long time, so the filter membrane should be particularly attractive to poorer countries as a way to help prevent such infections.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moreover, the membrane also eliminates H1N1 flu viruses and even the new SARS-CoV-2 </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/virus/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">virus</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from the water with great efficiency. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-filter-membrane-viruses-harmless.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Filter membrane renders viruses harmless</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Viruses can spread not only via droplets or aerosols like the new coronavirus, but in water, too. In fact, some potentially dangerous pathogens of gastrointestinal diseases are water-borne viruses.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To date, such viruses have been removed from water using nanofiltration or reverse osmosis, but at high cost and severe impact on the environment.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an international team of researchers led by Raffaele Mezzenga, Professor of Food & Soft Materials at ETH Zurich, has developed a new water filter </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/membrane/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">membrane</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that is both highly effective and environmentally friendly. To manufacture it, the researchers used natural raw materials.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Manufacturing the membrane is relatively simple. To produce the fibrils, whey proteins derived from milk processing are added to acid and heated to 90 degrees Celsius. This causes the proteins to extend and attach to each other, forming fibrils. The nanoparticles can be produced in the same reaction vessel as the fibrils: the researchers raise the pH and add iron salt, causing the mixture to disintegrate into iron hydroxide nanoparticles, which attach to the amyloid fibrils. For this application, Mezzenga and his colleagues used cellulose to support the membrane.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a great signal of the emerging understanding of how our mental and physical health is dependent on our microbial ecologies.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> … team set out to create a microbiome-based food supplement by testing foods common to the local diet and seeing which foods boosted healthy bacteria. The team also tested a way to measure the food’s impact by characterizing the gut bacteria in healthy and malnourished children and developing a pattern of markers in the blood. This pattern let the team understand how undernutrition changes the body, and also track gut microbiome changes.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gut-microbe-food-malnourished-children" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Food that boosts gut microbes could be a new way to help malnourished kids</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Malnourished children fed the new food did better than those who got traditional supplements</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to UNICEF, more than 1 in 5 children under age 5, or 149.2 million, are coping with undernutrition — a form of </span><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/global-progress-combating-child-malnutrition-masks-problem-spots" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">malnutrition most common in low- and middle-income countries</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Undernutrition leaves children stunted, or short for their age, and wasted, underweight for their height. And it can be deadly: Globally, 5.2 million children under age 5 died in 2019; 45 percent of those deaths are linked to nutrition-related issues, according to the World Health Organization.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The COVID-19 pandemic was expected to make things worse, disrupting nutrition programs and families’ ability to find and afford food, researchers reported in May 2020 in the </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lancet Global Health</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Children fed a new kind of food supplement, aimed at not only nourishing them but restoring helpful bacteria in their guts, gained more weight on average than children fed traditional high-caloric supplements, Ahmed and his colleagues reported in a preliminary study April 7 in the New England Journal of Medicine. In six months, the researchers hope to have results that determine whether those gains persist.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The approach is based on more than a decade of work, led by Jeffrey Gordon, a microbiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, on whether disruptions in our gut microbiota could cause malnutrition. The team has found that malnourished babies lack beneficial gut microbes, and the problem lingers even after the babies are fed foods designed to boost their weight. Those gut microbes are important for metabolism, immunity, digestion and overall development, so the lack of them stymies efforts to help these kids catch up. </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another signal in the nature and nurture conversation - dimensions of possibility in self-directed evolution?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"This research explains why humans are such a unique species. We evolve both genetically and culturally over time, but we are slowly becoming ever more cultural and ever less genetic," Waring says.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-culture-human-evolution-genetics.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Researchers: Culture drives human evolution more than genetics</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a new study, University of Maine researchers found that culture helps humans adapt to their environment and overcome challenges better and faster than genetics.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After conducting an extensive review of the literature and evidence of long-term </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/human+evolution/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">human evolution</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, scientists Tim Waring and Zach Wood concluded that humans are experiencing a "special evolutionary transition" in which the importance of culture, such as learned knowledge, practices and skills, is surpassing the value of genes as the primary driver of </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/human/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">human</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> evolution.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring says. Like genes, culture helps people adjust to their environment and meet the challenges of survival and reproduction. Culture, however, does so more effectively than genes because the transfer of knowledge is faster and more flexible than the inheritance of genes, according to Waring and Wood.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a great signal - for easier wider access to seeing beyond what we see now - advancing science yes but - I wonder when it will hit consumer products?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"This material converts low resolution light to high resolution light," said Zhaowei Liu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego. "It's very simple and easy to use. Just place a sample on the material, then put the whole thing under a normal microscope—no fancy modification needed."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-light-shrinking-material-ordinary-microscope-super.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Light-shrinking material lets ordinary microscope see in super resolution</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Electrical engineers at the University of California San Diego developed a technology that improves the resolution of an ordinary light microscope so that it can be used to directly observe finer structures and details in living cells.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The technology turns a conventional </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/light/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">light</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/microscope/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">microscope</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> into what's called a super-resolution microscope. It involves a specially engineered material that shortens the </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/wavelength+of+light/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wavelength of light</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as it illuminates the sample—this shrunken light is what essentially enables the microscope to image in higher resolution.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The work, which was published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Communications</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, overcomes a big limitation of conventional light microscopes: low resolution. Light microscopes are useful for imaging live </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/cells/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cells</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but they cannot be used to see anything smaller. Conventional light microscopes have a resolution limit of 200 nanometers, meaning that any objects closer than this distance will not be observed as separate objects. And while there are more powerful tools out there such as electron microscopes, which have the resolution to see subcellular structures, they cannot be used to image living cells because the samples need to be placed inside a vacuum chamber.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - some people are dogs - some people are cats - some are cogs or dats - this is for cat lovers.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-06-analyses-relationship-cats-owners.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New research analyses the relationship between cats and their owners</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Co-dependent and clingy or casual and aloof—a new study has examined the behavior of pet cats to understand what it means about their relationship with their owner, and the research suggests it's a two-way street!</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The research, "My Cat and Me—a Study of Cat Owner Perceptions of Their Bond and Relationship," by academics at the University of Lincoln, UK, involved nearly 4000 owners responding to a series of statements about their own behavior and that of their pet.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In addition to the research, the University of Lincoln has launched a new interactive quiz on its website so cat owners can find out what kind of relationship they have with their feline companions.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite the cat's popularity as a pet, little is known about its bond and relationship with owners. The study identifies and characterizes the different types of relationship which cats might establish with their owners by using human attachment and social support theories.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Analogia</b> - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by george dyson - </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">panoramic - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as a weaving of lived experiences-</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">research - </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an autobiography -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">embodied account of -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">narrated transdiscipline -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">research -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reasonings -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">real-magicisms - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">beyond control</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What's worse -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">than a curious life ? -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not knowing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that you don't know -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">could it also be -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that innocence is worse -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">than a curious life ?- </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hegel syllogism - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">innocence - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">loss (negation) - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">enlightenment (negation-of-negation) - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">innocence is sublated -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in enlightenment -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as-if-I-knew -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-55306072022194023582021-06-03T17:37:00.002-07:002021-06-03T17:37:58.463-07:00Friday Thinking 4 June, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 17.6px;" /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-17fc8389-7fff-5cc3-ee1d-e2f798b7749b"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-self-is-not-singular-but-a-fluid-network-of-identities" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You are a network</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/magic-helped-us-in-pandemics-before-and-it-can-again" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Magic helped us in pandemics before, and it can again</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-interview-bill-gates-intellectual-property" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Novelist Cory Doctorow on the Problem With Intellectual Property</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://breakingsmart.substack.com/p/good-people-and-wicked-problems" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good People and Wicked Problems</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/publishers-grapple-with-an-invisible-foe-as-huge-organised-fraud-hits-scientific-journals/4013652.article" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Publishers grapple with an invisible foe as huge organised fraud hits scientific journals</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/hyperion-xp-1-hydrogen-powered-ev-supercar-2941564/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hyperion’s Insane New Hydrogen-Powered EV Supercar Has a 1,000-Mile Range—and Can Recharge in 5 Minutes</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-powering-batteries.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Powering ahead with community batteries</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-solar-storms-threatening-life-earth.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Solar storms are back, threatening life as we know it on Earth</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/radioactivity-may-fuel-life-deep-underground-and-inside-other-worlds-20210524/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Radioactivity May Fuel Life Deep Underground and Inside Other Worlds</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-resetting-biological-clock-flipping.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Resetting the biological clock by flipping a switch</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-tree-bark-compost-aircraft-wings.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Turning tree bark and compost into aircraft wings and plastic bags</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-swiss-army-knife-pollution.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New 'Swiss Army knife' cleans up water pollution</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-beer-byproduct-manure-excellent-pesticide.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Beer byproduct mixed with manure proves an excellent pesticide</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-prototype-robotic-device-trim-button.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers develop prototype of robotic device to pick, trim button mushrooms</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://obj.ca/index.php/article/social/ottawa-community-house-pal-ottawa-enter-show-stopping-partnership-create-affordable" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ottawa Community Housing, PAL Ottawa enter into show-stopping partnership to create affordable housing for aging artists</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-94777730-7fff-c9b6-83cb-7b4995c009dc"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How do you self-identify? You probably have many aspects to yourself and would resist being reduced to or stereotyped as any one of them. But you might still identify yourself in terms of your heritage, ethnicity, race, religion: identities that are often prominent in identity politics. You might identify yourself in terms of other social and personal relationships and characteristics – ‘I’m Mary’s sister.’ ‘I’m a music-lover.’ ‘I’m Emily’s thesis advisor.’ ‘I’m a Chicagoan.’ Or you might identify personality characteristics: ‘I’m an extrovert’; or commitments: ‘I care about the environment.’ ‘I’m honest.’ You might identify yourself comparatively: ‘I’m the tallest person in my family’; or in terms of one’s political beliefs or affiliations: ‘I’m an independent’; or temporally: ‘I’m the person who lived down the hall from you in college,’ or ‘I’m getting married next year.’ Some of these are more important than others, some are fleeting. The point is that who you are is more complex than any one of your identities. Thinking of the self as a network is a way to conceptualise this complexity and fluidity.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consider Lindsey: she is spouse, mother, novelist, English speaker, Irish Catholic, feminist, professor of philosophy, automobile driver, psychobiological organism, introverted, fearful of heights, left-handed, carrier of Huntington’s disease (HD), resident of New York City. This is not an exhaustive set, just a selection of traits or identities. Traits are related to one another to form a network of traits. Lindsey is an inclusive network, a plurality of traits related to one another. The overall character – the integrity – of a self is constituted by the unique interrelatedness of its particular relational traits, psychobiological, social, political, cultural, linguistic and physical.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lindsey-at-age-five is not a spouse or a mother, and future stages of Lindsey might include different traits and relations too: she might divorce or change careers or undergo a gender identity transformation. The network self is also a process.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It might seem strange at first to think of yourself as a process. You might think that processes are just a series of events, and your self feels more substantial than that. Maybe you think of yourself as an entity that’s distinct from relations, that change is something that happens to an unchangeable core that is you. </span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-self-is-not-singular-but-a-fluid-network-of-identities" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">You are a network</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite the often dismissive use of the term, the placebo effect remains one of the most powerful effects in modern medicine. Its twin, the nocebo effect, can be equally powerful: if a patient has been advised to expect a negative side-effect, she could well go on to experience it. As for overall outcomes, even some of the most potent drugs have at most a 60 per cent efficacy, while placebos sit at 35-40 per cent. It’s also not clear to what extent the greater effectiveness of certain modern drugs is due to their marketing.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/magic-helped-us-in-pandemics-before-and-it-can-again" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Magic helped us in pandemics before, and it can again</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an important signal - that builds on the work toward an emerging economic paradigm that re-imagines how we value our values and find value worth valuing.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the same way that we don’t have a name for tuna fish, cuckoo clocks, and D&D miniatures that encompasses them as a single category, we didn’t really have a category that was patents, trademarks, and copyrights. They were all things that businesses might use, but they weren’t the same thing. If we had to talk about them as a category, we would call them monopolies or creators’ monopolies.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And having a monopoly is a hard thing to defend! If you’re anxious that your monopoly isn’t quite doing it for you and you go to your legislature and you say, “My monopoly needs to be bigger,” you’ll get kind of a skeptical hearing.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-interview-bill-gates-intellectual-property" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Novelist Cory Doctorow on the Problem With Intellectual Property</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Patents were once seen as a temporary reward for inventors. Now, as novelist Cory Doctorow tells Jacobin, they've become supposedly inviolable "intellectual property" rights that simply enrich people like Bill Gates.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If nothing else, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an incredibly instructive case study in what the neoliberal dogma that now governs our waking lives really means when stripped of artifice or pretense. As things stand, just a handful of profit-driven private companies currently control the knowledge and expertise required to produce vaccines — with people in many poorer countries not expected to be vaccinated until at least 2024. It didn’t have to be this way, of course.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enabled by a monopolistic global intellectual property (IP) regime and with a tip of the hat to billionaire Bill Gates, Big Pharma and its political allies have largely succeeded in controlling and defining the narrative during the early vaccine rollout — transforming the prospective solution to a global crisis into yet another occasion for narrow corporate profit, in this case at the expense of public health and a speedy end to the pandemic.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ground, however, may slowly be shifting. With the Biden administration’s recent announcement that it will support a waiver of IP protections for COVID vaccines, worldwide moral outrage toward vaccine apartheid may finally be having an impact. As for Gates himself, the billionaire is currently experiencing a messy divorce and may be facing the most serious crisis for his meticulously crafted personal image since the antitrust actions of the 1990s.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a long-ish article - but the author is brilliant - mostly - and this framing of the situation is worth the pondering.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At what scale do we need a phase transition in our moral framework? - I suspect this is where institutions are important. If Climate Change and the societies of digital environments represent a Crisis of Consciousness - where humans must grasp themselves to be one species in one environment/context - then perhaps we need more global institutions as global social commons.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In other words, simple situations reward those who feel, and punish those who think.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But when things get complex, and problems get wicked, things flip around.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://breakingsmart.substack.com/p/good-people-and-wicked-problems" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Good People and Wicked Problems</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">When effectiveness gets unmoored from morality, it is better to be weird than good</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had an aha! moment recently that helped me figure out what it means to exit the culture wars. Not a high-minded martyr flounce that only </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">looks</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> like an exit, while keeping you as entangled as ever, or a checked-out retreat that cedes stakes and agency for sanity, but an actual exit, where the conflict becomes incapable of co-opting your presence or agency within it. A vaccine of sorts.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The key is to appreciate what happens when </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">good people meet wicked problems</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and what to do about your own desire to be good.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Broadly, encounters between good people and wicked problems lead to intuitive moral reasoning failing, and unconscious folk models of moral causation unraveling. Firm moral ground beneath your feet seems to liquify the moment you try to act.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So moral reasoning doesn’t really fail outright beyond a particular point of socio-technical complexity, but it becomes increasingly unreliable. The islands of comprehensible moral order in an increasingly complex world get smaller, farther apart, and more unpredictably located.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The world of easy copying is inherent in the digital environment - the protections of copyright doesn’t seem to diminish the spread of fake news nor of fake science. This article could signal a use case for a distributed ledger tracking the open use of science data and provide sound credit for original work - And enable it to be openly used by everyone to further research work.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/publishers-grapple-with-an-invisible-foe-as-huge-organised-fraud-hits-scientific-journals/4013652.article" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Publishers grapple with an invisible foe as huge organised fraud hits scientific journals</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">While plagiarism and fraud isn’t new – individual researchers have been caught photoshopping electron microscopy images or inventing elemental analysis data – paper mills serve up professional fakery for their customers on an industrial scale. Buyers can apparently purchase a paper, or authorship of one, on any topic based on phony results to submit to a journal. This makes them not only harder to detect and crack down on, but also exponentially increases the damage they could do.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The extent of their operations became apparent in early 2020. Two independent groups of image detectives came across a number of manuscripts, all from different authors at different institutions working on different biomedical topics, that seemed to share strange inconsistencies – as if they had all used the same stock images. The set now contains almost 600 manuscripts. Another set of 125 was discovered only a few months later. And there could be 10 times as many professionally manipulated papers that have not yet been – and might never be – found, estimates science integrity consultant Elisabeth Bik.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Image manipulation or use of stock images at this scale has never been seen before, says Sabina Alam, director of publishing ethics and integrity at Taylor & Francis (T&F). The Biochemical Society’s Portland Press called it a ‘new and acute pandemic of falsified information’, having rejected over 600 manuscripts suspected to originate from paper mills in less than a year.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An amazing signal of the progress being made in the transformation of global energy geopolitics. This is like the sports dream companion to Ford’s new electric F150 Pick-Up Truck. The graphics of beautiful.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/hyperion-xp-1-hydrogen-powered-ev-supercar-2941564/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hyperion’s Insane New Hydrogen-Powered EV Supercar Has a 1,000-Mile Range—and Can Recharge in 5 Minutes</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Developed with ex-NASA engineers and current space technologies, the XP-1 also offers a blistering sub-3-second sprint to 60 mph.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the United States, plug-in electric vehicles account for just less than 2 percent of all vehicles running on roads, but Southern California–based Hyperion Companies, Inc., and its Hyperion Motors division, is banking on cutting-edge, space-grade hydrogen fuel-cell technology to help consumers embrace the electric car market with much more vigor. Hyperion’s first salvo in the battle against combustion is the XP-1 prototype—a futuristic supercar with a claimed 1,016-mile range and the ability to haul to 60 mph in 2.2 seconds. Oh, and the recharge time is less than five minutes. </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have to re-imagine how we architect communities - not just and assemblage of private homes - but with a new commons - and commons-based infrastructure.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-powering-batteries.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Powering ahead with community batteries</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Community-scale batteries are already achievable in Australia, will complement existing household batteries and will allow more solar energy to be stored in our suburbs, analysis from The Australian National University (ANU) shows.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the move towards community-scale batteries gathering pace across the nation, two new reports from ANU show the best way forward when it comes to their rollout.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The batteries have power capacity of around one megawatt (MW), or enough to power around 100 houses. They help "soak up" </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/solar+power/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">solar power</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> generated during the day, improving reliability.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is of concern - it’s not if it will happen - but when it will happen.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-solar-storms-threatening-life-earth.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Solar storms are back, threatening life as we know it on Earth</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few days ago, millions of tons of super-heated gas shot off from the surface of the sun and hurtled 90 million miles toward Earth.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, wasn't particularly powerful on the space-weather scale, but when it hit the Earth's magnetic field it triggered the strongest geomagnetic </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/storm/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">storm</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> seen for years. There wasn't much disruption this time—few people probably even knew it happened—but it served as a reminder the sun has woken from a yearslong slumber.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While invisible and harmless to anyone on the Earth's surface, the geomagnetic waves unleashed by solar storms can cripple </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/power+grids/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">power grids</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, jam radio communications, bathe airline crews in dangerous levels of radiation and knock critical satellites off kilter. The sun began a new 11-year cycle last year and as it reaches its peak in 2025 the specter of powerful space weather creating havoc for humans grows, threatening chaos in a world that has become ever more reliant on technology since the last big storms hit 17 years ago. A recent study suggested hardening the grid could lead to $27 billion worth of benefits to the U.S. power industry.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An amazing signal - that expands our view of where we can find life. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/radioactivity-may-fuel-life-deep-underground-and-inside-other-worlds-20210524/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Radioactivity May Fuel Life Deep Underground and Inside Other Worlds</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">New work suggests that the radiolytic splitting of water supports giant subsurface ecosystems of life on Earth — and could do it elsewhere, too.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists poke and prod at the fringes of habitability in pursuit of life’s limits. To that end, they have tunneled kilometers below Earth’s surface, drilling outward from the bottoms of mine shafts and sinking boreholes deep into ocean sediments. To their surprise, “life was everywhere that we looked,” said Tori Hoehler, a chemist and astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. And it was present in staggering quantities: By various estimates, the inhabited subsurface realm has twice the volume of the oceans and holds on the order of 1030 cells, making it one of the biggest habitats on the planet, as well as one of the oldest and most diverse.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers are still trying to understand how most of the life down there survives. Sunlight for photosynthesis cannot reach such depths, and the meager amount of organic carbon food that does is often quickly exhausted. Unlike communities of organisms that dwell near hydrothermal vents on the seafloor or within continental regions warmed by volcanic activity, ecosystems here generally can’t rely on the high-temperature processes that support some subsurface life independent of photosynthesis; these microbes must hang on in deep cold and darkness.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two papers appearing in February by different research groups now seem to have solved some of this mystery for cells beneath the continents and in deep marine sediments. They find evidence that, much as the sun’s nuclear fusion reactions provide energy to the surface world, a different kind of nuclear process — radioactive decay — can sustain life deep below the surface. Radiation from unstable atoms in rocks can split water molecules into hydrogen and chemically reactive peroxides and radicals; some cells can use the hydrogen as fuel directly, while the remaining products turn minerals and other surrounding compounds into additional energy sources.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Domesticating DNA - enables us to understand and learn how many processes are control - in an age of ubiquitous sleep disturbances - this may signal new ways to find wellbeing.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"It is becoming increasingly clear that these clocks can be disrupted in organs or tissues, which may lead to disease. And, of course, we all know about jet lag, which is caused by travel across time zones, or problems that are caused by the switch to or from daylight saving time. "We know very little about how our cells coordinate these oscillations, or how it affects the body, if for example, one kidney is out of phase with the rest of the body,"</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Developing this adaptation took Kolarski several years, but the result was well worth the effort. "It was a real scientific 'tour de force' and a beautiful example of interdisciplinary cooperation,"</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-resetting-biological-clock-flipping.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Resetting the biological clock by flipping a switch</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The biological clock is present in almost all cells of an organism. As more and more evidence emerges that clocks in certain organs could be out of sync, there is a need to investigate and reset these clocks locally. Scientists from the Netherlands and Japan introduced a light-controlled on/off switch to a kinase inhibitor, which affects clock function. This gives them control of the biological clock in cultured cells and explanted tissue. They published their results on 26 May in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Communications</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Life on Earth has evolved under a 24-hour cycle of light and dark, hot and cold. "As a result, our cells are synchronized to these 24-hour oscillations," says Wiktor Szymanski, Professor of Radiological Chemistry at the University Medical Center Groningen. Our circadian clock is regulated by a central controller in the </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/suprachiasmatic+nucleus/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">suprachiasmatic nucleus</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a region in the brain directly above the optic nerve, but all our cells contain a clock of their own. These clocks consist of an oscillation in the production and breakdown of certain proteins.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s a small signal of an emerging metabolic economy - something that should become part of a ‘green new deal’ investment strategy.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-tree-bark-compost-aircraft-wings.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Turning tree bark and compost into aircraft wings and plastic bags</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trees, crops and even organic waste can be transformed into a bewildering array of plastics to use in products ranging from single-use bags to heavy-duty airplane wings.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These so-called biopolymers could play a vital role in weaning us off petroleum plastics—which will help cut greenhouse gas emissions, and ensure plastics come from a renewable resource.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And in some cases they could help to reduce </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/plastic/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">plastic</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> pollution. One of the major sources of plastic pollution is packaging, which accounted for nearly 40% of the plastic used in the EU in 2019, according to Plastics Europe, a trade association. Researchers have developed ways to make biodegradable food waste bags and food packaging from municipal food and garden waste.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">project VOLATILE, has developed a technology that can be integrated into existing municipal anaerobic digestion and composting plants. It uses microorganisms to break down </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/organic+waste/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">organic waste</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> into volatile fatty acids, which are the building blocks of the PHB and PHBV plastics used to make plastic bags and food packaging.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The main by-product is a residue which can be used to make compost. Hydrogen gas is another by-product, and it can be used to make electricity.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another small signal of transforming our economic paradigm into a metabolic one.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-swiss-army-knife-pollution.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New 'Swiss Army knife' cleans up water pollution</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inspired by Chicago's many nearby bodies of water, a Northwestern University-led team has developed a way to repeatedly remove and reuse </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/phosphate/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">phosphate</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from polluted waters. The researchers liken the development to a "Swiss Army knife" for pollution remediation as they tailor their membrane to absorb and later release other pollutants.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The research will be published during the week of May 31 in the </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Science</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team's Phosphate Elimination and Recovery Lightweight (PEARL) membrane is a porous, flexible substrate (such as a coated sponge, cloth or fibers) that selectively sequesters up to 99% of phosphate ions from polluted water. Coated with nanostructures that bind to phosphate, the PEARL membrane can be tuned by controlling the pH to either absorb or release nutrients to allow for phosphate recovery and reuse of the membrane for many cycles.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team has demonstrated that the sponge-based approach is effective on scales, ranging from milligrams to kilograms, suggesting promise in scaling even further.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We should have all heard the meme - ‘I like beer!’ - this is one more small signal of both more benefits from beer and a metabolic economy.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Plots demonstrated increased yields by around 15% compared to the control plots after one year. Additionally, the organic matter treatment boosted populations of beneficial microorganisms in the soils, as demonstrated by a significantly higher soil respiration rate.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-beer-byproduct-manure-excellent-pesticide.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Beer byproduct mixed with manure proves an excellent pesticide</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">The use of many chemical fumigants in agriculture have been demonstrated to be harmful to human health and the environment and therefore banned from use.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this study published to </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, researchers from the Neiker Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development in Spain investigated using agricultural by-products rapeseed cake and beer bagasse (spent beer grains), along with fresh cow manure as two organic biodisinfestation treatments. The lead author Maite Gandariasbeitia explains: "Rapeseed cake and beer bagasse are two potential organic treatments which have shown really positive results in previous studies.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To disinfest the soil and reduce these nematode populations, beer bagasse and rapeseed cake were incorporated into the soil with fresh cow manure as a potential organic treatment. After the first crop post-treatment, the researchers found a significant reduction in galling on plant roots.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a small signal of the emerging transformation of our agricultural capacity - AI-powered bots to plant, weed, protect, harvest and process all manner of food.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The mushroom industry in Pennsylvania is producing about two-thirds of the mushrooms grown nationwide, and the growers here are having a difficult time finding laborers to handle the harvesting, which is a very labor intensive and difficult job," said He. "The industry is facing some challenges, so an automated system for harvesting like the one we are working on would be a big help."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-prototype-robotic-device-trim-button.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Researchers develop prototype of robotic device to pick, trim button mushrooms</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences have developed a robotic mechanism for mushroom picking and trimming and demonstrated its effectiveness for the automated harvesting of button mushrooms.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a new study, the prototype, which is designed to be integrated with a machine vision system, showed that it is capable of both picking and trimming mushrooms growing in a shelf system.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The research is consequential, according to lead author Long He, assistant professor of agricultural and </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/biological+engineering/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">biological engineering</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, because the mushroom industry has been facing labor shortages and rising labor costs. Mechanical or robotic picking can help alleviate those problems.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a small local signal - of a much larger concern and potential solution to re-imagining how we design for urban life.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://obj.ca/index.php/article/social/ottawa-community-house-pal-ottawa-enter-show-stopping-partnership-create-affordable" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ottawa Community Housing, PAL Ottawa enter into show-stopping partnership to create affordable housing for aging artists</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sporadic jobs and lack of compensation or benefits result in some self-employed artists living below poverty line, in need of rental assistance</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Starving artists need not be homeless, now that the Ottawa Community Housing Corp. has entered into a preliminary agreement with non-profit organization PAL Ottawa to help keep a roof over artists' heads.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The two organizations have signed an official memorandum of understanding to work together toward creating affordable rental units for senior artists, ages 55 and older. The mid-rise apartment building, to be constructed and completed between late 2023 and early 2024, will be located in the Gladstone Avenue and Rochester Street area of Little Italy, where there’s already a happening arts scene. The plan is to build 80 apartment units, as well as complementary creative spaces. At least 40 per cent of the units will be below-market-rate rentals while the rest will be near-market rentals.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The unique and innovative partnership with OCH, the city's largest social housing provider, marks a major breakthrough for PAL Ottawa, a grassroots arts organization created in 2012 to come up with an affordable housing solution for older artists, including actors, singers and musicians, visual artists, dancers, writers and arts administrators. It also provides personal support to artists, so that they don’t end up isolated and alone.</span></div><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thinking about phase transitions -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">intensities -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and scale -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">yesterday's sustain-abilities - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are not tomorrow's flourishings - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no Solution - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">there is only eternal solutioning - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oops that’s called evolution - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-29677486460109652492021-05-27T18:45:00.000-07:002021-05-27T18:45:19.879-07:00Friday Thinking 28 May, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 17.6px;" /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-862d0205-7fff-ef77-ec24-3d8c4b40e4d5"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-brain-computer-interface-technology-is-different-from-mind-control-20210517/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Can Machines Control Our Brains?</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n10/francis-gooding/from-its-myriad-tips" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From Its Myriad Tips</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-deconstruct-the-world-by-thinking-like-jacques-derrida" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How to deconstruct the world</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/wittgenstein-and-the-emergence-of-empathy-dc26655a7201" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wittgenstein, AI, and the Emergence of Empathy</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-mahle-magnet-free-electric-motor-require.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mahle developing magnet-free electric motor that does not require rare earth elements</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-hologram-experts-real-life-images-air.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hologram experts can now create real-life images that move in the air</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-graphene-atomically-thin-carbon-material.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not graphene: Researchers discover new type of atomically thin carbon material</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-atoms-resolution.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers see atoms at record resolution</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-world-fastest-information-fueled-university.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">World's fastest information-fueled engine designed by university researchers</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-evidence-electron-dual-nature-quantum.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New evidence for electron's dual nature found in a quantum spin liquid</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/blindness-retinitis-pigmentosa-gene-therapy-vision-optogenetics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A gene-based therapy partially restored a blind man’s vision</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-citrus-derivative-transparent-wood-percent.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Citrus derivative makes transparent wood 100 percent renewable</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-molecular-perovskite-solar-cells-reliable.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'Molecular glue' makes perovskite solar cells dramatically more reliable over time</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-era-spaceflight-advances-rocket-propulsion.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new era of spaceflight? Promising advances in rocket propulsion</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-ancient-australian-aboriginal-memory-tool.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ancient Australian Aboriginal memory tool superior to 'memory palace' learning</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c085473c-7fff-5edc-1404-caa9ef863a03"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A surprising finding from this research is that the brain does not store information the way we might think — as discrete items categorized logically in a database. Instead, information is encoded as integrated concepts that encapsulate all the sensations, emotions, relevant experiences and significance associated with an item. The words “spaghetti” and “apple” are logically similar in being food items, but each one has a different feel that activates a unique constellation of brain regions. This explains how Just can use the very slow method of fMRI, which takes many minutes to acquire brain images, to determine what sentence a person is reading. The brain does not decode and store written information word by word, the way Google Translate does: It encodes the meaning of the sentence in its entirety.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-brain-computer-interface-technology-is-different-from-mind-control-20210517/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Can Machines Control Our Brains?</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Try to imagine what it is like to be a fungus. Not a mushroom, pushing up through damp soil overnight or delicately forcing itself out through the bark of a rotting log: that would be like imagining the grape rather than the vine. Instead try to think your way into the main part of a fungus, the mycelium, a proliferating network of tiny white threads known as hyphae. Decentralised, inquisitive, exploratory and voracious, a mycelial network ranges through soil in search of food. It tangles itself in an intimate scrawl with the roots of plants, exchanging nutrients and sugars with them; it meets with the hyphae of other networks and has mycelial sex; messages from its myriad tips are reported rapidly across the whole network by mysterious means, perhaps chemical, perhaps electrical. For food, it prefers wood, but with practice it can learn to eat novel substances, including toxic chemicals, plastics and oil. Is it somehow sentient? As its thousands of hyphae simultaneously but independently rove through the soil, is the mycelium behaving as an individual or a swarm? What is it like to be this way?</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fungi, even the seemingly singular are many: fungal genomes are so promiscuous and multiple that some scholars have proposed abandoning the attempt to categorise them using the Linnaean system. They are everywhere, all the time: coursing through soil and seabed, ‘along coral reefs, through plant and animal bodies both alive and dead, in rubbish dumps, carpets, floorboards, old books in libraries, specks of house dust, and in the canvases of old master paintings hanging in museums’. If the mycelial threads in just a teaspoon of soil were unravelled and laid out, they might stretch anywhere from ‘a hundred metres to ten kilometres’. Mycelium is a continuous mesh that envelops the earth – strangely, differently, alive and alert.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n10/francis-gooding/from-its-myriad-tips" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From Its Myriad Tips</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Derrida’s work spawned a whole genre called ‘hauntology’, a pun on the word ontology. Ontology is the philosophical investigation of what there is. Hauntology is the philosophical investigation of what there isn’t. Lost futures, distant pasts, gaps and fissures in our reality that can’t be closed over. Hauntological music tends to foreground the technology that produces it. The sound of needles on records, tape hiss and noises-off remind the listener that there’s an ‘outside of the frame’. </span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-deconstruct-the-world-by-thinking-like-jacques-derrida" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">How to deconstruct the world</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Modern language is biased towards the categorization of things (that of being) rather than the generative nature of processes (that of becoming). We emphasize nouns rather than focusing on the nuances of verbs.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/wittgenstein-and-the-emergence-of-empathy-dc26655a7201" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Wittgenstein, AI, and the Emergence of Empathy</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a great signal for the looming phase transition in our transportation paradigms and global energy geopolitics.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-mahle-magnet-free-electric-motor-require.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mahle developing magnet-free electric motor that does not require rare earth elements</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">German car parts company Mahle has announced that it is in the process of developing a magnet-free electric motor that does not require rare earth elements. Company reps report that the new motor is efficient and extremely durable.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As many of the big-name carmakers begin switching from gasoline-powered vehicles to those that run on </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/electric+motors/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">electric motors</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the issue of rare earth metals has taken on added urgency—China produces approximately 90 percent of the rare earth metals used in electric motors, and China is the only country that currently has the processing capacity to handle them in mass quantities. This situation has forced car makers around the world to rely on Chinese suppliers, making them nervous.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In response, carmakers and other entities have begun looking into developing electric motors that do not require magnets, which in turn means they will not need rare earth metals. Most of those developed thus far have relied on rotating contact devices that transfer electricity to copper coils in a rotor. The new </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/motor/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">motor</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by the team at Mahle has done away with these contacts, making the motor both more efficient and more durable since it has removed one of the stress points. The new motor instead uses powered coils in its rotor, transferring power to the spinning rotors using induction, which means they never have to touch and that the motor has no surfaces that will wear out.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a fascinating signal - not just of the movies but of a new form of virtual - actually - mixed reality that is not dependent on fashionable or not eyewear. There is a lovely 4 min video.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"We can play some fancy tricks with motion parallax and we can make the display look a lot bigger than it physically is," Rogers said. "This methodology would allow us to create the illusion of a much deeper display up to theoretically an infinite size </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/display/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">display</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-hologram-experts-real-life-images-air.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hologram experts can now create real-life images that move in the air</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">They may be tiny weapons, but Brigham Young University's holography research group has figured out how to create lightsabers—green for Yoda and red for Darth Vader, naturally—with actual luminous beams rising from them.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inspired by the displays of science fiction, the researchers have also engineered battles between equally small versions of the Starship Enterprise and a Klingon Battle Cruiser that incorporate photon torpedoes launching and striking the enemy vessel that you can see with the naked eye.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"What you're seeing in the scenes we create is real; there is nothing computer generated about them," said lead researcher Dan Smalley, a professor of electrical engineering at BYU. "This is not like the movies, where the lightsabers or the photon torpedoes never really existed in physical </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/space/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">space</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. These are real, and if you look at them from any angle, you will see them existing in that space."</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The world of every smaller electronic and computational devices also progresses with advance in creating new materials.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-graphene-atomically-thin-carbon-material.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not graphene: Researchers discover new type of atomically thin carbon material</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers at the University of Marburg in Germany and Aalto University in Finland have now discovered a new </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/carbon/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">carbon</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/network/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">network</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which is atomically thin like graphene, but is made up of squares, hexagons, and octagons forming an ordered lattice. They confirmed the unique structure of the network using high-resolution scanning probe microscopy and interestingly found that its electronic properties are very different from those of graphene.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In contrast to graphene and other forms of carbon, the new Biphenylene network—as the new material is named—has metallic properties. Narrow stripes of the network, only 21 atoms wide, already behave like a metal, while graphene is a semiconductor at this size. "These stripes could be used as conducting wires in future carbon-based electronic devices." said professor Michael Gottfried, at University of Marburg, who leads the team who developed the idea. The lead author of the study, Qitang Fan from Marburg, continues, "This novel carbon network may also serve as a superior anode material in </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/lithium-ion+batteries/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lithium-ion batteries</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, with a larger lithium storage capacity compared to that of the current graphene-based materials."</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To understand current and future creation of new materials needs some way to see what’s going on - our capacity to see the very small and the very large continues to advance.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"This doesn't just set a new record," Muller said. "It's reached a regime which is effectively going to be an ultimate limit for resolution. We basically can now figure out where the atoms are in a very easy way. This opens up a whole lot of new measurement possibilities of things we've wanted to do for a very long time.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-atoms-resolution.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Researchers see atoms at record resolution</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 2018, Cornell researchers built a high-powered detector that, in combination with an algorithm-driven process called ptychography, set a world record by tripling the resolution of a state-of-the-art electron microscope.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As successful as it was, that approach had a weakness. It only worked with ultrathin samples that were a few </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/atoms/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">atoms</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> thick. Anything thicker would cause the electrons to scatter in ways that could not be disentangled.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now a team, again led by David Muller, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Engineering, has bested its own record by a factor of two with an electron microscope pixel array detector (EMPAD) that incorporates even more sophisticated 3D reconstruction algorithms. The resolution is so fine-tuned, the only blurring that remains is the thermal jiggling of the atoms themselves.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The group's paper, "Electron Ptychography Achieves Atomic-Resolution Limits Set by Lattice Vibrations," published May 20 in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The paper's lead author is postdoctoral researcher Zhen Chen.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Someone once told me we can’t eat information (I quipped back - true - but try to eat without information). Well we still can’t eat it - but someone is figuring out how to drive an engine with it. New forms of sensors - could be more efficient and self-sustaining. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"When we see an upward bounce, we move the stage up in response," explains lead author and Ph.D. student Tushar Saha. "When we see a downward bounce, we wait. This ends up lifting the entire system using only information about the particle's position."</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Repeating this procedure, they raise the particle "a great height, and thus store a significant amount of gravitational energy," without having to directly pull on the particle.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-world-fastest-information-fueled-university.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">World's fastest information-fueled engine designed by university researchers</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Simon Fraser University researchers have designed a remarkably fast engine that taps into a new kind of fuel—information.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The development of this </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/engine/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">engine</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which converts the random jiggling of a microscopic particle into stored energy, is outlined in research published this week in the </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (PNAS) and could lead to significant advances in the speed and cost of computers and bio-nanotechnologies.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">SFU physics professor and senior author John Bechhoefer says researchers' understanding of how to rapidly and efficiently convert information into "work" may inform the design and creation of real-world information engines.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well we all know that light is both particle and wave - now electrons are found to also have a dual nature - this time it is one particle that is two particles.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"People have been searching for this signature for four decades," Ong said, "If this finding and the spinon interpretation are validated, it would significantly advance the field of quantum spin liquids."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-evidence-electron-dual-nature-quantum.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New evidence for electron's dual nature found in a quantum spin liquid</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new discovery led by Princeton University could upend our understanding of how electrons behave under extreme conditions in quantum materials. The finding provides experimental evidence that this familiar building block of matter behaves as if it is made of two particles: one particle that gives the electron its negative charge and another that supplies its magnet-like property, known as spin.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"We think this is the first hard evidence of spin-charge separation," said Nai Phuan Ong, Princeton's Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and senior author on the paper published this week in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Physics</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The experimental results fulfill a prediction made decades ago to explain one of the most mind-bending states of matter, the quantum spin liquid. In all materials, the spin of an electron can point either up or down. In the familiar magnet, all of the spins uniformly point in one direction throughout the sample when the temperature drops below a </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/critical+temperature/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">critical temperature</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is a great signal related to our advances in domesticating DNA and enabling gene therapies. There’s a 1min video.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/blindness-retinitis-pigmentosa-gene-therapy-vision-optogenetics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A gene-based therapy partially restored a blind man’s vision</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Light-activated proteins inserted in eye nerve cells and special goggles help him see objects</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new type of gene therapy that rewires nerve cells in the eye has given a blind man some limited vision.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 58-year-old man has a genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa, which causes light-gathering cells in the retina to die. Before the treatment, known as optogenetic therapy, the man could detect some light but couldn’t see motion or pick out objects. Now he can see and count objects and even reported being able to see the white stripes of a pedestrian crosswalk, researchers report May 24 in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Medicine</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. His vision is still limited and requires him to wear special goggles that send pulses of light to the treated eye.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It’s exciting. It’s really good to see it working and getting some definite responses from patients,” says David Birch, a retinal degeneration expert at the Retina Foundation of the Southwest in Dallas. Birch has conducted clinical trials of other optogenetic therapies, but was not involved in this study.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More progress toward a new building material - transparent wood.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-citrus-derivative-transparent-wood-percent.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Citrus derivative makes transparent wood 100 percent renewable</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since it was first introduced in 2016, transparent wood has been developed by researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology as an innovative structural material for building construction. It lets natural light through and can even store thermal energy.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The key to making </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/wood/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wood</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> into a transparent composite material is to strip out its lignin, the major </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/light/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">light</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-absorbing component in wood. But the empty pores left behind by the absence of lignin need to be filled with something that restores the wood's strength and allows light to permeate.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In earlier versions of the composite, researchers at KTH's Wallenberg Wood Science Centre used fossil-based polymers. Now, the researchers have successfully tested an eco-friendly alternative: limonene acrylate, a monomer made from limonene. They reported their results in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Advanced Science</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The new limonene acrylate it is made from renewable citrus, such as peel waste that can be recycled from the orange juice industry," says the lead author, Ph.D. student Céline Montanari.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More progress toward the transformation of global energy geopolitics.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-molecular-perovskite-solar-cells-reliable.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">'Molecular glue' makes perovskite solar cells dramatically more reliable over time</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A research team from Brown University has made a major step toward improving the long-term reliability of perovskite solar cells, an emerging clean energy technology. In a study published on Friday, May 7 in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the team demonstrates a "molecular glue" that keeps a key interface inside cells from degrading. The treatment dramatically increases cells' stability and reliability over time, while also improving the efficiency with which they convert sunlight into electricity.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The difference is that perovskite light absorbers can be made at near </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/room+temperature/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">room temperature</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, whereas silicon needs to be grown from a melt at a temperature approaching 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. Perovskite films are also about 400 times thinner than silicon wafers. The relative ease of the manufacturing processes and the use of less material means perovskite cells can be potentially made at a fraction of the cost of silicon cells.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been reading George Dyson’s new book </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Analogia: The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In one of the chapters George provides a short history of his father Freeman Dyson - who should have won a Nobel in physics with Richard Feynman for his contribution to Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). Freeman is also famous for the development of a famous Star Trek concept of the Dyson Sphere. Freeman was also part of the group who in the 50s were working on atomic energy powered space flight - the project was canceled because of competing politics. However, what was old is now new again.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-era-spaceflight-advances-rocket-propulsion.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A new era of spaceflight? Promising advances in rocket propulsion</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has recently commissioned three private companies, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics, to develop nuclear fission thermal rockets for use in lunar orbit.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Such a development, if flown, could usher in a new era of spaceflight. That said, it is only one of several exciting avenues in </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/rocket+propulsion/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">rocket propulsion</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Here are some others.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the age of Google Search one wonders about the utility of rote memorization - especially as the digital environment becomes ubiquitous - however - ancient techniques can’t hurt our memories.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-05-ancient-australian-aboriginal-memory-tool.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ancient Australian Aboriginal memory tool superior to 'memory palace' learning</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Australian scientists have compared an ancient Greek technique of memorizing data to an even older technique from Aboriginal culture, using students in a rural medical school.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The study found that students using a technique called memory palace in which students memorized facts by placinthem into a memory blueprint of the childhood home, allowing them to revisit certain rooms to recapture that data. Another group of students were taught a technique developed by Australian Aboriginal people over more than 50,000 years of living in a custodial relationship with the Australian land.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The students who used the Aboriginal method of remembering had a significantly improved retention of facts compared to the control and the "memory palace" group.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The study led by Dr. David Reser, from the Monash University School of Rural Health and Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta, from Deakin University's NIKERI Institute, has just been published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PLOS One</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Domain of Craft - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">enacted Crafting -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Knowing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the ‘feel’ of things’ -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in a sort of -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I-Thou relation - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">attend the attending - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the multi-channel </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ground-of-sensorium - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is revealed as -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">quantas of differences -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">making a difference - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with path-dependencies -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and emergents - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">histories and futures -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s the learning - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">makes me feel alive-engaged -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it’s this -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the alive-because-i’m-engaged - thing - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the difficulty of the engagement - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i need-to-be valued - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- where i want to be valued - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where i can feel -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i can make value to be valued - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wow - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i can’t seem to -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">be eating my bread - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and doing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">something else??? -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I think that’s amazing - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exploration - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">IS - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the core drive - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to survive-as-entangled - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i can’t survive without ---- </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fill in and connect - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all the dots -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all the way up-down -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> beautifully twisted - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we’re two-gather - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as each-other -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-45792266498808976032021-05-20T18:04:00.000-07:002021-05-20T18:04:31.855-07:00Friday Thinking 21 May, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-25e1bcf3-7fff-f0c9-c383-a9fcbda4c4f2"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210505-how-cities-will-fossilise" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How cities will fossilise</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01246-x" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How COVID broke the evidence pipeline</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cory Doctorow: IP</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-do-philosophy-for-and-with-children" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Philosophy with children</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/neuroglia-the-alternative-model-of-the-brain-d2ade678df65" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Neuroglia-The Alternative Model of the Brain</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/05/introducing-public-interest-internet" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Introducing the Public Interest Internet</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/05/governor-newsoms-budget-proposes-historic-investment-public-fiber-broadband" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Governor Newsom’s Budget Proposes Historic Investment in Public Fiber Broadband</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/optogenetics-social-behavior-brains-mice-light" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists remotely controlled the social behavior of mice with light</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-brain-interface-mental-text-screen.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brain computer interface turns mental handwriting into text on screen</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210510-how-to-recycle-any-plastic" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The world's first 'infinite' plastic</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/scientists-catch-jumping-genes-rewiring-genomes-20210512/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists Catch Jumping Genes Rewiring Genomes</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/evolution-is-a-story-not-of-fitness-but-of-relevance-d43ae3d4fc07" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Evolution is a Story not of Fitness, but of Relevance</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-76462c3d-7fff-234f-cdc5-f3033f531ba7"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first cities replicated the environments that once-nomadic people depended on, concentrating shelter and sustenance in one place. The metropolis of the present offers its inhabitants the whole planet in microcosm. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You might assume that cities are too ephemeral to leave behind a fossil. "Most buildings are designed to last for 60 years," says Roma Agrawal, structural engineer for the Shard skyscraper in London. "And I always thought, that feels really short, because that’s my lifetime." If you wanted to build something that would stand in </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190611-how-to-build-something-that-lasts-10000-years" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tens of thousands of years</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, "then the forces that you need to contend with become huge", she explains. Most engineers don't look that far ahead.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We live in the </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200610-how-china-can-cut-co2-emissions-with-sustainable-buildings" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">greatest age of city-building</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the world has ever seen. Three hundred years ago, there was only one city with a population of one million (Edo, modern-day Tokyo). Today there are </span><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?redir_esc=y&id=oslvcYf95TIC&q=500+cities#v=snippet&q=500%20cities&f=false" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more than 500</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, all of them dwarfed by megacities like Mexico City (population: 21 million), Shanghai (24 million), and Tokyo (now 37 million).</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210505-how-cities-will-fossilise" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">How cities will fossilise</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the pandemic now deep into its second year, it’s clear the crisis has exposed major weaknesses in the production and use of research-based evidence — failures that have inevitably cost lives. Researchers have registered more than 2,900 clinical trials related to COVID-19, but the majority are too small or poorly designed to be of much use (see ‘Small samples’). Organizations worldwide have scrambled to synthesize the available evidence on drugs, masks and other key issues, but can’t keep up with the outpouring of new research, and often repeat others’ work. There’s been “research waste at an unprecedented scale”, says Huseyin Naci, who studies health policy at the London School of Economics.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One clear take-home lesson, researchers say, is that countries need more large-scale national and international clinical-trial protocols sitting on the shelf, ready to fire up quickly when a pandemic strikes. </span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01246-x" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">How COVID broke the evidence pipeline</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Interoperability is the default state of the world. Anyone’s charcoal will burn in your barbecue, just as anyone’s gas will make your car go. Any manufacturer can make a lightbulb that fits in your light-socket and any shoes can be worn with any socks.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is to say, banking and aerospace monopolies can get sued for being anticompetitive – but entertainment monopolies can sue you for being pro-competitive. The result is a monopoly that controls access to distribution channels and audiences – that can invoke the power of the state to fine or even im prison people who seek to challenge that monopoly.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Cory Doctorow: IP</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sometimes described as living in the world of the possible, children are open to considering creative options; viewing the world from a perspective of wonder and openness, they seem less burdened by assumptions about what they already know. As one 10-year-old put it: ‘</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because adults know so much about what is real and what isn’t, they have less imagination about the possibilities</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.’</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-do-philosophy-for-and-with-children" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Philosophy with children</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are there problems that take years of intellectual effort to solve, or is most of the effort spent removing obstacles out of the way? Are there solutions that are simple but hidden by wrong assumptions? One could truly say that biology is hampered by the obstacle of lack of information about its intrinsic complexity. We don’t know what we are looking at so we can’t see the simple mechanisms. Here’s the rub though. We don’t even know if there are simple mechanisms!</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/neuroglia-the-alternative-model-of-the-brain-d2ade678df65" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Neuroglia-The Alternative Model of the Brain</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a signal we should all be paying attention too - in the age of Climate Change, Pandemic and the emerging economic paradigm of Modern Monetary Theory.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/05/introducing-public-interest-internet" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Introducing the Public Interest Internet</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Big Tech is long gone, a better future will come from the seed of this public interest internet: seeds that are being planted now, and which need everyone to nurture them. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">on the real internet, one or two clicks away from that handful of conglomerates, there remains a wider, more diverse, and more generous world. Often run by volunteers, frequently without any obvious institutional affiliation, sometimes tiny, often local, but free for everyone online to use and contribute to, this internet preceded Big Tech, and inspired the earliest, most optimistic vision of its future place in society.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The word “internet” has been so effectively hijacked by its most dystopian corners that it’s grown harder to even refer to this older element of online life, let alone bring it back into the forefront of society’s consideration. In his work documenting this space and exploring its future, academic, entrepreneur, and author Ethan Zuckerman has named it our “digital public infrastructure.” Hana Schank and her colleagues at the New America think tank have revitalized discussions around what they call “public interest technology.” In Europe, activists, academics and public sector broadcasters talk about the benefits of the internet’s “public spaces” and improving and expanding the “public stack.” Author and activist Eli Pariser has dedicated a new venture to advancing better digital spaces—what its participants describe as the “New Public”.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And more - I wish the Canadian Government would understand this signal - this is the time.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Laying fiber infrastructure like this brings terabits of broadband capacity to unserved and underserved communities in rural areas. Simultaneously, this plan dramatically lowers the cost to the communities themselves, who are in charge of developing their own, locally appropriate last mile plans.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/05/governor-newsoms-budget-proposes-historic-investment-public-fiber-broadband" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Governor Newsom’s Budget Proposes Historic Investment in Public Fiber Broadband</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">This morning, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced his plans for the state’s multi-billion dollar surplus and federal recovery dollars, including a massive, welcome $7 billion investment in public broadband infrastructure. It's a plan that would give California one of the largest public broadband fiber networks in the country. The proposal now heads to the legislature to be ratified by June 15 by a simple majority. Here are the details:</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Plan: California Builds Fiber Broadband Highway; Locals Build the Onramps</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Internet infrastructure shares many commonalities with public roads. Surface streets that crisscross downtowns and residential areas connect to highways via on-ramps. Those highways are a high-speed, high-capacity system that connect cities to one another over long distances.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In broadband, that highway function— connecting distant communities— is called "the middle mile," while those local roads, which connect with every home and business, are called "the last mile."</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">national private ISPs have proven themselves unwilling to tackle the rural fiber challenge, even when they stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars by doing so. Their desire for fast profits over long-term investments is so great, they would rather bankrupt themselves before deploying fiber in rural areas. The same is true for low-income access even in the most densely populated cities, which the Governor's plan will enable local solutions to resolve.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well most people are now familiar with having a wireless mouse - but this is a signal of something way more eerie.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/optogenetics-social-behavior-brains-mice-light" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Scientists remotely controlled the social behavior of mice with light</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The new devices allow complex wireless control of mouse brain activity</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the help of headsets and backpacks on mice, scientists are using light to switch nerve cells on and off in the rodents’ brains to probe the animals’ social behavior, a new study shows.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These remote control experiments are revealing new insights on the neural circuitry underlying social interactions, supporting previous work suggesting minds in sync are more cooperative, researchers report online May 10 in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Neuroscience</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The new devices rely on optogenetics, a technique in which researchers use bursts of light to activate or suppress the brain nerve cells, or neurons, often using tailored viruses to genetically modify cells so they respond to illumination. Scientists have used optogenetics to probe neural circuits in mice and other lab animals to yield insights on how they might work in humans.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Optogenetic devices often feed light to neurons via fiber-optic cables, but such tethers can interfere with natural behaviors and social interactions. While scientists recently developed implantable wireless optogenetic devices, these depend on relatively simple remote controls or limited sets of preprogrammed instructions.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And if that seems like it’s only mice. Another signal of the near future emergence of mind-computer entanglement.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-brain-interface-mental-text-screen.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Brain computer interface turns mental handwriting into text on screen</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists are exploring a number of ways for people with disabilities to communicate with their thoughts. The newest and fastest turns back to a vintage means for expressing oneself: handwriting.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the first time, researchers have deciphered the </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/brain+activity/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">brain activity</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> associated with trying to write letters by hand. Working with a participant with paralysis who has sensors implanted in his brain, the team used an algorithm to identify letters as he attempted to write them. Then, the system displayed the text on a screen—in real time.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The innovation could, with further development, let people with paralysis rapidly type without using their hands, says study coauthor Krishna Shenoy, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Stanford University who jointly supervised the work with Jaimie Henderson, a Stanford neurosurgeon.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we consider the renewable energy available - one can use this energy without a requirement to store it - for difficult material to recycle. This should be part of the design requirements of all industrial products.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As with other feedstock techniques, there is no down-cycling as the polymer bonds can be formed anew, meaning the plastics can be infinitely recycled. With a conversion rate of more than 99%, nearly all the plastic turns into a useful product.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210510-how-to-recycle-any-plastic" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The world's first 'infinite' plastic</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chemical recycling techniques are being trialled across the world. UK-based Recycling Technologies has developed a pyrolysis machine that turns hard-to-recycle plastic such as films, bags and laminated plastics into Plaxx. This liquid hydrocarbon feedstock can be used to make new virgin quality plastic. The first commercial-scale unit was installed in Perth in Scotland in 2020.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The firm Plastic Energy has two commercial-scale pyrolysis plants in Spain and plans to expand into France, the Netherlands and the UK. These plants transform hard-to-recycle plastic waste, such as confectionery wrappers, dry pet food pouches and breakfast cereal bags into substances called "tacoil". This feedstock can be used to make food-grade plastics.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the US, the chemical company Ineos has become the first to use a technique called depolymerisation on a commercial scale to produce recycled polyethylene, which goes into carrier bags and shrink film. Ineos also has plans to build several new pyrolysis recycling plants. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the UK, Mura Technology has begun construction of the world's first commercial-scale plant able to recycle all kinds of plastic. The plant can handle mixed plastic, coloured plastic, plastic of all composites, all stages of decay, even plastic contaminated with food or other kinds of waste.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A good signal of the emerging enrichment of our understanding of evolution - the afford-dancing of parts and wholes. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once the fusion protein is created, “it has a ready-made set of potential binding sites scattered all over the genome,” Adelson said, because its transposase part is still drawn to transposons. The more potential binding sites for the fusion protein, the higher the likelihood that it changes gene expression in the cell, potentially giving rise to new functions.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“These aren’t just new genes, but entire new architectures for proteins,” </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/scientists-catch-jumping-genes-rewiring-genomes-20210512/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Scientists Catch Jumping Genes Rewiring Genomes</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Transcription factors that act throughout the genome can arise from mashups of transposable elements inserted into established genes.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Roughly 500 million years ago, something that would forever change the course of eukaryotic development was brewing in the genome of some lucky organism: a gene called Pax6. The gene is thought to have orchestrated the formation of a primitive visual system, and in organisms today, it initiates a genetic cascade that recruits more than 2,000 genes to build different parts of the eye.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pax6 is only one of thousands of genes encoding transcription factors that each have the powerful ability to amplify and silence thousands of other genes. While geneticists have made leaps in understanding how genes with relatively simple, direct functions could have evolved, explanations for transcription factors have largely eluded scientists. The problem is that the success of a transcription factor depends on how usefully it targets huge numbers of sites throughout the genome simultaneously; it’s hard to picture how natural selection enables that to happen. The answer may hold the key to understanding how complex evolutionary novelties such as eyes arise, said Cédric Feschotte, a molecular biologist at Cornell University.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For more than a decade, Feschotte has pointed to transposons as the ultimate innovators in eukaryotic genomes. Transposons are genetic elements that can copy themselves and insert those copies throughout the genome using a splicing enzyme they make. Feschotte may have finally found the smoking gun he has been looking for: As he and his colleagues recently reported in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, these jumping genes have fused with other genes nearly 100 times in tetrapods over the past 300 million years, and many of the resulting genetic mashups are likely to encode transcription factors.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Damon Lisch, a plant geneticist at Purdue University who studies transposable elements and was not involved with the study, said he hopes this study pushes back against a widespread but misguided notion that transposons are “junk DNA.” Transposable elements generate tremendous amounts of diversity and have been implicated in the evolution of the placenta and the adaptive immune system, he explained. “These are not junk — they’re living little creatures in your genome that are under very active selection over long periods of time, and what that means is that they evolve new functions to stay in your genome,” </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a short read - but a great signal on the difference between generalized design vs highly optimized design - one enables vastly more afford-dancing.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A key architectural feature for survival in the biological world is the reusability of the underlying components. All biological life shares the same nucleotides (4) and proteins (21). Evolution has somehow consolidated its design into a reduced instruction set (RISC) computer.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What persists in biology are those components that prove to be ubiquitously useful.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Evolution thus is not a constant struggle for survival as a reading of Darwin may have implied. Rather, it is a constant struggle for usefulness. Every part of biology must justify its existence by revealing its usefulness.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/evolution-is-a-story-not-of-fitness-but-of-relevance-d43ae3d4fc07" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Evolution is a Story not of Fitness, but of Relevance</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Organic or biological designs are reusable designs from the ground up. They accommodate the needs of the environment because of the generality of the architecture. They don’t pretend to solve just a narrow problem.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Architectures like biology that lead to general intelligence (i.e. like you) are from the ground up built from reusable components that encourage combinatorial mixing opportunities. One can never correctly guess the needs of the environment (i.e. market).</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The opposite of generalization is pre-mature optimization. A company that has is genesis as a one-product company has a bias toward optimizing the entire stack. As a consequence, it compromises reusability and thus shuts of future opportunities for evolution.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The opposable thumb is shared by a common ancestor of the great apes and humans. However, apes have optimized for strength and not dexterity. As a consequence, lost this capability and thus further shut themselves off to an evolution path of higher intelligence.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The human jaw is weaker than apes because humans lost an important gene. However, the consequence of a weaker jaw was a jaw that was more flexible. Thus leading eventually to a richness in vocalization.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">spell check ? - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">does it make me -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a better speller - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">jeezuz - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when was the last time -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i went to a dictionary -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to check spelling -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of a word? -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">there can be -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">artfulness-fore -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">learning pleasure - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">taking - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">receiving - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">taceive - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in seeing-as-it-is - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or-tfully - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">thinking about conversation - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that orgasgenates -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">social-thinking -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and how we spark - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">each other - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with friction - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but not conflict - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">there’s an orthogonality - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in each’s -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meta-mor-Phor-ing - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the age of -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">autospell-check - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">how - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ow - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do we know -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when wordplay is -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">auto-undone - - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yeah - writing is re-writing</span></div><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-64931c3c-7fff-0bfa-e2ab-7ec02a5f7d50"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be alive - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is to live -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in the middle -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">excluded -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><div><br /></div></span></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-76976581039423292322021-05-13T17:42:00.002-07:002021-05-13T17:43:25.760-07:00Friday Thinking 14 May, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a4cefc29-7fff-51d7-e7ab-b53a76d856bb"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/consciousness-and-the-illusion-of-continuity-cd4cfc59ec6c" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consciousness and the Illusion of Continuity</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-danger-of-fact-ist-politics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Danger of Fact-ist Politics</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/158058/coronavirus-conservative-experts-scientific-counterrevolution" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Coronavirus and the Right’s Scientific Counterrevolution</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The miracle of the commons</span></a></p><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://edri.org/our-work/four-measures-to-limit-the-dominance-of-platforms-like-youtube-and-facebook/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Four measures to limit the dominance of platforms like YouTube and Facebook</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/gregory-e-kaebnick-science-doesnt-work-way" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science Doesn't Work That Way</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/inventing-the-universe" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inventing the Universe</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01223-4" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Minuscule drums push the limits of quantum weirdness</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tesla remotely disables Autopilot on used Model S after it was sold</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01086-9" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These cellular clocks help explain why elephants are bigger than mice</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-read-the-sugary-language-on-cell-surfaces-20210503/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers Read the Sugary ‘Language’ on Cell Surfaces</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-3d-company-desktop-metal-wood.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3D printing company Desktop Metal will now use wood to print</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22419794/authenticator-apps-and-you-authy-google-authenticator" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a better way to protect yourself from hackers and identity thieves</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micopoem</span></a></p></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a62305b0-7fff-fa1d-155a-2cf1d79fee2d"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Intuition can only be leveraged through practice. To be really good at something requires 10,000 hours of participatory experience. Humans do not master a skill by reading an instruction manual. To leverage the massive processing in the brain, the performance of skill must become unconscious. In other words, skills must become ‘second nature’ and thus run ‘in the background’.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/consciousness-and-the-illusion-of-continuity-cd4cfc59ec6c" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consciousness and the Illusion of Continuity</span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the threat to democratic, “open” societies is not misinformation or ignorance but rather fanatical certainty.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Popper’s political ideas were informed by his philosophy of science. He emphasized the tentativeness of scientific knowledge, contending that we never know whether theories are true in an ultimate sense, but only whether they have survived previous attempts to disprove them. Scientific “objectivity” emerges not from the unique cognitive qualities or neutrality of researchers but from their critical engagement with each other’s work. Progress in knowledge relies on an environment that fosters lively criticism, a system that encourages productive dissent. The enemies of this system are those who insist on perfect certainty.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The belief that misinformation is today’s main threat to democracy blinds us to the pernicious effects of a broader preoccupation with certitude. This obsession has been tearing at American politics throughout the Covid pandemic, and continues to imperil debates over vaccination, masking, and lockdowns. But the problem will remain with us long after the virus has been beaten.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-danger-of-fact-ist-politics" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Danger of Fact-ist Politics</span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In an insightful 2013 essay, M. Anthony Mills drew on G.K. Chesterton’s claim that it is not quite right to view a conspiracy theorist as someone with a flaw in his reasoning. Talk to a committed anti-vaxxer or just-the-flu-er, and you may well be flummoxed at the discovery that he has a better command of the research than you do, that he can answer and dodge and weave until you quit in exhaustion. He may even be capable of “saving the appearances”—of offering an explanation for all the observable facts. “The problem,” Mills writes, “is not so much a flaw in his reasoning but that his whole reasoning process has become unmoored. ‘</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.’”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The trouble with the Galilean right is not that its partisans have lost their reason—really they have it in perverse excess—but rather that in their war against the establishment they have lost their sense. Judgment has given way to technique, coherence to deconstruction, the picture of the whole has broken apart into skillful scribbles. Cast out of the hall of scientific power, intoxicated and giddy, they discover that science has given them the tools to blow it up.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/158058/coronavirus-conservative-experts-scientific-counterrevolution" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Coronavirus and the Right’s Scientific Counterrevolution</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even before Hardin’s ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ was published, however, the young political scientist Elinor Ostrom had proven him wrong. While Hardin speculated that the tragedy of the commons could be avoided only through total privatisation or total government control, Ostrom had </span><a href="https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/handle/10535/3581" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">witnessed</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> groundwater users near her native Los Angeles hammer out a system for sharing their coveted resource. Over the next several decades, as a professor at Indiana University Bloomington, she </span><a href="https://www.thecgo.org/research/the-environmental-optimism-of-elinor-ostrom/?utm_term=elinor%20ostrom&utm_campaign=NA_GG_S_CGO&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=5827172578&hsa_cam=10168821513&hsa_grp=122211695409&hsa_ad=506910240447&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-332850769093&hsa_kw=elinor%20ostrom&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=CjwKCAjwr_uCBhAFEiwAX8YJgXzyqGIzyNV8xOJ5lEvf8jNwiKYnRnNt7MB3FgRbjCDz-RWf4jJj5RoCuGkQAvD_BwE" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">studied</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> collaborative management systems developed by cattle herders in Switzerland, forest dwellers in Japan, and irrigators in the Philippines. These communities had found ways of both preserving a shared resource – pasture, trees, water – and providing their members with a living. Some had been deftly avoiding the tragedy of the commons for centuries; Ostrom was simply one of the first scientists to pay close attention to their traditions, and analyse how and why they worked.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The features of successful systems, Ostrom and her colleagues found, include clear boundaries (the ‘community’ doing the managing must be well-defined); reliable monitoring of the shared resource; a reasonable balance of costs and benefits for participants; a predictable process for the fast and fair resolution of conflicts; an escalating series of punishments for cheaters; and good relationships between the community and other layers of authority, from household heads to international institutions.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The miracle of the commons</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an important idea from the European equivalent of the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://edri.org/our-work/four-measures-to-limit-the-dominance-of-platforms-like-youtube-and-facebook/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Four measures to limit the dominance of platforms like YouTube and Facebook</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">For our public debate, we are far too dependent on the whims of dominant companies such as Google and Facebook. The time is nigh for politicians to step in, and here are four measures they should take.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is crucial that we can speak freely, which allows us to sharpen our thinking and ideas. A healthy public debate is essential for a functioning democracy. Yet, this is only possible if the platforms we use for that debate are a reflection of our society. Unfortunately, this is not the case right now on the internet. Our public debate takes place on a limited number of very dominant platforms. And they have their toxic business model and dominance to thank for this role. With this role, those platforms have a major influence on the form and content of our conversations. Technology companies such as Google and Facebook are thus the gatekeepers of our public debate online.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dominant platforms must be interoperable. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dominant platforms must allow third parties to access certain parts of their services.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Basing advertisements on user behaviour should be prohibited. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The use of so-called dark patterns should be prohibited.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the founding creator of Ethereum who's initial vision was 'trustless' systems. This is an interesting 'state of the blockchain' piece - is it just me or does legitimacy seem like a metaphor for trust? </span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I will give this powerful social force a name:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> legitimacy</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What's going on here is a pattern of a similar type to what we saw with the not-yet-issued Bitcoin and Ethereum coin rewards: the coins were ultimately owned not by a cryptographic key, but by </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">some kind of social contract</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain ecosystems both spend far more on network security - the goal of proof of work mining - than they do on everything else combined. The Bitcoin blockchain has paid an average of about $38 million per day in block rewards to miners since the start of the year, plus about $5m/day in transaction fees. The Ethereum blockchain comes in second, at $19.5m/day in block rewards plus $18m/day in tx fees. Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation's annual budget, paying for research, protocol development, grants and all sorts of other expenses, is a mere $30 million per year. Non-EF-sourced funding exists too, but it is at most only a few times larger. Bitcoin ecosystem expenditures on R&D are likely even lower. Bitcoin ecosystem R&D is largely funded by companies (with $250m total raised so far according to this page), and this report suggests about 57 employees; assuming fairly high salaries and many paid developers not being counted, that works out to about $20m per year.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think we have to understand that it's our institutions that provide robust strength and the chemistry of trust in a society - yes personal behavior and good faith acting are vital - but it's our institutions that compensate for the whimsy of leadership and individual influence. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/gregory-e-kaebnick-science-doesnt-work-way" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Science Doesn't Work That Way</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Its authority derives not from unbiased scientists but from the institutions and norms that structure their work. Fighting mistrust requires more public engagement with policy, not unqualified deference to experts.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The COVID-19 pandemic seems to take every public problem—vast social inequality, political polarization, the spread of conspiracy theories—and magnify it. Among these problems is the public’s growing distrust of scientists and other experts. As Archon Fung, a scholar of democratic governance at Harvard’s Kennedy School, has put it, the U.S. public is in a “wide-aperture, low-deference” mood: deeply disinclined to recognize the authority of traditional leaders, scientists among them, on a wide range of topics—including masks and social distancing.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an excellent signal of our times - the nature of The Truth - versus honest accounts - multiple lines of evidence - multiple ways of reasoning and wayfinding paradoxes and contradictions through institutions of conversation. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.” Since this inherited framework works well enough to get new researchers started, the question of what it all means is usually left alone.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/inventing-the-universe" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Inventing the Universe</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are quantum physicists making things up as they go along?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with Carroll claiming quantum mechanics as </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">literally true</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and Smolin claiming it as </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">literally false</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, there must be some underlying disagreement. And of course there is. Traditional quantum theory describes things like electrons as smeary waves whose measurable properties only become definite in the act of measurement. Sean Carroll is a supporter of the “Many Worlds” interpretation of this theory, which claims that the multiple measurement possibilities all simultaneously exist. Some proponents of Many Worlds describe the existence of a “multiverse” that contains many parallel universes, but Carroll prefers to describe a single, radically enlarged universe that contains all the possible outcomes running alongside each other as separate “worlds.” But the trouble, says Lee Smolin, is that in the real world as we observe it, these multiple possibilities never appear — each measurement has a single outcome. Smolin takes this fact as evidence that quantum theory must be wrong, and argues that any theory that supersedes quantum mechanics must do away with these multiple possibilities.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So how can such similar books, informed by the same evidence and drawing upon the same history, reach such divergent conclusions? Well, anyone who cares about politics knows that this type of informed disagreement happens all the time, especially, as with Carroll and Smolin, when the disagreements go well beyond questions that experiments could possibly resolve.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But there is another problem here. The question that both physicists gloss over is that of just how much we should expect to get out of our best physical theories. This question pokes through the foundation of quantum mechanics like rusted rebar, often luring scientists into arguments over parables meant to illuminate the obscure.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another signal of a looming paradigm change in fundamental science - a phase transition in ‘magic’. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The quantum-drum techniques could lead to the development of instrumentation that beats the limitations that quantum mechanics imposes on measurement.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01223-4" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Minuscule drums push the limits of quantum weirdness</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vibrating aluminium membranes provide the first direct evidence of quantum entanglement in macroscopic objects.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By playing two tiny drums, physicists have provided the most direct demonstration yet that quantum entanglement — a bizarre effect normally associated with subatomic particles — works for larger objects.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The findings, described in two Science papers on 6 May, could help researchers to build measuring devices of unprecedented sensitivity, as well as quantum computers that can perform certain calculations beyond the reach of any ordinary computer.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The counter-intuitive rules of quantum mechanics predict that two objects can share a common, ‘entangled’ state. Measurable properties of one object, such as its position or velocity, are then correlated to those of the other, with a degree of correlation that is stronger than what can be achieved in classical, or non-quantum, physics.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an important signal of an emerging business model in the digital environment that will enslave us to particular devices - unless we create legislative protections for users - rather than corporations.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Tesla remotely disables Autopilot on used Model S after it was sold</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tesla says the owner can’t use features it says ‘they did not pay for’</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tesla has remotely disabled driver assistance features on a used Model S after it was sold to a customer, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jalopnik</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reports. The company now claims that the owner of the car, who purchased it from a third-party dealer — a dealer who bought it at an auction held by Tesla itself — “did not pay” for the features and therefore is not eligible to use them.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The features were enabled when the dealer bought the car, and they were advertised as part of the package when the car was sold to its owner. It’s a peculiar situation that raises hard questions about the nature of over-the-air software updates as they relate to vehicles.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cars sold with hardware-based upgrades, such as four-wheel drive versus all-wheel drive, or advanced adaptive cruise control, do not lose those features when they are resold on the used car market. But because Tesla can update its vehicles remotely, the Model S and other Tesla vehicles can apparently lose key features. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a fascinating signal of progress in domesticating DNA, understanding biological time - and perhaps toward increasing longevity.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Speed matters when it comes to building species. Evolution didn’t give giraffes long necks by adding extra bones; they have the same number of vertebrae as their stubby-necked okapi relatives. Rather, neck vertebrae in giraffes grow over longer periods of time, which allows them to reach bigger sizes.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01086-9" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">These cellular clocks help explain why elephants are bigger than mice</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Biologists are uncovering how tiny timekeepers in our cells might govern body size, lifespan and ageing.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In her laboratory in Barcelona, Spain, Miki Ebisuya has built a clock without cogs, springs or numbers. This clock doesn’t tick. It is made of genes and proteins, and it keeps time in a layer of cells that Ebisuya’s team has grown in its lab. This biological clock is tiny, but it could help to explain some of the most conspicuous differences between animal species.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Animal cells bustle with activity, and the pace varies between species. In all observed instances, mouse cells run faster than human cells, which tick faster than whale cells. These differences affect how big an animal gets, how its parts are arranged and perhaps even how long it will live. But biologists have long wondered what cellular timekeepers control these speeds, and why they vary.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A wave of research is starting to yield answers for one of the many clocks that control the workings of cells. There is a clock in early embryos that beats out a regular rhythm by activating and deactivating genes. This ‘segmentation clock’ creates repeating body segments such as the vertebrae in our spines. This is the timepiece that Ebisuya has made in her lab.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The domestication of DNA continues to expand the domains of knowledge.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It turns out in almost any of these cases, it is through interactions of glycomolecules that microorganisms and parasites cause human disease,”</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-read-the-sugary-language-on-cell-surfaces-20210503/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Researchers Read the Sugary ‘Language’ on Cell Surfaces</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now scientists may be verging on a breakthrough in the understanding of glycans and glycobiology. After analyzing a comprehensive data set of glycan structures and their known interactions, researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found a shared structural “language” that all organisms use when making glycans, like a municipal building code that ensures consistent, compatible architecture. The researchers have released a set of online tools that anyone can use to analyze glycan structures and functions.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Varki and his team had found that, more than 2 million years ago, a mutation in humans’ ancestors inactivated a gene that modifies sialic acids in all other primates and most other mammals. As a result, hundreds of millions of sialic acid glycans that are present in other primate cells are missing from human ones.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To Varki, glycans are still one of the greatest enigmas of the biological universe. They’re “actually so prominent, they’re a major component of biomass on the planet.” In fact, glycans make up most of the organic matter by mass: Cellulose and chitin, the major building material of arthropod exoskeletons and fungal cell walls, are nature’s two most abundant organic polymers. And yet in contrast with the overabundance of glycans, “this whole field has been left behind,” Varki said.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A small signal of some progress in 3D printing.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-3d-company-desktop-metal-wood.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">3D printing company Desktop Metal will now use wood to print</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 3D printing company Desktop Metal has just announced the release of Forust, a new tool using wood to 3D print objects. The company, founded in 2019, focuses on 3D printing for interior design. With printing methods deemed "non-destructive", they haven't come under much scrutiny for safety or environmental concerns, making them an attractive prospect for acquisition.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, Desktop Metal has introduced Forust as its new portfolio manufacturing process. The technology uses cellulose dust and lignin, byproducts from both the paper and wood industries.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lauding Desktop Metal, Forust CEO Andrew Jeffery states that the </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/interior+design/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">interior design</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> company enables architects, designers and manufacturers to utilize design-forward technology in order to re-consider the use of wood waste streams, from just one piece to over a million pieces. In turn, Jeffery reports that Forust does its part by offering sustainable, 3D-printed wood designs for both businesses and consumers to develop beautiful, strong wood products suited for a variety of industries, including consumer home goods, furniture and interior design.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an important signal of the increasing complexity of how we navigate our lives with our devices and soon with our households and vehicles (I’m sure some people are already there).</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22419794/authenticator-apps-and-you-authy-google-authenticator" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">There’s a better way to protect yourself from hackers and identity thieves</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you’re using texts for two-factor authentication, it’s time to change to an app. Here’s what you need to know.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When people ask me for security tips, I give them the basics. One is a strong and long password with upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. (No, “Passw0rd!” is not good enough.) Each password should also be unique to each account (We love a good password manager!). And you always use two-factor authentication, or 2FA. (Don’t be like me, who didn’t have 2FA on her bank account until a hacker wired $13,000 out of it.) But the type of 2FA you use is also increasingly important.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Text-based 2FA, where a text with a six-digit code is sent to your phone to verify your identity, is better known and better understood because it uses technology most of us use all the time anyway. But it’s a technology that wasn’t meant to serve as an identify verifier, and it’s an increasingly insecure option as hackers continue to find ways to exploit it.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s why I recommend using an authenticator app, like Google Authenticator, instead. Don’t let the name intimidate you: There are a few extra steps involved, but the effort is worth it.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micopoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what difference -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">does it matter - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what lane - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a pedestrian is walking in - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When ambling for the joy -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or watching river life - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it matters for pedestrians -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">writing is not only re-writing - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s writing the same thing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">over and over - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">maintenance -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">renovations -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">yard work - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">garden-shaping -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">aspiration shaping- </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">then what? - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">process of living -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> creating - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">home-making - </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">relationship - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">why is that so last priority - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but like a ground for -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my shadow in all i enact - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Emotions -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are experiences - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">enacting complex-relational-chemistry - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to manage emotions - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">needs - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reframing apophenia -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 15pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">writing is not only re-writing - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s writing the same thing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">over and over - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 15pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s all me i felt - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">then realized -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">how much them -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">becomes me -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the-mees-that-is-them -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the chemistry of chemistry - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">homeostatial -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">complex evolving adaptive attractors - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">attractors -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are patterned fields -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of flowing intensive boundaries - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not blurry - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but gradients with phase-change thresholds - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">needing to transform -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">media enactments of patterned content - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">emotions are -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the enactment of meaning - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">basic or archetypal - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">accountings for-or-by - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">contingencies-of-relationship - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">virtual-or-actual - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-68047276703620863842021-05-06T18:05:00.000-07:002021-05-06T18:05:46.772-07:00Friday Thinking 7 May, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 17.6px;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-87ea386d-7fff-0dc9-997f-ac3d558d6163"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/a-mathematician-a-philosopher-and-a-gambler-walk-into-a-bar" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mathematics for gamblers</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/04/when-ais-start-hacking.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When AIs Start Hacking</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cory Doctorow: Qualia</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/a-history-of-authenticity-from-jesus-to-self-help-and-beyond" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Authenticity is a sham</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://outline.com/KkapuA" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Manufacturing mRNA vaccines is surprisingly straightforward</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/04/when-ais-start-hacking.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When AIs Start Hacking</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01174-w" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reactive, reproducible, collaborative: computational notebooks evolve</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-3d-holographic-head-up-road-safety.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3D holographic head-up display could improve road safety</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-crispr-retrons.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Move over CRISPR, the retrons are coming</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01157-x" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Weird viral DNA spills secrets to biologists</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://vancouversun.com/commodities/energy/electric-vehicles/the-anti-tesla-ballard-bets-the-day-for-tech-elon-musk-called-mind-bogglingly-stupid-has-finally-come" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Burnaby's Ballard bets the day has finally come for technology Elon Musk called 'mind-bogglingly stupid'</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-two-qubit-powered-entanglement-local.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A two-qubit engine powered by entanglement and local measurements</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://reimaginingthelocal.medium.com/re-imagining-the-local-6360d72ef1d1" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Re-imagining the Local</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="http://www.johnverdon.com/2021/05/a-eulogy-to-truth-long-live-honesty.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Eulogy to Truth – Long Live Honesty</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micopoem</span></a></p></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-bcc01c95-7fff-5263-bb3d-78b59f79bcad"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">interventions to promote mathematical literacy among gamblers generally push the message that gamblers should unconditionally trust mathematics. But recall in the opening story that the philosopher didn’t actually trust what the mathematician said; she trusted mathematics, sure, but she didn’t trust it as applied in the context of the die roll. The problem for gamblers isn’t so much a lack of trust in mathematics as much as an incorrect application and interpretation. After all, the gambler did trust mathematics, she just misinterpreted it.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The limitations of mathematical counselling make sense when we recall that the mathematics of ‘real world’ events are far from pure numbers; rather, they take the form of descriptions, strategies, predictions and expectations, all mediated by language and meaning. By making a distinction between pure and applied mathematics, between truths that are necessary and those that are contingent, and noticing how often we mix mathematical and non-mathematical terms ourselves, we might steer ourselves on the right track to correct our cognitive distortions.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No single expert or guide can help us here. We need the combined wisdom of the mathematician, the philosopher and the psychological counsellor to help combat the forces that sustain problem gambling. Indeed, some of the associated cognitive distortions tap into genuine philosophical debates, such as over the meaning of randomness, something that’s uncontrolled and proceeds without any rules. Mathematicians and philosophers struggle to agree on a rigorous and universally accepted definition, despite the centrality of the concept to probability theory.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we put abstract, formal mathematics in empirical situations such as games of chance, we ultimately rely on language to express newly inferred relations as truths. However, these ‘truths’ are no longer necessary truths; they depend on meanings, interpretations and context. As such, they’re contingent truths. If we’re too zealous in abstracting or idealising our empirical context, or if we poorly interpret the mathematical truths in the target domain, such modelling can lead to erroneous results. When this happens, it’s not pure mathematics that’s to blame, but the whole setup.</span></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of this shows that any application of mathematics is a balance between relevance and convenience – a choice, a refinement, and finally a cross-checking against the real world. All this relies as much on a mathematician’s or scientist’s intuition as it does on scientific or mathematical rigour.</span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All probability theory is grounded in the concept of infinity, yet all our gaming experiences are finite</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/a-mathematician-a-philosopher-and-a-gambler-walk-into-a-bar" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mathematics for gamblers</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take a soccer simulation where an AI figured out that if it kicked the ball out of bounds, the goalie would have to throw the ball in and leave the goal undefended. Or another simulation, where an AI figured out that instead of running, it could make itself tall enough to cross a distant finish line by falling over it. Or the robot vacuum cleaner that instead of learning to not bump into things, it learned to drive backwards, where there were no sensors telling it it was bumping into things. If there are problems, inconsistencies, or loopholes in the rules, and if those properties lead to an acceptable solution as defined by the rules, then AIs will find these hacks.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can imagine equipping an AI with all of the world’s laws and regulations, plus all the world’s financial information in real time, plus anything else we think might be relevant; and then giving it the goal of “maximum profit.” My guess is that this isn’t very far off, and that the result will be all sorts of novel hacks.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/04/when-ais-start-hacking.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">When AIs Start Hacking</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyone who studies public health knows the importance of qualitative factors. Even seemingly precise, quantitative figures, like the infamous R0 – describing the rate of spread of a pathogen – is heavily dependent on qualitative factors that you just can’t do math on. R0 doesn’t just depend on things like, “How many virus particles must you inhale before you are likely to become infected,” it depends every bit as much on things like “do people trust public health authorities enough to report their contacts after they are diagnosed with an infection?”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But mathematical models operate on quantitative elements. To do math on a qualitative measurement, you must first quantize it, assigning a numeric value to it. This is also a qualitative exercise, because “how much does this hurt?” or “how intense does this shade of blue appear to you?” or “how much do you trust the CDC?” are not questions with precise, deterministic answers.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quantitative disciplines – physics, math, and (especially) computer science – make a pretense of objectivity. They make very precise measurements of everything that can be measured precisely, assign deceptively precise measurements to things that can’t be measured precisely, and jettison the rest on the grounds that you can’t do mathematical operations on it.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the quant’s version of the drunkard’s search for car-keys under the lamp-post: we can’t add, subtract, multiply or divide qualitative elements, so we just incinerate them, sweep up the dubious quantitative residue that remains, do math on that, and simply assert that nothing important was lost in the process.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Cory Doctorow: Qualia</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The word ‘authenticity’ comes from the Greek authentes for ‘master’ or ‘one acting on his own authority’ (aut = self and hentes = making or working on/crafting). Importantly, it doesn’t mean ‘self-maker’ in the reflexive sense of one who makes himself, but one who makes or acts according to his own will – making from out of the self. And in crafting of our accord, we do actually actualise ourselves. We transform inner feelings into something real.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we’re to be authentic, we should ironically and humbly acknowledge the limitations of our individual perspective and effort, without despairing at our limitations. We should embrace the necessarily fragmentary nature of our endeavours, and we should enrich our efforts by trying to inhabit those of others, including those who came before us. In this way, we do take some steps toward the absolute.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This ironic attitude allows us, like Socrates, to truly know that we don’t know, to be comfortable with our ignorance while pushing against its boundaries, and to temper our desire for wholeness with an authentic understanding of our limitations. From this perspective, the silence of the world doesn’t sound unreasonable at all.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/a-history-of-authenticity-from-jesus-to-self-help-and-beyond" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Authenticity is a sham</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is vital information if we are going to create conditions not only for the current pandemic - but for the inevitable next ones. A strong signal of progress - if we also develop the right business - public infrastructure models for the whole world - the local is now global - making it local everywhere.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://outline.com/KkapuA" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Manufacturing mRNA vaccines is surprisingly straightforward</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Gates Foundation convinced the Oxford team to do an exclusive deal with Astrazeneca. In support of this proposition, Gates argued that without a profit motive, the pharma giants would abandon human society and risk civilizational collapse.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite his cuddly reputation as a philanthropist, Gates has always pursued the ideology that the world should be guarded over by monopolist-kings, dependent on their largesse (guided by their superhuman judgment) for progress.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of the poorest, most populous countries on Earth have petitioned the WTO for a patent waiver to allow them to manufacture generic versions of vaccines. There’s enormous, global support for this, both from people who care about humanitarian causes and from people who just don’t want to die of a mutant strain incubated half a world away. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Gates] and his foundation are peddling the lie that patents aren’t the reason that poor countries aren’t making their own vaccines — instead, they are simply not “developed” enough to do science (again, the world’s largest existing vaccine factories are in the Global South).</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Rapid development and deployment of high‐volume vaccines for pandemic response” (DOI: 10.1002.amp2.10060) is an open access, peer-reviewed paper in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ </span><a href="https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/amp2.10060" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Journal of Advanced Manufacturing and Processing</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><a href="https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/amp2.10060" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/amp2.10060</span></a></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- New facilities will be 99–99.9% smaller than conventional vaccine facilities</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- They will be 95–99.7% cheaper than conventional vaccine facilities</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- You could use a single room in a conventional vaccine factory to make more vaccine doses of mRNA vaccines than the entire output of the rest of the factory</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- New vaccines can be made 1,000% faster than previous vaccines</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have to remember that it will be impossible to have a single all-powerful AI - the digital environment is enabling a complex ecology of all manner of AI - with all the diversity that any other viable ecology produces.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/04/when-ais-start-hacking.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">When AIs Start Hacking</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you don’t have enough to worry about already, consider a world where AIs are hackers.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hacking is as old as humanity. We are creative problem solvers. We exploit loopholes, manipulate systems, and strive for more influence, power, and wealth. To date, hacking has exclusively been a human activity. Not for long.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I lay out in a report I just published, artificial intelligence will eventually find vulnerabilities in all sorts of social, economic, and political systems, and then exploit them at unprecedented speed, scale, and scope. After hacking humanity, AI systems will then hack other AI systems, and humans will be little more than collateral damage.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Okay, maybe this is a bit of hyperbole, but it requires no far-future science fiction technology. I’m not postulating an AI “singularity,” where the AI-learning feedback loop becomes so fast that it outstrips human understanding. I’m not assuming intelligent androids. I’m not assuming evil intent. Most of these hacks don’t even require major research breakthroughs in AI. They’re already happening. As AI gets more sophisticated, though, we often won’t even know it’s happening.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AIs don’t solve problems like humans do. They look at more types of solutions than us. They’ll go down complex paths that we haven’t considered. This can be an issue because of something called the explainability problem. Modern AI systems are essentially black boxes. Data goes in one end, and an answer comes out the other. It can be impossible to understand how the system reached its conclusion, even if you’re a programmer looking at the code.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a very good signal of the future of scientific publishing.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01174-w" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Reactive, reproducible, collaborative: computational notebooks evolve</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new breed of notebooks is taking data visualization and collaborative functionality to the next level, with spreadsheet simplicity.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This year marks ten years since the launch of the IPython Notebook. The open-source tool, now known as the Jupyter Notebook, has become an exceedingly popular piece of data-science kit, with millions of notebooks deposited to the GitHub code-sharing site.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Computational notebooks combine code, results, text and images in a single document, yielding what Stephen Wolfram, creator of the Mathematica software package, has called a “computational essay”. And whether written using Jupyter, Mathematica, RStudio or any other platform, researchers can use them for iterative data exploration, communication, teaching and more.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But computational notebooks can also be confusing and foster poor coding practices. And they are difficult to share, collaborate on and reproduce. A 2019 study found that just 24% of 863,878 publicly available Jupyter notebooks on GitHub could be successfully re-executed, and only 4% produced the same results </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How long will it be before we see this as a standard feature in our vehicles? Will it be before self-driving vehicles?</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-3d-holographic-head-up-road-safety.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">3D holographic head-up display could improve road safety</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers have developed the first LiDAR-based augmented reality head-up display for use in vehicles. Tests on a prototype version of the technology suggest that it could improve road safety by 'seeing through' objects to alert of potential hazards without distracting the driver.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The technology, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford and University College London (UCL), is based on LiDAR (light detection and ranging), and uses LiDAR data to create ultra high-definition holographic representations of road objects which are beamed directly to the driver's eyes, instead of 2D windscreen projections used in most head-up displays.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While the technology has not yet been tested in a car, early tests, based on data collected from a busy street in central London, showed that the holographic images appear in the driver's field of view according to their actual position, creating an augmented reality. This could be particularly useful where objects such as road signs are hidden by large trees or trucks, for example, allowing the driver to 'see through' visual obstructions. The results are reported in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Optics Express</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another signal in the emerging toolbox of domesticated DNA.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"RLR enabled us to do something that's impossible to do with CRISPR: we randomly chopped up a </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/bacterial+genome/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bacterial genome</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, turned those genetic fragments into single-stranded DNA in situ, and used them to screen millions of sequences simultaneously, … RLR is a simpler, more flexible gene editing tool that can be used for highly multiplexed experiments, which eliminates the toxicity often observed with CRISPR and improves researchers' ability to explore mutations at the genome level."</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Being able to analyze pooled, barcoded mutant libraries with RLR enables millions of experiments to be performed simultaneously, allowing us to observe the effects of mutations across the genome, as well as how those mutations might interact with each other,"</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-crispr-retrons.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Move over CRISPR, the retrons are coming</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">While the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system has become the poster child for innovation in synthetic biology, it has some major limitations. CRISPR-Cas9 can be programmed to find and cut specific pieces of DNA, but editing the DNA to create desired mutations requires tricking the cell into using a new piece of DNA to repair the break. This bait-and-switch can be complicated to orchestrate, and can even be toxic to cells because Cas9 often cuts unintended, off-target sites as well.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alternative gene editing techniques called recombineering instead perform this bait-and-switch by introducing an alternate piece of DNA while a cell is replicating its genome, efficiently creating genetic mutations without breaking DNA. These methods are simple enough that they can be used in many cells at once to create complex pools of mutations for researchers to study. Figuring out what the effects of those mutations are, however, requires that each mutant be isolated, sequenced, and characterized: a time-consuming and impractical task.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School (HMS) have created a new gene editing tool called Retron Library Recombineering (RLR) that makes this task easier. RLR generates up to millions of mutations simultaneously, and "barcodes" mutant cells so that the entire pool can be screened at once, enabling massive amounts of data to be easily generated and analyzed. The achievement, which has been accomplished in bacterial cells, is described in a recent paper in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PNAS</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was some fear mongering a while back about an attempt to add two more letters to the basic genetic code - to create a synthetic DNA - as is often the case reality is stranger than our imagination.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The work is seminal, says Steven Benner, a synthetic biologist and founder of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Florida, who compares it to US microbiologist Carl Woese’s discovery of a new branch of single-celled life. “It represents the first discovery of a ‘shadow biosphere’ since Woese identified the Archaea a half century ago.”</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01157-x" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Weird viral DNA spills secrets to biologists</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bacteria-infecting viruses have specialized enzymes to make genes with alternative nucleobase.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Alien’ genomes can be found on Earth. Some viruses that infect bacteria use an alternative genetic alphabet that’s distinct from the code used by nearly all other organisms — and, now, two teams have spelt out how the system works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More than four decades in the making, the studies show how dozens of these bacteriophages (or just ‘phages’), as they are known, write their genomes using a chemical base called 2-aminoadenine, Z for short, instead of adenine — the A in the As, Ts, Cs and Gs of genetics textbooks.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Scientists have long dreamed of increasing the diversity of bases. Our work shows that nature has already come up with a way to do that,” write Suwen Zhao, a computational biologist at ShanghaiTech University in China, and her team in a 29 April </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> paper, showing how ‘Z-DNA’ is made. Researchers in France described similar insights in a pair of papers in the same journal.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It seems like the hydrogen economy is about to take off - again. But this time there’s a bigger tide of change to surf.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://vancouversun.com/commodities/energy/electric-vehicles/the-anti-tesla-ballard-bets-the-day-for-tech-elon-musk-called-mind-bogglingly-stupid-has-finally-come" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Burnaby's Ballard bets the day has finally come for technology Elon Musk called 'mind-bogglingly stupid'</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">After 40 years on the brink, Ballard Power, backed by heavyweights like Ford, Daimler and China's Weichai, may actually get its breakthrough</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As chief executive of Burnaby-based Ballard Power Systems Inc., the company that hopes to disrupt trucking, municipal transit buses, railways and shipping with its proprietary hydrogen fuel cell technology, Randy MacEwen has made countless sacrifices.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A weak signal of something farther off - but conceptually fascinating.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-two-qubit-powered-entanglement-local.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A two-qubit engine powered by entanglement and local measurements</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers at Institut Néel-CNRS, University of Saint Louis and University of Rochester recently realized a two-qubit engine fueled by entanglement and local measurements. This engine's unique design, outlined in a paper published in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Physical Review Letters</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, could open up exciting possibilities for thermodynamics research and inform the development of new quantum technologies.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Our paper is based on a very simple and deep effect of quantum mechanics: Measuring a </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/quantum+system/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">quantum system</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> disturbs the system, i.e., changes its state in a random way," Alexia Auffèves, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Phys.org</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. "As an immediate consequence, the measuring device provides both energy and entropy to the quantum system, playing a role similar to a hot source fueling a thermal </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/engine/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">engine</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The noticeable difference is that here, the fuel is not thermal, but quantum."</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few years ago, Auffèves and some of her colleagues at Institut Néel-CNRS introduced the proof of concept for a measurement-fueled engine based on a single </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/qubit/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">qubit</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This was the first of a series of proposals that revealed the energetic counterpart of measurement devices.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Flagrant - Self-Promotion </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have two pieces to share - the first is a sprouting endeavor that will very soon enter into the access from the digital environment - Re-Imagining the Local </span></div><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://reimaginingthelocal.medium.com/re-imagining-the-local-6360d72ef1d1" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Re-imagining the Local</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Response-Able action to the challenges of the 21st Century</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Three paradigms enabling response-able action to the challenges of the 21st Century — where everything that can be automated will be.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There will never be a shortage of Work and Activity to Do and to Value — When we are Engaged in the enterprise of a Flourishing Life, Community and Ecology.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paradigm One — Power of a nation with its own currency — Modern Monetary Theory.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paradigm Two — Enabling a person to flourish as a citizen — Universal Basic Assets (UBA) and Guaranteed Job rather than unemployment insurance.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paradigm Three — Enabling community to be response-able in a changing world — Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD).</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And two - A cartoon of serious thinking - but here is my 10 page version of my epistemon-tology musings. It’s a 10 page narrative account of the opening ‘Motif’.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="http://www.johnverdon.com/2021/05/a-eulogy-to-truth-long-live-honesty.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A Eulogy to Truth – Long Live Honesty </span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Motif</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The truth is dead - long live honesty</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Entailing honest accounts and holding accounts honest</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science teaches us skepticism - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Entailing multiple lines of evidence</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For reliable knowledge</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Complexity teaches us relative perspectives - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Entailing multiple ways of reasoning</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For relevant wisdom</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Collective wisdom emerges in our institutions of conversation</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Entailing good faith speaker-hearers - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with honest accounting - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Entangling complex reasonings - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For adaptive evolving </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We know what we know – but we don’t even know what we don’t know</span></div><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micopoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">watching bingetv -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">partial attention syndrome -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">meant I had to watch episodes -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">many times -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">something very compelling -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">kept me on repeat to understand -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">now on last episode -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">major archetype becomes clear -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">very brilliant -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unless it’s my own apophenia -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">financism -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Failing to distinguish -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">risk from uncertainty -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">less a failing - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more a willing blindness - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">denial enable by -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">magical thinking alchemy -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of probability-incantations - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All probability theory is -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">grounded in concept of infinity -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">yet all our gaming experiences -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are finite -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">George Ellis noted -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mathematics progresses -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to degree infinity is eliminated -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So probability -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a misdirection -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">obfuscating infinity?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/a-mathematician-a-philosopher-and-a-gambler-walk-into-a-bar" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://aeon.co/essays/a-mathematician-a-philosopher-and-a-gambler-walk-into-a-bar</span></a><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-53686709796205080402021-04-29T18:05:00.002-07:002021-04-29T18:05:39.144-07:00Friday Thinking 29 April, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 17.6px;" /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-480f2b32-7fff-19e2-019d-e0459116bae0"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/looking-at-portraits-with-an-eye-to-evolutionary-psychology" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Looking at portraits with an eye to evolutionary psychology</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/recognising-the-rhythm-in-addiction-offers-new-ways-to-escape-it" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Recognising the rhythm in addiction offers new ways to escape it</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://frankchimero.com/blog/2018/everything-easy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everything Easy is Hard Again</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conservation-Shadows-Yoon-Ha-Lee/dp/1607013878" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yoon Ha Lee -Conservation of Shadows</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.01868?context=econ" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Economics in Nouns and Verbs</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://edri.org/our-work/dominant-tech-companies-make-their-products-incompatible-deliberately/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dominant tech companies make their products incompatible deliberately</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-neural-networks-solve-hardest-equations-faster-than-ever-20210419/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Latest Neural Nets Solve World’s Hardest Equations Faster Than Ever Before</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-brain-rotates-memories-to-save-them-from-new-sensations-20210415/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Brain ‘Rotates’ Memories to Save Them From New Sensations</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-reversible-crispr-method-gene-underlying.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New, reversible CRISPR method can control gene expression while leaving underlying DNA sequence unchanged</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-dna-robots-minutes-days.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">DNA robots designed in minutes instead of days</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/plastic-compost-new-enzyme-technique-biodegradable" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new technique could make some plastic trash compostable at home</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-efficient-safer-alternative-sourcing-copper.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A more efficient, safer alternative to sourcing copper via bacteria</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-tantalizing-results-defy-physics-rulebook.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'Tantalizing' results of 2 experiments defy physics rulebook</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/25/insanely-cheap-energy-how-solar-power-continues-to-shock-the-world" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Insanely cheap energy’: how solar power continues to shock the world</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-930cf536-7fff-e8dc-9942-3dc312063eff"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What inspired our research was a general zoological observation of no obvious relevance to art history, let alone to portrait painting. Most animals are bilaterians: they have a right and a left side, and a front and a back. This body plan is strongly correlated with the direction in which they typically move: forward. Many animals including humans perceive better and pay more attention to what’s in front of them. Hence, if you’re watching another human or a nonhuman animal and you want to understand their thoughts and predict their actions, it makes sense to attend to what might be happening in front of them rather than behind them. Even an infant spontaneously perceives humans and nonhuman animals as having a front and a back, and relies on this to anticipate what they might do next, as Hernik demonstrated in an earlier study, co-authored with the clinical psychologist Pasco Fearon and the cognitive scientist Gergely Csibra.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With Miton and Hernik, we speculated that this adaptive disposition to pay particular attention to what agents have in front of them might subtly influence one type of cultural production, namely profile portraits. We predicted that, in painting such portraits, artists would have a ‘forward bias’, that is, a tendency to leave more space in front of the sitters than behind them.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/looking-at-portraits-with-an-eye-to-evolutionary-psychology" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Looking at portraits with an eye to evolutionary psychology</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what we observed ... in the US, the UK and France was that addiction is a cyclical rhythm, a strict and dominant hamster-wheel imposed on them by a substance. This is what we call addiction time: a cyclical temporality that drugs impose on the person who takes them, catching them in a perpetual cycle. It implies quite different ways of escaping addiction, compared with those put forward by the prevailing medical model.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">viewing addiction as something that’s cyclical not only assumes a different kind of person taking the drugs – it also suggests other treatment options. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Addiction time, as we conceive it, cuts you ‘out of time’; it involves a loss of a sense of time and a replacement of time</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, as the anthropologist Kelly Knight and other scholars have documented. People … who consume crack and inject heroin (or prescription opioids and fentanyl) are often ‘caught’ in a cyclical, all-encompassing rhythm. They’re forced – by their addiction – to focus on the procurement and consumption of the drug in the present. </span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/recognising-the-rhythm-in-addiction-offers-new-ways-to-escape-it" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Recognising the rhythm in addiction offers new ways to escape it</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nothing stays settled, so of course a person with one year of experience and one with fifteen years of experience can both be confused. Things are so often only understood by those who are well-positioned in the middle of the current wave of thought. If you’re before the sweet spot in the wave, your inexperience means you know nothing. If you are after, you will know lots of things that aren’t applicable to that particular way of doing things. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One argument says that continual change in methodology is rigorous and healthy. I agree. Keeping things in play helps us to more easily fix what’s wrong. It’d be terrible if nothing could ever change. But I also agree with the other argument: people only have so much patience. How many laps around the cycle can a person run? I’m on lap five now, and I can tell you that it is exhausting to engage with rehashed ideas from the past without feeling a tiny amount of prejudice against them.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In one way, it is easier to be inexperienced: you don’t have to learn what is no longer relevant. Experience, on the other hand, creates two distinct struggles: the first is to identify and unlearn what is no longer necessary (that’s work, too). The second is to remain open-minded, patient, and willing to engage with what’s new, even if it resembles a new take on something you decided against a long time ago.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://frankchimero.com/blog/2018/everything-easy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Everything Easy is Hard Again</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no such thing as conservation of shadows.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When light destroys shadows, darkness does not gain in density elsewhere.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When shadows steal over earth and across the sky, darkness is not diluted . </span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conservation-Shadows-Yoon-Ha-Lee/dp/1607013878" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yoon Ha Lee -Conservation of Shadows</span></a><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A good signal of the turbulence in the emergence of a new economic paradigm.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.01868?context=econ" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Economics in Nouns and Verbs</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Standard economic theory uses mathematics as its main means of understanding, and this brings clarity of reasoning and logical power. But there is a drawback: algebraic mathematics restricts economic modeling to what can be expressed only in quantitative nouns, and this forces theory to leave out matters to do with process, formation, adjustment, creation and nonequilibrium. For these we need a different means of understanding, one that allows verbs as well as nouns. Algorithmic expression is such a means. It allows verbs (processes) as well as nouns (objects and quantities). It allows fuller description in economics, and can include heterogeneity of agents, actions as well as objects, and realistic models of behavior in ill-defined situations. The world that algorithms reveal is action-based as well as object-based, organic, possibly ever-changing, and not fully knowable. But it is strangely and wonderfully alive.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Surely we can do better - we could pass protective laws to ensure adversarial interoperability.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Interoperability is one of the basic principles on which the internet was originally built. By adopting open technical standards, people and companies around the world could communicate and exchange services and content in simple and effective ways. Breaking down the internet into ‘walled gardens’ controlled by a single gatekeeper is the dream of every aspiring monopolist; but it undoes the very principle that allowed the internet to thrive and foster growth and development for all its participants.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://edri.org/our-work/dominant-tech-companies-make-their-products-incompatible-deliberately/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Dominant tech companies make their products incompatible deliberately</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine buying a new dining table from IKEA and although it’s a great table, it can only be used with IKEA-made chairs. For security reasons, the furniture maker tells you, the table is incompatible with chairs from third party vendors, sorry. Sounds ridiculous? Welcome to today’s online platform economy.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many of the largest tech companies deliberately make their products incompatible with others. The technical term for products that are </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">compatible</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with those from other vendors is ‘interoperability’. Digital interoperability is a technical mechanism for computing systems to work together, even if they are from competing firms. Well-known examples of interoperable technology are email and telephone services. You can send an email or call anyone else with an email account or phone, regardless of the service provider, app or device you use.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why can corporations control this? Big tech companies can break interoperability and get away with it because they are too big to care. Facebook, WhatsApp, Youtube, and others have so many users that they benefit from holding them as digital hostages by making any interaction with people on other services technically impossible.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The result: People sign up to those closed networks not because they are the best but because people have to if they wish to be in touch with everyone else. In economics this is called a ‘network effect’ and overcoming network effects by breaking people free from the hostage situation is incredibly difficult without effective legislation. What kind of legislation is needed?</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a good signal related to better faster AI in the near future.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we now have deep neural networks that can learn how to approximate not just functions, but “operators” that map functions to functions. And they seem to do so without suffering from the “curse of dimensionality,” a problem that can plague neural networks and other computer algorithms that learn from data. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-neural-networks-solve-hardest-equations-faster-than-ever-20210419/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Latest Neural Nets Solve World’s Hardest Equations Faster Than Ever Before</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two new approaches allow deep neural networks to solve entire families of partial differential equations, making it easier to model complicated systems and to do so orders of magnitude faster.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now researchers have built new kinds of artificial neural networks that can approximate solutions to partial differential equations orders of magnitude faster than traditional PDE solvers. And once trained, the new neural nets can solve not just a single PDE but an entire family of them without retraining.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To achieve these results, the scientists are taking deep neural networks — the modern face of artificial intelligence — into new territory. Normally, neural nets map, or convert data, from one finite-dimensional space (say, the pixel values of images) to another finite-dimensional space (say, the numbers that classify the images, like 1 for cat and 2 for dog). But the new deep nets do something dramatically different. They “map between an infinite-dimensional space and an infinite-dimensional space,” said the mathematician Siddhartha Mishra of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, who didn’t design the deep nets but has been analyzing them mathematically.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Solving complex PDEs numerically can take months on supercomputers. And if you change the initial or boundary conditions or the geometry of the system being studied (such as the wing design), you’ll have to start over. Also, the smaller the increments you use — or the finer the mesh, as the researchers say — the higher the resolution of the model, and the longer it takes to solve numerically.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a fascinating signal of understanding the brain-mind condition - with possible implications of a sensorium that embodies an extended mind. What is more interesting is anticipating our AI-ssistants who will help interface with a data sensorium for an exponentially larger memory mansion. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sensory data was transformed into a memory through a morphing of the neuronal firing patterns. “The information changes because it needs to be protected,”</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This use of orthogonal coding to separate and protect information in the brain has been seen before. For instance, when monkeys are preparing to move, neural activity in their motor cortex represents the potential movement but does so orthogonally to avoid interfering with signals driving actual commands to the muscles.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-brain-rotates-memories-to-save-them-from-new-sensations-20210415/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Brain ‘Rotates’ Memories to Save Them From New Sensations</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Research in mice shows that neural representations of sensory information get rotated 90 degrees to transform them into memories. In this orthogonal arrangement, the memories and sensations do not interfere with one another.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During every waking moment, we humans and other animals have to balance on the edge of our awareness of past and present. We must absorb new sensory information about the world around us while holding on to short-term memories of earlier observations or events. Our ability to make sense of our surroundings, to learn, to act and to think all depend on constant, nimble interactions between perception and memory.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But to accomplish this, the brain has to keep the two distinct; otherwise, incoming data streams could interfere with representations of previous stimuli and cause us to overwrite or misinterpret important contextual information. Compounding that challenge, a body of research hints that the brain does not neatly partition short-term memory function exclusively into higher cognitive areas like the prefrontal cortex. Instead, the sensory regions and other lower cortical centers that detect and represent experiences may also encode and store memories of them. And yet those memories can’t be allowed to intrude on our perception of the present, or to be randomly rewritten by new experiences.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another potentially very important signal in the future of DNA domestication.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The big story here is we now have a simple tool that can silence the vast majority of genes," says Weissman, who is also a professor of biology at MIT and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "We can do this for multiple genes at the same time without any DNA damage, with great deal of homogeneity, and in a way that can be reversed. It's a great tool for controlling gene expression."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-reversible-crispr-method-gene-underlying.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">New, reversible CRISPR method can control gene expression while leaving underlying DNA sequence unchanged</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the past decade, the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system has revolutionized genetic engineering, allowing scientists to make targeted changes to organisms' DNA. While the system could potentially be useful in treating a variety of diseases, CRISPR-Cas9 editing involves cutting DNA strands, leading to permanent changes to the cell's genetic material.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, in a paper published online in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cell</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, researchers describe a </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/new+gene/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">new gene</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> editing technology called CRISPRoff that allows researchers to control gene expression with high specificity while leaving the sequence of the DNA unchanged. Designed by Whitehead Institute Member Jonathan Weissman, University of California San Francisco assistant professor Luke Gilbert, Weissman lab postdoc James Nuñez and collaborators, the method is stable enough to be inherited through hundreds of cell divisions, and is also fully reversible.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A great small signal of the design of domesticated DNA tools</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Previously, we could build devices with up to about six individual components and connect them with joints and hinges and try to make them execute complex motions, With this software, it is not hard to make robots or other devices with upwards of 20 components that are much easier to control. It is a huge step in our ability to design nanodevices that can perform the complex actions that we want them to do."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-dna-robots-minutes-days.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">DNA robots designed in minutes instead of days</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Someday, scientists believe, tiny DNA-based robots and other nanodevices will deliver medicine inside our bodies, detect the presence of deadly pathogens, and help manufacture increasingly smaller electronics.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers took a big step toward that future by developing a new tool that can design much more complex DNA robots and nanodevices than were ever possible before in a fraction of the time.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a paper published today in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature Materials</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, researchers from The Ohio State University—led by former engineering doctoral student Chao-Min Huang—unveiled new software they call MagicDNA.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The software helps researchers design ways to take tiny strands of DNA and combine them into complex structures with parts like rotors and hinges that can move and complete a variety of tasks, including drug delivery.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A good signal of an emerging metabolic economy - where we can ban landfill and expect all products to be fully reclaimable, modular, or decomposed into useful molecules.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/plastic-compost-new-enzyme-technique-biodegradable" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A new technique could make some plastic trash compostable at home</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Embedding enzymes in the material causes it to rapidly break down without creating microplastics</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With moderate heat, enzyme-laced films of the plastic </span><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03408-3" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">disintegrated </span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in standard compost or plain tap water within days to weeks, Ting Xu and her colleagues report April 21 in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Biodegradability does not equal compostability,” says Xu, a polymer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She often finds bits of biodegradable plastic in the compost she picks up for her parents’ garden. Most biodegradable plastics go to landfills, where the conditions aren’t right for them to break down, so they degrade no faster than normal plastics.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Embedding polymer-chomping enzymes in biodegradable plastic should accelerate decomposition. But that process often inadvertently forms potentially harmful microplastics, which are showing up in ecosystems across the globe. The enzymes clump together and randomly snip plastics’ molecular chains, leading to an incomplete breakdown. “It’s worse than if you don’t degrade them in the first place,” Xu says.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Her team added individual enzymes into two biodegradable plastics, including polylactic acid, commonly used in food packaging. They inserted the enzymes along with another ingredient, a degradable additive Xu previously developed, which ensured the enzymes didn’t clump together and didn’t fall apart. The solitary enzymes grabbed the ends of the plastics’ molecular chains and ate as though they were slurping spaghetti, severing every chain link and preventing microplastic formation.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A great signal on how domesticating DNA can enable the new materials and new ways to harvest matter.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The idea of having bacteria in mines is not new, but the unanswered question was: what are they doing in the mines?" Robles said. "By putting the bacteria inside an electronic microscope, we were able to figure out the physics and analyze it. We found out the bacteria were isolating single atom copper. In terms of chemistry, this is extremely difficult to derive. Typically, harsh chemicals are used in order to produce single atoms of any element. This bacterium is creating it naturally that is very impressive."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-efficient-safer-alternative-sourcing-copper.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">A more efficient, safer alternative to sourcing copper via bacteria</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Copper remains one of the single most ubiquitous metals in everyday life. As a conductor of heat and electricity, it is utilized in wires, roofing and plumbing, as well as a catalyst for petrochemical plants, solar and electrical conductors and for a wide range of energy related applications. Subsequently, any method to harvest more of the valuable commodity proves a useful endeavor.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Debora Rodrigues, Ezekiel Cullen Professor of Engineering at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering, in collaboration with Francisco C. Robles Hernandez, professor at the UH College of Technology and Ellen Aquino Perpetuo, professor at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil offered conclusive research for understanding how bacteria found in </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/copper/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">copper</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> mines convert toxic copper ions to stable single-atom copper.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In their co-authored paper, "Copper Mining Bacteria: Converting toxic copper ions into a stable single atom copper," their research demonstrates how copper-resistant bacterium from a copper mine in Brazil convert copper sulfate ions into zero-valent metallic copper.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fascinating signals related to what’s the matter of the universe.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If confirmed, the U.S. results would be the biggest finding in the bizarre world of subatomic particles in nearly 10 years, since the discovery of the Higgs boson,</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The secrets don't just live in matter. They live in something that seems to fill in all of space and time. These are quantum fields," Kaplan said. "We're putting energy into the vacuum and seeing what comes out."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-tantalizing-results-defy-physics-rulebook.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">'Tantalizing' results of 2 experiments defy physics rulebook</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Preliminary results from two experiments suggest something could be wrong with the basic way physicists think the universe works, a prospect that has the field of particle physics both baffled and thrilled.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiny particles called muons aren't quite doing what is expected of them in two different long-running experiments in the United States and Europe. The confounding results—if proven right—reveal major problems with the rulebook physicists use to describe and understand how the universe works at the subatomic level.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"We think we might be swimming in a sea of background particles all the time that just haven't been directly discovered," Fermilab experiment co-chief scientist Chris Polly said in a press conference. "There might be monsters we haven't yet imagined that are emerging from the vacuum interacting with our muons and this gives us a window into seeing them."</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The rulebook, called the Standard Model, was developed about 50 years ago. Experiments performed over decades affirmed over and again that its descriptions of the particles and the forces that make up and govern the universe were pretty much on the mark. Until now.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A strong signal of the accelerating phase transition in global energy geopolitics. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/25/insanely-cheap-energy-how-solar-power-continues-to-shock-the-world" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">‘Insanely cheap energy’: how solar power continues to shock the world</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Australian smarts and Chinese industrial might made solar power the cheapest power humanity has seen – and no one saw it coming</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the year 2000, the International Energy Agency (IEA) made a prediction that would come back to haunt it: by 2020, the world would have installed a grand total of 18 gigawatts of photovoltaic solar capacity. Seven years later, the forecast would be proven spectacularly wrong when roughly 18 gigawatts of solar capacity were installed in a single year alone.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the last two decades, however, the IEA has consistently failed to see the massive growth in renewable energy coming. Not only has the organisation underestimated the take-up of solar and wind, but it has massively overstated the demand for coal and oil.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I see it as the limits of modelling. Most energy system models are, or were, set up to model minor changes to an energy system that is run on fossil fuel or nuclear. Every time you double producing capacity, you reduce the cost of PV solar by 28%.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We’ve got to the point where solar is the cheapest source of energy in the world in most places. This means we’ve been trying to model a situation where the grid looks totally different today.”</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is something in our dreams - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a distance - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">between the geology of our life -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and the wishes -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from the well of emptiness - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They say it’s a dog eat dog world - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but don’t they know that dogs are pack animals -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> they survive in groups - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m doing ok - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">covid space-time - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being a night owl - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">minding time with family - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">minding stuff to do - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">minding my own mind - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sometimes the best we can do -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is have a shared -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">interestedness -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.44; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Parenting is wayfinding - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the map is Not only NOT the territory - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but the maps changes -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in a different way than -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the territory does -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Training judgement -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">secret to life! -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you Must pay attention -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to how the sausage of judgment -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is made -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all judgments require boundaries -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that we assume [as judgments] -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">judgements improve with training -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">only as long as assumption-created -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">boundary is stable -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">@kevin2kelly</span></a><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -new rules -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> feed the network-ecology -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">because it’s the network-ecology -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that feeds you -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/davidgraeber" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">@davidgraeber</span></a></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the words for -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sin - guilt - debt -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the same word -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that's 'original-debt' -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the network-ecology that enables us -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">precedes & outlives us -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">responsibility without -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">response-ability -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is a quagmire that -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">many are - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">drawn-drowned in -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">response-ability - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is natural authority -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for responsibility -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-33283161864945363342021-04-22T17:56:00.002-07:002021-04-22T17:57:35.011-07:00Friday Thinking 23 April, 2021 <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 17.6px;" /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-bad488bc-7fff-d21f-d017-7211802e4baf"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/noam-chomsky-david-barsamian-mole" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Noam Chomsky - “Marx’s Old Mole is Right Beneath the Surface”</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-solve-problems-by-thinking-like-a-detective" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How to think like a detective</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://tessybritton.medium.com/universal-basic-everything-f149afc4cef1" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Universal Basic Everything</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5xR4QB1ADw" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sustainable community development: from what's wrong to what's strong</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/marshall-mcluhans-learning-a-living-meme-anticipated-todays-learning-a-living/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marshall McLuhan’s “Learning a Living” Meme Anticipated Today’s “Learning a Living”</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_902.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Job Guarantee: Design, Jobs, and Implementation</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-deep-learning-code-humans.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Toward deep-learning models that can reason about code more like humans</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/03/illegal-content-and-the-blockchain.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Illegal Content and the Blockchain</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/first-report-of-horizontal-gene-transfer-between-plant-and-animal-68597" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First Report of Horizontal Gene Transfer Between Plant and Animal</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prF8trTallQ" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Power of Multisolving for People and Climate | Elizabeth Sawin | TEDxSunValley</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-sunlight-world-crisis.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sunlight to solve the world's clean water crisis</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-experts-future-energy-significantly.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Experts' predictions for future wind energy costs drop significantly</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://9to5google.com/2021/04/11/google-lens-photos-web/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Lens expands beyond mobile and comes to desktop web with OCR in Google Photos</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-451fff67-7fff-38d5-a9a2-49057f74d88f"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hume was a great philosopher. He wrote an important essay, “Of the First Principles of Government” (1741), one of the classic texts on what we now call political philosophy or political science. He opens his study by raising a question. He’s surprised, he says, to see the “easiness” with which people subordinate themselves to power systems. That’s a mystery, because the people themselves really have the power. Why do they subject themselves to masters? The answer, he says, must be consent: the masters succeed in what we now call manufacturing consent. They keep the public in line by their belief that they must subordinate themselves to power systems. And he says this miracle occurs in all societies, no matter how brutal or how free.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hume was writing in the wake of the first democratic revolution, the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century, which led to what we call the British constitution—basically, that the king will be subordinate to parliament. Parliament at that time basically meant merchants and manufacturers. Hume’s close friend, Adam Smith, wrote about the consequences of the revolution. In his own famous book The Wealth of Nations (1776), he pointed out that the now sovereign “merchants and manufacturers” are the true “masters of mankind.” They used their power to control the government and to ensure that their own interests are very well taken care of, no matter how “grievous” the effect on the people of England—and even worse, on those who are subject to what he called “the savage injustice of the Europeans,” referring mainly to the British rule in India.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The year before Smith published The Wealth of Nations, the American Revolution broke out. About a decade later the American Constitution was formed, very much like during the first democratic uprising.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But that’s not the whole story. There was also the general public, which didn’t want to be ruled by either king or parliament. It was a lively pamphlet period. Itinerant workers and ministers reached much of the general public. Their pamphlets and talks called for being ruled by fellow countrymen, who know the people’s wants, not by knights and gentlemen who only want to oppress the people. They called for universal health, universal education, and many things. But they were ultimately crushed. Hume and Smith both wrote after the victory of the merchants and manufacturers in Britain—not only over the king, but over the general public.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/noam-chomsky-david-barsamian-mole" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Noam Chomsky - “Marx’s Old Mole is Right Beneath the Surface”</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/noam-chomsky-david-barsamian-mole" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/noam-chomsky-david-barsamian-mole</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To think like an expert detective, you have to </span><a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-cultivate-shoshin-or-a-beginners-mind" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">embrace</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a so-called ‘investigative mindset’. The terms ‘possibly’ and ‘could’ should be your watchwords as they are in every real investigation and at every crime scene. In detective handbooks, this is called the ABC principle:</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Assume nothing</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Believe nothing</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Challenge and check everything</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nothing should be taken for granted or accepted at face value. Expert detectives will always take a sceptical approach to any information or evidence. All stories are possible, until they are not. Always ask yourself ‘What do I know?’ and ‘What do I not know?’ Doing this is sometimes very hard, but even just attempting to slow down your otherwise conclusion-jumping brain will prove helpful. Keep reminding yourself: correlation does not imply causation. Hence, the safest way to test any hypothesis is to try to disprove it. Suppose you think your house keys are lost or stolen. In this situation, it might be a good idea to double-check and eliminate all other options before you decide to change your locks. The only true investigative mantra was formulated in 1890 by Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. It goes like this: ‘[W]hen you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It might sound pretty straightforward, but believe me, it’s not. There’s a reason why Sherlock Holmes is considered a genius. The hardest thing is to resist our automatic assumptions and deep-seated need for closure.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">complexity has gone from something found mainly in large systems, such as cities, to something that affects almost everything we do: the life we live, the jobs we have, and the projects or organisations we run. As a consequence, the gap between our first idea and reality has almost exploded. Most of this increase stems from the information-technology revolution of the past few decades. Phenomena that used to be hidden, constant or separate are now tangible, interconnected and interdependent. Complex systems interact in unexpected ways. New patterns form, and the outlier is often more significant than the average. Making matters even worse, our analytical tools haven’t kept up with these developments. Collectively, we know a good deal about how to navigate complexity but this knowledge hasn’t been transformed into effective tools. Some predict that artificial intelligence might be our salvation, while others see it as our downfall.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What this rising complexity means in practice is that, whenever you’re confronted by a real-life dilemma that involves abductive reasoning – such as working out why a product launch failed, why your kid is struggling at school, or why your smartphone has stopped working – it’s more important than ever that you learn how to think more systematically. More like a detective.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-solve-problems-by-thinking-like-a-detective" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">How to think like a detective</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-solve-problems-by-thinking-like-a-detective" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-solve-problems-by-thinking-like-a-detective </span></span></a></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Universal Basic Everything is the idea that there are systems, tangible and intangible, that we need to survive and thrive. These relationships and friendships, products and services need to be co-created, accessible to everyone, open source, simple in their design, circular in their production.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We already have an incredible set of universal services in the UK, most notably our National Health Service and public schooling. We have the important concept of Universal Basic Income that is being tested in places across the world, and a version of which is being currently enacted by the current UK government through the Covid 19 furlough schemes.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have universal services at local authority level, such as libraries, rubbish collection and road maintenance. What these all have in common is that they are top down services, provided by government for citizens,</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://tessybritton.medium.com/universal-basic-everything-f149afc4cef1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Universal Basic Everything</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://tessybritton.medium.com/universal-basic-everything-f149afc4cef1" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://tessybritton.medium.com/universal-basic-everything-f149afc4cef1</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A great TED talk for thinking about re-imagining the local in preparation for a post-covid community - that learns its living.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5xR4QB1ADw" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sustainable community development: from what's wrong to what's strong </span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5xR4QB1ADw" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5xR4QB1ADw</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How can we help people to live a good life? Instead of trying to right what's wrong within a community Cormac argues we need to start with what's strong. We need to help people discover what gifts they have and to use those gifts to enrich those around them.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cormac Russell is Managing Director of Nurture Development, the leading Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) organisation in Europe, and faculty member of the ABCD Institute at Northwestern University, Illinois.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">McLuhan continues to deepen his insights as we develop the digital environment.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/marshall-mcluhans-learning-a-living-meme-anticipated-todays-learning-a-living/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Marshall McLuhan’s “Learning a Living” Meme Anticipated Today’s “Learning a Living”</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/marshall-mcluhans-learning-a-living-meme-anticipated-todays-learning-a-living/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/marshall-mcluhans-learning-a-living-meme-anticipated-todays-learning-a-living/</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marshall McLuhan anticipated that learning and work would become increasingly interrelated: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“… it is becoming clear that the main “work” of the future will be education, that people will not so much earn a living as learn a living…. Industry and the military, as well as the arts and sciences, are beginning to consider education their main business” </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(McLuhan & Leonard, 1967, 25). In this, he was in agreement with and possibly influenced by his friend and colleague Peter Drucker, who coined the phrase “knowledge worker” in his 1959 book Landmarks of Tomorrow, writing in his 1994 essay </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Age of Social Transformation</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The great majority of the new jobs require qualifications the industrial worker does not possess and is poorly equipped to acquire. They require a good deal of formal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytical knowledge. They require a different approach to work and a different mind-set. Above all, they require a habit of continuous learning. Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move into knowledge work or services the way displaced farmers and domestic workers (the dominant jobs at the turn of the last century – R.M) moved into industrial work. At the very least they have to change their basic attitudes, values, and beliefs”. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here are some additional McLuhan quotes on Learning a Living to drive home the point:</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging new political-economic paradigms is already being felt as we manage Covid 19 - this signal a far more effective paradigm to navigate paths to flourishing for all.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_902.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Job Guarantee: Design, Jobs, and Implementation</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_902.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_902.pdf</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ABSTRACT </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The job guarantee (JG) is a public option for jobs. It is a permanent, federally funded, and locally administered program that supplies voluntary employment opportunities on demand for all who are ready and willing to work at a living wage. While it is first and foremost a jobs program, it has the potential to be transformative by advancing the public purpose and improving working conditions, people’s everyday lives, and the economy as a whole. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This working paper provides a blueprint for operationalizing the proposal. It addresses frequently asked questions and common concerns. It begins by outlining some of the core propositions in the existing literature that have motivated the JG proposal. These propositions suggest specific design and implementation features. (Some questions are answered in greater detail in appendix III). The paper presents the core objectives and expected benefits of the program, and suggests an institutional structure, funding mechanism, and project design and administration.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One more signal in the ‘what can be automated - will be’ paradigm.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Unless you're really careful, a hacker can subtly manipulate inputs to these models to make them predict anything," says Shashank Srikant, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "We're trying to study and prevent that."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-deep-learning-code-humans.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Toward deep-learning models that can reason about code more like humans</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-deep-learning-code-humans.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-deep-learning-code-humans.html</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whatever business a company may be in, software plays an increasingly vital role, from managing inventory to interfacing with customers. Software developers, as a result, are in greater demand than ever, and that's driving the push to automate some of the easier tasks that take up their time.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Productivity tools like Eclipse and Visual Studio suggest snippets of code that developers can easily drop into their work as they write. These automated features are powered by sophisticated language models that have learned to read and write </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/computer+code/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computer code</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> after absorbing thousands of examples. But like other deep learning models trained on big datasets without explicit instructions, language models designed for code-processing have baked-in vulnerabilities.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a new paper, Srikant and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab unveil an automated method for finding weaknesses in code-processing models, and retraining them to be more resilient against attacks. It's part of a broader effort by MIT researcher Una-May O'Reilly and IBM-affiliated researcher Sijia Liu to harness AI to make automated programming tools smarter and more secure. The team will present its results next month at the International Conference on Learning Representations.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a great analysis of some aspects of the Blockchain and how all technologies can become weaponized - and perhaps the inverse too - all weapons have affordances for positive uses.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine someone using this idea to evade government censorship. </span><a href="https://cbeci.org/mining_map" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerhuang/2021/12/29/the-chinese-mining-centralization-of-bitcoin-and-ethereum/?sh=19f1b5142f66" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bitcoin</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> mining happens in China. What if someone added a bunch of Chinese-censored </span><a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/09/05/what-is-falun-gong" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Falun Gong</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> texts to the blockchain?</span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What if someone added a type of political speech that Singapore routinely censors? Or cartoons that Disney holds the copyright to?</span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">information must reside somewhere. Code is written by and for people, stored on computers located within countries, and embedded within the institutions and societies we have created. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To trust information is to trust its chain of custody and the social context it comes from</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Neither code nor information is value-neutral, nor ever free of human context.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/03/illegal-content-and-the-blockchain.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Illegal Content and the Blockchain</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/03/illegal-content-and-the-blockchain.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/03/illegal-content-and-the-blockchain.html</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Security researchers have recently discovered a botnet with a novel defense against takedowns. Normally, authorities can disable a botnet by taking over its command-and-control server. With nowhere to go for instructions, the botnet is rendered useless. But over the years, botnet designers have come up with ways to make this counterattack harder. Now the content-delivery network Akamai has </span><a href="https://blogs.akamai.com/sitr/2021/02/bitcoins-blockchains-and-botnets.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reported</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on a new method: a botnet that uses the Bitcoin blockchain ledger. Since the blockchain is globally accessible and hard to take down, the botnet’s operators appear to be safe.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s best to avoid explaining the mathematics of Bitcoin’s blockchain, but to understand the colossal implications here, you need to understand one concept. Blockchains are a type of “distributed ledger”: a record of all transactions since the beginning, and everyone using the blockchain needs to have access to — and reference — a copy of it. What if someone puts illegal material in the blockchain? Either everyone has a copy of it, or the blockchain’s security fails.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be fair, not absolutely everyone who uses a blockchain holds a copy of the entire ledger. Many who buy cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum don’t bother using the ledger to verify their purchase. Many don’t actually hold the currency outright, and instead trust an exchange to do the transactions and hold the coins. But people need to continually verify the blockchain’s history on the ledger for the system to be secure. If they stopped, then it would be trivial to forge coins. That’s how the system works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some years ago, people started noticing all sorts of things embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain. There are digital images, including one of Nelson Mandela. There’s the Bitcoin logo, and the original paper describing Bitcoin by its alleged founder, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. There are advertisements, and several prayers. There’s even illegal pornography and leaked classified documents. All of these were put in by anonymous Bitcoin users. But none of this, so far, appears to seriously threaten those in power in governments and corporations. Once someone adds something to the Bitcoin ledger, it becomes sacrosanct. Removing something requires a fork of the blockchain, in which Bitcoin fragments into multiple parallel cryptocurrencies (and associated blockchains). Forks happen, rarely, but never yet because of legal coercion. And repeated forking would destroy Bitcoin’s stature as a stable(ish) currency.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our understanding of the processes driving evolution has been challenge in the last few decades with our understanding of horizontal gene transfer and other similar mechanisms of change.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“This study is seriously cool,” says Charles Davis, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University who was not involved in the study. It “demonstrates yet another nice example of how horizontal gene transfer among eukaryotes confers evolutionary novelty.”</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/first-report-of-horizontal-gene-transfer-between-plant-and-animal-68597" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">First Report of Horizontal Gene Transfer Between Plant and Animal</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/first-report-of-horizontal-gene-transfer-between-plant-and-animal-68597" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/first-report-of-horizontal-gene-transfer-between-plant-and-animal-68597</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whiteflies overcome a toxin in plants they eat through the use of the plant’s own genetic protection, likely ferried from plant to insect millions of years ago by a virus.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the first known example of horizontal gene transfer between a plant and an animal, a common pest known as the whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) acquired a gene from the one of the various plants it feeds on, researchers reported today (March 25) in </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cell</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The gene, BtPMaT1, protects the insects from phenolic glycosides, toxins that many plants produce to defend themselves against such pests, thus allowing the whiteflies to feast.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Horizontal gene transfer is the nonsexual swapping of genes between species. It’s been documented previously between single-celled organisms and even between some eukaryotes such as fungi and beetles. There are a number of ways that horizontal gene transfer can occur. Genetic material can be transferred via phages or other viruses, and some organisms may take up free DNA from the environment.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a great signal of an good approach to the local and the global dimensions to meeting the challenges of Climate Change.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prF8trTallQ" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Power of Multisolving for People and Climate | Elizabeth Sawin | TEDxSunValley</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prF8trTallQ" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prF8trTallQ</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is the way we are thinking about climate change preventing us from solving it? Elizabeth Sawin tells how we can solve the climate issue by helping other people solve their problems. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Elizabeth Sawin is Co-Director of Climate Interactive, a think tank that applies systems analysis to climate change and related issues. A biologist with a Ph.D. from MIT, Beth trained in system dynamics and sustainability with Donella Meadows and worked at Sustainability Institute, the research institute founded by Meadows, for 13 years. Beth’s work focuses on helping people find solutions that prevent future climate change, build resilience to unavoidable climate impacts, and provide opportunities to people who need them most. She writes and speaks on this topic to local, national, and international audiences. She is a member of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, a continuing dialogue on issues of climate change and sustainability among humanities scholars, writers, artists and climate scientists. Beth’s work also focuses on capacity building, helping leaders achieve bigger impact. She has trained and mentored global sustainability leaders and Dalai Lama fellows. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A great signal of progress towards clean water for all.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-sunlight-world-crisis.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sunlight to solve the world's clean water crisis</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-sunlight-world-crisis.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-sunlight-world-crisis.html</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A team led by Associate Professor Haolan Xu has refined a technique to derive freshwater from seawater, brackish water, or contaminated water, through highly efficient solar evaporation, delivering enough daily fresh drinking water for a family of four from just one square meter of source water.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the heart of the system is a highly efficient photothermal structure that sits on the </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/surface/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">surface</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of a water source and converts sunlight to heat, focusing </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/energy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">energy</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> precisely on the surface to rapidly evaporate the uppermost portion of the liquid.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While other researchers have explored similar technology, previous efforts have been hampered by energy loss, with heat passing into the source water and dissipating into the air above.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another signal in the phase transition of global energy geopolitics.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-experts-future-energy-significantly.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Experts' predictions for future wind energy costs drop significantly</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-experts-future-energy-significantly.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-experts-future-energy-significantly.html</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Technology and commercial advancements are expected to continue to drive down the cost of wind energy, according to a survey led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) of the world's foremost wind power experts. Experts anticipate cost reductions of 17%-35% by 2035 and 37%-49% by 2050, driven by bigger and more efficient turbines, lower capital and operating costs, and other advancements. The findings are described in an article in the journal Nature Energy.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The study summarizes a global survey of 140 wind experts on three wind applications—onshore (land-based) wind, fixed-bottom offshore wind, and floating offshore wind. The anticipated future </span><a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/costs/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">costs</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for all three types of wind energy are half what experts predicted in a similar Berkeley Lab study in 2015. The study also uncovered insights on the possible magnitude of and drivers for cost reductions, anticipated technology trends, and grid-system value-enhancement measures.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have come to really love Google Lens when trying to identify plants and animals - with my Android mobile - I take a picture - then open it up and touch the lens icon - and a series of images and websites are displayed with suggested identifications - I’ve learned about cormorants, golden eye ducks, poison ivy, and many more plants with this simple awesome tool.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://9to5google.com/2021/04/11/google-lens-photos-web/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Google Lens expands beyond mobile and comes to desktop web with OCR in Google Photos</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://9to5google.com/2021/04/11/google-lens-photos-web/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://9to5google.com/2021/04/11/google-lens-photos-web/</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Besides being its own app, Google Lens is also available in Image Search, Photos, and integrated across Android. Google is now bringing Lens to the desktop web inside Google Photos for convenient text copying through optical character recognition (OCR).</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Opening an image with words reveals a “Copy text from image” suggestion chip that features the (</span><a href="https://9to5google.com/2021/03/18/google-lens-camera-logo/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">old</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) Lens logo and dismiss button. It appears to the left of Share, Edit, Info, and other controls for Google Photos.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tapping launches Google Lens with the same analysis animation of pulsating dots appearing over the picture for a brief second. Afterwards, all text in an image is selected by default and everything appears in the right panel. You can “Deselect text” from the top-right corner to just highlight specific passages and copy with a floating button over the image.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">OCR is a very convenient Google Lens capability and the only capability live in this web version of Photos, which is widely rolled out today. The visual search tool does not currently work to recognize monuments or plants, and could help people explore their images and memories.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the first time Lens has expanded beyond mobile. </span></div><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">yesterday</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">television is what bring families together -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by setting them apart [attentionally] -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a tacit presencing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">psytuationally bubbled -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">today</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Internet is what brings the world together -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by netting them a part -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in-magic-nation stages -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">psytuationally hubbled -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The boundaries of the Local -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">expand & contract -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">alway in motion - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We all serve purposes -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">key is to be more than a purpose -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it's to always be a possibility -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we can NEVER be -fully independent -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and be human - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we can grow our agency -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in an aware interdepence -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At best –</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ethics serves to name shaping aspirations –</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">despite enternal uncertainty -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of any resulting consequence of actions -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">while at best -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">moral accounting aims -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to enable honest social chemistry -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">despite eternal uncertainty -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of any gaming consequences -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-19428203945248016222021-04-15T19:54:00.000-07:002021-04-15T19:54:23.893-07:00Friday Thinking 16 April, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-cca526d8-7fff-f3e7-3291-6774e57b4eea"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://zeynep.substack.com/p/vaccine-efficacy-statistical-power" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vaccine Efficacy, Statistical Power and Mental Models</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/on-the-dynamics-of-social-trust-in-human-cultures" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Safety is fatal</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/does-consciousness-come-from-the-brains-electromagnetic-field" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brain wifi</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3129017/alibaba-antitrust-investigation-beijing-slaps-e-commerce-giant-record" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alibaba antitrust investigation: Beijing slaps e-commerce giant with record US$2.8 billion fine in landmark case</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-11/inflation-is-the-only-signal-that-the-post-covid-boom-will-heed" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inflation Is the Only Signal That the Post-Covid Boom Will Heed</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/netflixs-big-bet-on-foreign-content-and-international-viewers-could-upend-the-global-mediascape-and-change-how-people-see-the-world-156629" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Netflix’s big bet on foreign content and international viewers could upend the global mediascape – and change how people see the world</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-loophole-state-backed-manipulation" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Revealed: the Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/social-media-competitive-compatibility" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why it’s easier to move country than switch social media</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00868-5" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Time to regulate AI that interprets human emotions</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-988decd9-7fff-c590-39ab-128fdfb07487"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But while the acknowledgment of the problem of Big Tech is most welcome, I am worried that the diagnosis is wrong.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem is that we’re confusing automated persuasion with automated targeting. Laughable lies about Brexit, Mexican rapists, and creeping Sharia law didn’t convince otherwise sensible people that up was down and the sky was green.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rather, the sophisticated targeting systems available through Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other Big Tech ad platforms made it easy to find the racist, xenophobic, fearful, angry people who wanted to believe that foreigners were destroying their country while being bankrolled by George Soros.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remember that elections are generally knife-edge affairs, even for politicians who’ve held their seats for decades with slim margins: 60% of the vote is an excellent win. Remember, too, that the winner in most races is “none of the above,” with huge numbers of voters sitting out the election. If even a small number of these non-voters can be motivated to show up at the polls, safe seats can be made contestable. In a tight race, having a cheap way to reach all the latent Klansmen in a district and quietly inform them that Donald J. Trump is their man is a game-changer.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cambridge Analytica are like stage mentalists: they’re doing something labor-intensive and pretending that it’s something supernatural. A stage mentalist will train for years to learn to quickly memorize a deck of cards and then claim that they can name your card thanks to their psychic powers. You never see the unglamorous, unimpressive memorization practice. Cambridge Analytica uses Facebook to find racist jerks and tell them to vote for Trump and then they claim that they’ve discovered a mystical way to get otherwise sensible people to vote for maniacs.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This isn’t to say that persuasion is impossible. Automated disinformation campaigns can flood the channel with contradictory, seemingly plausible accounts for the current state of affairs, making it hard for a casual observer to make sense of events. Long-term repetition of a consistent narrative, even a manifestly unhinged one, can create doubt and find adherents – think of climate change denial, or George Soros conspiracies, or the anti-vaccine movement.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/" target="_blank">Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags</a></span></span></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The problem with traditional social networks 1.0 is all the relationships are flat,” said Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group, which researches Web technologies and advises companies on how to use them. “Everyone is the same level, whether I’m married to you or you’re someone I went to high school with or somebody I met at a conference.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That online reality does not reflect human nature, said Zeynep Tufekci, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County who studies the social impacts of technology.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Your mom and your boyfriend are rarely in the same room,” she said, “and that’s why Christmas and Thanksgiving are such a stressful time for people, because their worlds collapse. On Facebook you’re in a long extended Thanksgiving dinner with everyone you ever knew, and people find that difficult to deal with.”</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After a decade or more of this kind of flattening, it may seem like an obvious thing. But apparently it wasn’t obvious then to many, including to Facebook’s CEO. Back then, Mark Zuckerberg would give interviews claiming the social flatness of his platform was not only natural, that it was a sign of integrity:</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You have one identity,” he emphasized three times in a single interview with David Kirkpatrick in his book, “The Facebook Effect.” “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.” He adds: “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course we’re not exactly the same to our friends, our co-workers, our parents and to strangers. That’s called having social roles, and it’s not lack of integrity to treat your close friends in a different manner—and reveal different kinds of information—than you would treat your workplace acquaintances. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Zuckerberg's mental model of human relationships was wrong, misguided and dangerous</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The platform he designed reflected this mental model, which, in turn, was a shock to my normal students.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://zeynep.substack.com/p/vaccine-efficacy-statistical-power" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Vaccine Efficacy, Statistical Power and Mental Models</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The real question is not how many friends a person can have, but how many people with unknown ideas can be put together and manage themselves in creating a common purpose, bolstered by social rules or cultures of practice (such as the need to live or work together). Once considered this way, anyone can understand why certain small elite groups devoted to creative thinking are sized so similarly.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take small North American colleges. Increasingly, they vie with big-name universities such as Harvard and Stanford not only because they’re considered safer environments by worried parents, but because their smaller size facilitates growing trust among strangers, making for better educational experiences. Their smaller size matters. Plus, it’s no accident that the best of these colleges on average have about 150 teaching staff (Dunbar’s number) and that (as any teacher will know) a seminar in which you expect everyone to talk tops out at around 18 people.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what do we learn from these facts? Well, we can learn quite a bit. While charismatic speakers can wow a crowd, even the most gifted seminar leader will tell you that his or her ability to involve everyone starts to come undone as you approach 20 people. And if any of those people require special attention (or can’t tolerate ideological uncertainty) that number will quickly shrink.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the end, therefore, what matters much more than group size is social integration and social trust. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The point here is that thinking of the immune system only as a defensive fortress-builder seriously misses what it’s actually doing. Because the immune system is also, and quite literally, your biological intelligence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s an important conclusion here: equality is only a first step towards alleviating human suffering and promoting feeling well within a moral economy. The bigger part concerns how people learn to hope about more than getting through the day. To put it another way, being hopeful requires a belief in the future, a long-term view.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But being hopeful also requires more than that. It requires a sense of deep time and an enduring willingness – a desire – to engage. For hope to proliferate, we need much more than endurance in the heroic, Darwinian sense. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We need a willingness to accept the natural place of everyday </span><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/complex-systems-science-allows-us-to-see-new-paths-forward" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">uncertainty</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and we need diversity – even redundancy</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> – to make that possible.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/on-the-dynamics-of-social-trust-in-human-cultures" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Safety is fatal</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Locating consciousness in the brain’s EM field might seem bizarre, but is it any more bizarre than believing that awareness resides in matter? Remember Albert Einstein’s equation, E = mc2. All it involves is moving from the matter-based right-hand side of the equation to energy located on the left-hand side. Both are physical, but whereas matter encodes information as discrete particles separated in space, energy information is encoded as overlapping fields in which information is bound up into single unified wholes. Locating the seat of consciousness in the brain’s EM field thereby solves the binding problem of understanding how information encoded in billions of distributed neurons is unified in our (EM field-based) conscious mind. It is a form of dualism, but a scientific dualism based on the difference between matter and energy, rather than matter and spirit. Awareness is then what this joined-up EM field information feels like from the inside. So, for example, the experience of hearing a door slam is what an EM field perturbation in the brain that correlates with a door slamming, and all of its memory neuron-encoded associations, feels like, from the inside.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/does-consciousness-come-from-the-brains-electromagnetic-field" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Brain wifi</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This may be a very good signal of how governments in the west begin to make the digital playing field more level.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3129017/alibaba-antitrust-investigation-beijing-slaps-e-commerce-giant-record" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Alibaba antitrust investigation: Beijing slaps e-commerce giant with record US$2.8 billion fine in landmark case</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fine surpassed the previous record imposed on Qualcomm in 2015</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Regulators stressed that the fine imposed is for the healthy development of China’s internet economy</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">China’s antitrust regulators slapped a record fine on one of the country’s largest technology conglomerates, closing a months-long investigation that began </span><a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3115196/china-investigates-alibaba-over-suspected-monopolistic-practices" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">last Christmas Eve</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and setting the precedent for the government to use anti-monopoly rules to regulate the country’s Big Tech.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alibaba Group Holding, the world’s largest e-commerce company and owner of this newspaper, was fined 18.2 billion yuan (US$2.8 billion) by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR).</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Hangzhou-based company “abused its dominant market position in China’s online retail platform service market since 2015 by forcing online merchants to open stores or take part in promotions on its platforms,” compelling the market to “</span><a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprises/article/3115300/alibaba-antitrust-investigation-what-picking-one-two-practice" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pick one from two</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” in a breach of the country’s anti-monopoly law, the regulator said on Saturday.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alibaba was ordered to correct its misconduct, and pay a fine equivalent to 4 per cent of its total 2019 revenue. The fine was nearly three times the 6.1 billion yuan penalty paid by Qualcomm, the world’s largest supplier of mobile chips, in 2015.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A small signal of a new emerging economic paradigm - but all without mentioning Modern Monetary Theory?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meanwhile -- as part of a profound shift in economic thinking that’s gathered pace in the past year -- a whole range of other indicators once relied on to flag trouble ahead are falling out of favor.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-11/inflation-is-the-only-signal-that-the-post-covid-boom-will-heed" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Inflation Is the Only Signal That the Post-Covid Boom Will Heed</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Economics used to offer lots of metrics that claimed to show when growing economies were approaching some kind of speed limit. But increasingly, inflation is the only one that’s taken seriously.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A lasting surge in prices would likely convince policy makers that it’s time to tap the brakes on expansionary measures adopted in the pandemic, like high public spending or low borrowing costs. That’s why Tuesday’s consumer-price data in the U.S. will be so closely watched -- though it’ll take more than a single month’s numbers to change minds.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yesterday's Problem -- Or Tomorrow's?</span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's been decades since inflation was a pressing issue in the rich world</span></p><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Budget deficits and public debt were thought to flash a warning sign at certain levels -- until plenty of countries exceeded those limits, especially in the last year, without crashing. Estimates for full employment, or the most jobs an economy could create without overheating, turned out to be wrong.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Abandoning or downplaying all of these yardsticks means officials are less likely to take the kind of pre-emptive action that’s choked off expansions in the past.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The shift also amounts to a pivot toward humility, in a profession not famous for it. Economists used to be comfortable with offering their predictions as a basis for policy. They’re having to acknowledge that the future is full of things they simply do not know.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The influence of long-term projections has evaporated, and that’s a very good thing,” says James Galbraith, a professor of economics at the University of Texas. “You design policies to deal with the problems you have. If they have consequences later, you address them later.”</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It has been over a decade since I stopped subscribing to Cable used the internet for all my media consumption (occasionally still watch a DVD) - these days I hardly even watch Netflix. In the last five years my access to international media seems to be getting ever easier. With AI evolving at an accelerating pace - who knows how soon getting international media dubbed in a language of choice will be an additional click.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/netflixs-big-bet-on-foreign-content-and-international-viewers-could-upend-the-global-mediascape-and-change-how-people-see-the-world-156629" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Netflix’s big bet on foreign content and international viewers could upend the global mediascape – and change how people see the world</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a kid growing up in Italy, I remember watching the American TV series “Happy Days,” which chronicled the 1950s-era Midwestern adventures of the Fonz, Richie Cunningham and other local teenagers.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, I call the U.S. home, and I have developed my own understanding of its complexities. I am able to see “Happy Days” as a nostalgic revival of an ideal, conflict-free American small town.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Happy Days” was a product of Hollywood, which is arguably still the epicenter of the global entertainment industry. So recent news that the streaming service Netflix is opening an Italian office and will begin massively funding original local content with the intent of distributing it globally on its platform – following a strategy already launched in other European countries – struck me.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This could be a potentially game-changing move in global entertainment. And it might even change how the world perceives, well, the world.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I deleted my Facebook account in 2010 - and left-behind - lost great connection with less than 100 real friends (why we need adversarial interoperability). Facebook could have become a foundation - like Wikimedia - but it decided to enclose a commons to hold hostage its users for rent-seeking.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There is a lot of harm being done on Facebook that is not being responded to because it is not considered enough of a PR risk to Facebook,” said Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook who worked within the company’s “integrity” organization to combat inauthentic behavior. “The cost isn’t borne by Facebook. It’s borne by the broader world as a whole.”</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-loophole-state-backed-manipulation" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Revealed: the Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders and politicians to use its platform to deceive the public or harass opponents despite being alerted to evidence of the wrongdoing.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Guardian has seen extensive internal documentation showing how Facebook handled more than 30 cases across 25 countries of politically manipulative behavior that was proactively detected by company staff.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The investigation shows how Facebook has allowed major abuses of its platform in poor, small and non-western countries in order to prioritize addressing abuses that attract media attention or affect the US and other wealthy countries. The company acted quickly to address political manipulation affecting countries such as the US, Taiwan, South Korea and Poland, while moving slowly or not at all on cases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia, Mexico, and much of Latin America.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A great signaling by Cory Doctorow - </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/social-media-competitive-compatibility" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why it’s easier to move country than switch social media</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we talk about social media monopolies, we focus too much on network effects, and not enough on switching costs. It's time to tear down the walls</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we talk about social media monopolies, we focus too much on network effects, and not enough on switching costs. Yes, it's true that all your friends are already stuck in a Big Tech silo that doesn't talk to any of the other Big Tech silos. It needn't be that way: interoperable platforms have existed since the first two Arpanet nodes came online. You can phone anyone with a phone number and email anyone with an email address.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The reason you can't talk to Facebook users without having a Facebook account isn't that it's technically impossible – it's that Facebook forbids it. What's more, Facebook (and its Big Tech rivals) have the law on their side: the once-common practice of making new products that just work with existing ones (like third-party printer ink, or a Mac program that can read Microsoft Office files, or an emulator that can play old games) has been driven to the brink of extinction by Big Tech. They were fine with this kind of "competitive compatibility" when it benefited them, but now that they dominate the digital world, it's time for it to die.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To restore competitive compatibility, we would need reform to many laws: software copyright and patents, the anti-circumvention laws that protect digital rights management, and the cybersecurity laws that let companies criminalize violations of their terms of service.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New proposals from the UK Competition and Markets Authority, as well as the EU's Digital Services and Digital Markets Act and the US ACCESS Act of 2020, all contemplate some form of interoperability mandate - forcing the dominant platforms to open up the APIs they already use to let various parts of their own business talk to one another. These mandates are a great floor under interoperability, but they can't be the ceiling. That's because they would be easy for big companies to subvert: if a lawmaker forces you to open a specific conduit to your competition, then you can respond by moving all the interesting data away from that conduit. You're still providing a jack that competitors can plug into, but you've moved all the important stuff to another jack.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a good signal of a growing realization that the digital environment will require new institutions - for almost a decade I’ve noted the need to create an arms length organization - something like an Auditor General of Algorithms (AGA) - that would function much like Health Canada or the FDA does to approve drug for public consumption. AGA would review algorithms to ensure they do what they claim - before approval for widespread use.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00868-5" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Time to regulate AI that interprets human emotions</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The pandemic is being used as a pretext to push unproven artificial-intelligence tools into workplaces and schools.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During the pandemic, technology companies have been pitching their emotion-recognition software for monitoring workers and even children remotely. Take, for example, a system named 4 Little Trees. Developed in Hong Kong, the program claims to assess children’s emotions while they do classwork. It maps facial features to assign each pupil’s emotional state into a category such as happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise and fear. It also gauges ‘motivation’ and forecasts grades. Similar tools have been marketed to provide surveillance for remote workers. By one estimate, the emotion-recognition industry will grow to US$37 billion by 2026.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is deep scientific disagreement about whether AI can detect emotions. A 2019 review found no reliable evidence for it. “Tech companies may well be asking a question that is fundamentally wrong,” the study concluded</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And there is growing scientific concern about the use and misuse of these technologies. Last year, Rosalind Picard, who co-founded an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up called Affectiva in Boston and heads the Affective Computing Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, said she supports regulation. Scholars have called for mandatory, rigorous auditing of all AI technologies used in hiring, along with public disclosure of the findings. In March, a citizen’s panel convened by the Ada Lovelace Institute in London said that an independent, legal body should oversee development and implementation of biometric technologies (see go.nature.com/3cejmtk). Such oversight is essential to defend against systems driven by what I call the phrenological impulse: drawing faulty assumptions about internal states and capabilities from external appearances, with the aim of extracting more about a person than they choose to reveal.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></a></span></h2><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So many claims of truth - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fact-in-experience - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The question of -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">objective - subjective -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is won of perspective -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and rests in false dichotomy - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the moment one claims objectivity - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">one enacts -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">re-cognition of -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">self knowing not-self - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">enacting I am - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">re-cursing the question -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the extended mind - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">moral-economicus - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">accounting for homeostasis -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the social chemistry -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of our gift-ing flows -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">selfing-as-others - in-self -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 15pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 15pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">languaging emerges -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a new entangling attractor -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">conscious electromagnetic information (cemi) -field - </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">languaging - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">enacts culture - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">social-moral-selfing -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">strikes me - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">why hasn't the placenta -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">become a ubiquitous metaphor - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like community is the placenta -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of individual flourishing?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- but I know -if a man had one - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it would be a 'seminal' metaphor - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">rather than an 'ovapotent' one -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-genomic-study-of-placenta-finds-deep-links-to-cancer-20210408/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-genomic-study-of-placenta-finds-deep-links-to-cancer-20210408/</span></a><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Metaphors -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">frame how we reason - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to create the facts -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">supporting our reasoning -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1645599136956910086.post-42101872258289678272021-04-08T17:34:00.000-07:002021-04-08T17:34:23.976-07:00Friday Thinking 9 April, 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friday Thinking</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: georgia, utopia, "palatino linotype", palatino, serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many thanks to those who enjoy this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #274e13; font-family: arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☺</span></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for life of skillful means .</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #606060; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">computational ecology - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.55328; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I'm not failing - I'm Learning" </span></div></span></div><div style="font-size: 17.6px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4746ba8-7fff-700b-503d-4a39cafd3b64"><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon</span></div></span></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1cdad0cd-7fff-0324-2146-3733d801fc26"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b>Content</b></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><b>Quotes:</b></i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 4pt;"><a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdj79/peoples-expensive-nfts-keep-vanishing-this-is-why" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People's Expensive NFTs Keep Vanishing. This Is Why</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://twitter.com/bruces/status/1380040930233835524" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bruce Sterling - Tweet</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;"><a href="https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">how to destroy surveillance capitalism.</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Articles:</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/document/privacy-without-monopoly-data-protection-and-interoperability" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Privacy Without Monopoly:</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://breakingsmart.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-world-of-tomorrow" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Welcome to the World of Tomorrow</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/rh/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Refuse to be Human ⤩</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://wt.social/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Welcome to WT.Social!</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22351108/dark-patterns-ui-web-design-privacy" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dark patterns, the tricks websites use to make you say yes, explained</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/31/22360786/microsoft-hololens-headset-us-army-contract" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Microsoft is supplying 120,000 HoloLens-based headsets to the US Army</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-first-ever-vaccine-malignant-brain-tumors.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First-ever vaccine for malignant brain tumors reported safe, effective in early trial</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/cells-form-into-xenobots-on-their-own-20210331/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cells Form Into ‘Xenobots’ on Their Own</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-03-canadian-built-laser-chills-antimatter-absolute.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers achieve world's first manipulation of antimatter by laser</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-physicists-phase-bose-einstein-condensate-particles.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Physicists observe new phase in Bose-Einstein condensate of light particles</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></p><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-7fb086ac-7fff-8a40-88dc-6d8721c67210"><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It’s like a casino,” he said in an interview. “If it goes up 100 times you resell it, if it doesn't, well, you don’t tell anyone.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you buy an NFT for potentially as much as an actual house, in most cases you're not purchasing an artwork or even an image file. Instead, you are buying a little bit of code that references a piece of media located somewhere else on the internet. </span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdj79/peoples-expensive-nfts-keep-vanishing-this-is-why" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">People's Expensive NFTs Keep Vanishing. This Is Why</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"And now, a Clubhouse chat with Silicon Valley startup ladyboss Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Theranos 2.0"</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://twitter.com/bruces/status/1380040930233835524" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Bruce Sterling - Tweet</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in a world where sprawling and incoherent conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and its successor, QAnon, have widespread followings, something must be afoot.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what if there’s another explanation? What if it’s the material circumstances, and not the arguments, that are making the difference for these conspiracy pitchmen? What if the trauma of living through real conspiracies all around us — conspiracies among wealthy people, their lobbyists, and lawmakers to bury inconvenient facts and evidence of wrongdoing (these conspiracies are commonly known as “corruption”) — is making people vulnerable to conspiracy theories?</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If it’s trauma and not contagion — material conditions and not ideology — that is making the difference today and enabling a rise of repulsive misinformation in the face of easily observed facts, that doesn’t mean our computer networks are blameless. They’re still doing the heavy work of locating vulnerable people and guiding them through a series of ever-more-extreme ideas and communities.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Belief in conspiracy is a raging fire that has done real damage and poses real danger to our planet and species, from epidemics kicked off by vaccine denial to genocides kicked off by racist conspiracies to planetary meltdown caused by denial-inspired climate inaction. Our world is on fire, and so we have to put the fires out — to figure out how to help people see the truth of the world through the conspiracies they’ve been confused by.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But firefighting is reactive. We need fire prevention. We need to strike at the traumatic material conditions that make people vulnerable to the contagion of conspiracy. Here, too, tech has a role to play.</span></div><h4 style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><a href="https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">how to destroy surveillance capitalism.</span></span></a></h4><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a vital signal for all citizens and policy makers for the digital environment. Monopolies and their ilk are not only toxic for market systems they are also toxic to the development of diversity and public infrastructure. This is a downloadable PDF.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.eff.org/document/privacy-without-monopoly-data-protection-and-interoperability" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Privacy Without Monopoly:</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Data Protection and Interoperability</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problems of corporate concentration and privacy on the Internet are inextricably linked. A new regime of interoperability can revitalize competition in the space, encourage innovation, and give users more agency over their data; it may also create new risks to user privacy and data security. This paper considers those risks and argues that they are outweighed by the benefits. New interoperability, done correctly, will not just foster competition, it can be a net benefit for user privacy rights.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In section 2 we provide background. First, we outline how the competition crisis in tech intersects with EFF issues and explain how interoperability can help alleviate it. In “The Status Quo,” we describe how monopoly power has woven the surveillance business model into the fabric of the Internet, undermining the institutions that are supposed to protect users. Finally we introduce the “</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">privacy paradox ”—the apparent tension between new interoperability and user privacy—that frames this paper.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In section 3 , we present EFF’s proposals for interoperability policy.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Venkatesh Rao is brilliant - and he’s also struggling with the world in transformation - partly because the change is outside the box of management consultation - there is apprehension of an emerging economic paradigm change - where governments ARE of-for-by - collective intelligence & power - markets become real markets = collaborative commons regulated & secured by-for-of - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine an economy NOT based on ‘enclosures’ ?? Looming shadow evocations to neoliberal flatworld views</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://breakingsmart.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-world-of-tomorrow" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Welcome to the World of Tomorrow</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this episode of Breaking Smart podcast, I want to explore what it means to say that Covid has accelerated everything. If so, it means we’ve done some time travel relative the old timeline. As the cryogenic lab tech said to Philip J. Fry on </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Futurama</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, when he landed in the year 2999, welcome to the world of tomorrow!</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an interesting site for a digital experience. </span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/rh/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Refuse to be Human ⤩</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Have you ever wanted to surf the web as a bot?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a Russian bot?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ever wondered what a bot gets to see online and you don't?</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Refuse to be Human lets you pretend to be a Yandex bot to find out. It is a simple web extension which changes your browser’s user agent to that of the Yandex bot. While Google is the most popular web search engine in the world, Yandex is number one in Russia. Yandex uses web crawlers which surf the web extensively to scrape the contents for their search engines (making the Yandex bot the most influential Internet user in Russia. Only what the bots see is indexed and can later be found by other users through Yandex search). By changing your settings to match those of the bot, you become one of thousands of Yandex bots browsing the web to index its contents.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Surfing the web as a search engine bot gives you access to what is referred to as the grey web, a layer of content only visible to bots. In some cases it might give you access to websites and archives that are usually hidden behind a paywall. While the website owner will present the regular user with a login page, they will give web crawlers access to their full archive in order for it to be represented in Yandex’s or Google's search results.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tired of the current environment of social media? This is a new platform founded by Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia-Wikimedia.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://wt.social/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Welcome to WT.Social!</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The non-toxic social network</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Welcome to a place where advertisers don’t call the shots. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where your data isn’t packaged up and sold. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where you – not algorithms – decide what you see. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where you can directly edit misleading content. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where bad actors are kicked out and kept out. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where you actually like spending time. </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Welcome to social media the way it should be. </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WT.Social is just a newborn babe in the woods, not even a toddler yet. In other words: This place is a work in progress and may not yet be fully functional. Please don't be surprised if you encounter some bugs; </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This sure is a very different platform for interaction than Facebook. Firstly, it's oriented around sharing news and ideas rather than the sort of free-for-all we find "over there". </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At least at the moment, there is no way to hide what you show this person from that person. If it's visible at all, it's visible to everyone (even people without an account). Lots of sunlight here. Full transparency amongst us users. </span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An interesting article about the use of ‘nudge’ or choice architectures to make websites stickier and lead us to Yes.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s now a growing movement to ban dark patterns, and that may well lead to consumer protection laws and action as the Biden administration’s technology policies and initiatives take shape. California is currently tackling dark patterns in its evolving privacy laws, and Washington state’s latest privacy bill includes a provision about dark patterns.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22351108/dark-patterns-ui-web-design-privacy" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Dark patterns, the tricks websites use to make you say yes, explained</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">How design can manipulate and coerce you into doing what websites want.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you’re an Instagram user, you may have recently seen a pop-up asking if you want the service to “use your app and website activity” to “provide a better ads experience.” At the bottom there are two boxes: In a slightly darker shade of black than the pop-up background, you can choose to “Make ads less personalized.” A bright blue box urges users to “Make ads more personalized.”</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an example of a dark pattern: design that manipulates or heavily influences users to make certain choices. Instagram uses terms like “activity” and “personalized” instead of “tracking” and “targeting,” so the user may not realize what they’re actually giving the app permission to do. Most people don’t want Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, to know everything they do and everywhere they go. But a “better experience” sounds like a good thing, so Instagram makes the option it wants users to select more prominent and attractive than the one it hopes they’ll avoid.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is definitely a good signal - regardless of whether Microsoft actually delivers - because this level of augmentation is coming to us all eventually.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/31/22360786/microsoft-hololens-headset-us-army-contract" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Microsoft is supplying 120,000 HoloLens-based headsets to the US Army</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">The contract could be worth up to $21.88 billion over 10 years</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Microsoft has won a contract to supply the US Army with HoloLens-based headsets. The contract could be worth up to $21.88 billion over 10 years, and CNBC reports that it will involve Microsoft supplying 120,000 headsets. The software maker has been working closely with the Army since 2018, and soldiers have been testing the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) headsets over the past two years. These devices combine high-resolution night, thermal, and soldier-borne sensors into a heads-up display.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The system also leverages augmented reality and machine learning to enable a life-like mixed reality training environment so the Close Combat Force (CCF) can rehearse before engaging any adversaries,” reads a US Army statement. In February, the Army revealed how a newer, more ruggedized version of its heads-up display can let operators of armored vehicles see through the walls of, for instance, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. An earlier version was criticized for poor sensor and GPS performance, but you can see that the design has now changed quite a bit.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an amazing signal related to the domestication of DNA and medical treatments.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Our idea was to support patients' immune systems and to use a </span><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/tags/vaccine/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">vaccine</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as a targeted way of alerting it to the </span><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/tags/tumor/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tumor</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-specific neo-epitope,"</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-first-ever-vaccine-malignant-brain-tumors.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">First-ever vaccine for malignant brain tumors reported safe, effective in early trial</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tumor vaccines can help the body fight cancer. Mutations in the tumor genome often lead to protein changes that are typical of cancer. A vaccine can alert the patient's immune system to these mutated proteins. For the first time, physicians and cancer researchers from Heidelberg and Mannheim have now carried out a clinical trial to test a mutation-specific vaccine against malignant brain tumors. The vaccine proved to be safe and triggered the desired immune response in the tumor tissue, as the team now reports in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Diffuse gliomas are usually incurable brain tumors that spread throughout the brain and are difficult to remove completely by surgery. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy often have only a limited effect. In many cases, diffuse gliomas share a common feature: In more than 70% of patients, the tumor cells have the same gene mutation. An identical error in the DNA causes a single, specific protein building block to be exchanged in the IDH1 (Isocitrate dehydrogenase 1) enzyme. This creates a novel protein structure, known as a neo-epitope, which can be recognized as foreign by the patient's immune system.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is an amazing signal - of the domestication of DNA and the development of different life forms.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">xenobots are nothing less than a new type of creature — one “defined by what it does rather than to what it belongs developmentally and evolutionarily.” ... the findings might illuminate the very origins of multicellular life.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The results seem to imply that individual cells have a kind of decision-making capacity that creates a palette of possible bodies they could build — constrained and guided by the genome but not defined by it.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> cells might be programmed to collectively “compute” their own ways solutions to growth and form, rather than for their genome to prescribe them</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/cells-form-into-xenobots-on-their-own-20210331/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Cells Form Into ‘Xenobots’ on Their Own</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At a glance, these xenobots might be mistaken for other microscopic aquatic animals — amoebas or plankton or </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Giardia</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> parasites — swimming here and there with apparent agency. Some move in orbit around particles in the water, while others patrol back and forth as though on the lookout for something. Collections of them in a petri dish act like a community, responding to one another’s presence and participating in collective activities.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When he shows movies of these spontaneously grown xenobots to other biologists and asks them to guess what they are, Levin said that “People say, ‘It’s an animal you found in a pond somewhere.’” They are astounded when he reveals that “it’s 100%</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Xenopus laevis</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.” These microscopic entities are utterly unlike any stage in the normal development of a frog.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The xenobots are turning some conventional views in developmental biology upside down. They suggest that the frog genome doesn’t uniquely instruct cells about how to proliferate, differentiate and arrange themselves into a frog body. Rather, that’s just one possible outcome of the process that the genomic programming permits.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is definitely a small signal of some fundamental progress in the human domestication of matter.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: Verdana; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"With this technique, we can address long-standing mysteries like: 'How does antimatter respond to gravity? Can antimatter help us understand symmetries in physics?'. These answers may fundamentally alter our understanding of our Universe."</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-03-canadian-built-laser-chills-antimatter-absolute.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Researchers achieve world's first manipulation of antimatter by laser</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers with the CERN-based ALPHA collaboration have announced the world's first laser-based manipulation of antimatter, leveraging a made-in-Canada laser system to cool a sample of antimatter down to near absolute zero. The achievement, detailed in an article published today and featured on the cover of the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, will significantly alter the landscape of antimatter research and advance the next generation of experiments.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antimatter is the otherworldly counterpart to matter; it exhibits near-identical characteristics and behaviors but has opposite charge. Because they annihilate upon contact with matter, </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/antimatter+atoms/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">antimatter atoms</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are exceptionally difficult to create and control in our world and had never before been manipulated with a laser.</span></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The physics of the real are … well real strange - the one is the many.</span></div><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-04-physicists-phase-bose-einstein-condensate-particles.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Physicists observe new phase in Bose-Einstein condensate of light particles</span></span></a></h2><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">About 10 years ago, researchers at the University of Bonn produced an extreme aggregate photon state, a single "super-photon" made up of many thousands of individual light particles, and presented a completely new light source. The state is called an optical Bose-Einstein condensate and has captivated many physicists ever since, because this exotic world of light particles is home to its very own physical phenomena. Researchers led by Prof. Dr. Martin Weitz, who discovered the super photon, and theoretical physicist Prof. Dr. Johann Kroha now report a new observation: a so-called overdamped phase, a previously unknown phase transition within the optical Bose-Einstein condensate. The study has been published in the journal </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Science</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Bose-Einstein </span><a href="https://phys.org/tags/condensate/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">condensate</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is an extreme physical state that usually only occurs at very low temperatures. The particles in this system are no longer distinguishable and are predominantly in the same quantum mechanical state; in other words, they behave like a single giant "superparticle." The state can therefore be described by a single wave function.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://johnverdon-mp.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">#micropoem</span></a></span></h2><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mhm -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the hidden toll of living -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no matter what I do -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not doing unimaginable afford-dancings -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with other possibles -</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no matter how creative I effort -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">enacting uncreates -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to many-fes-trans-form -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what-was - to - what-is -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">loses-the-was to gain-the-is -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s interesting -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in the critiques of social media - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">babel - towering - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">our life - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we forget - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the stepfordwifes of - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">company-men -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once the cache -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of Easter chocolate was secured - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">made easter dinner - </span></div><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sauteed kale-broccoli -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mixed rice -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">amaretto-soaked button mushrooms - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">roasted easter bunny - </span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">yumity yum -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div><br /><br /><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an economy NOT -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">based on ‘enclosures’ -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Looming shadow evocations -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of neoliberal flatworld views -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/apprehension?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#apprehension</span></a><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">paradigm change -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where governments ARE -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of-for-by -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">collective intelligence & power -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">real markets as -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">collaborative commons by-for-of -</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/micropoem?src=hashtag_click" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#micropoem</span></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>John Verdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05827897248034896903noreply@blogger.com0