Friday Thinking 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.
Many thanks to those who enjoy this. ☺
In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -
for life of skillful means .
Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.
Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.
The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment -
computational ecology -
may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence.
To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference.
‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’
“I'm not failing - I'm Learning"
Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon
Content
Quotes:
How particle detectors capture matter’s hidden, beautiful reality
Articles:
Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free to all
Environmental impact of bottled water ‘up to 3,500 times greater than tap water’
THE USER EXPERIENCE OF DESIGN SYSTEMS
Centenarians have a distinct microbiome that may help support longevity
B.C. non-profit challenges Health Canada to end 50-year prohibition on magic mushrooms
A promising new treatment for COVID-19 infection
Colliding photons were spotted making matter. But are the photons ‘real’?
New material offers ecofriendly solution to converting waste heat into energy
Researchers find oxygen spike coincided with ancient global extinction
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.
How particle detectors capture matter’s hidden, beautiful reality
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.
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”.’
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.
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.
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 …
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.
In praise of possibility
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.
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.
O (No!) Canada: Fast-Moving Proposal Creates Filtering, Blocking and Reporting Rules—and Speech Police to Enforce Them
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.
These ideas include:
- broad “harmful content” categories that explicitly include speech that is legal but potentially upsetting or hurtful
- a hair-trigger 24-hour takedown requirement (far too short for reasonable consideration of context and nuance)
- an effective filtering requirement (the proposal says service providers must take reasonable measures which “may include” filters, but, in practice, compliance will require them)
- penalties of up to 3 percent of the providers' gross revenues or up to 10 million dollars, whichever is higher
- mandatory reporting of potentially harmful content (and the users who post it) to law enforcement and national security agencies
- website blocking (platforms deemed to have violated some of the proposal’s requirements too often might be blocked completely by Canadian ISPs)
onerous data-retention obligations
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.
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’.
Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free to all
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.
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.
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.
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).
Environmental impact of bottled water ‘up to 3,500 times greater than tap water’
Researchers also find impact of bottled water on ecosystems is 1,400 times higher than that of tap water
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.
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.
Researchers also found the impact of bottled water on ecosystems is 1,400 times higher than tap water.
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.
Native Land Digital
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.
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.
This is a signal of some of these issues as they are working themselves out.
THE USER EXPERIENCE OF DESIGN SYSTEMS
On Google’s Material Design and the Templatization of Digital Products
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.
Another signal of our relationships with our internal ecologies.
Centenarians have a distinct microbiome that may help support longevity
Intestinal microbes in people aged 100 or over produce unique bile acids that might help keep infections at bay.
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 Nature, could help researchers develop new ways to treat chronic inflammation and bacterial disease.
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.
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 Clostridioides difficile, an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that causes severe diarrhea and gut inflammation. Feeding mice infected with C. difficile 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.
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.
B.C. non-profit challenges Health Canada to end 50-year prohibition on magic mushrooms
Proposal outlines licensing growers and sellers, quality control, security and packaging
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.
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.
TheraPsil CEO Spencer Hawkswell said his organization sent a 165-page proposal to Health Canada's director general Jennifer Saxe.
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.
An interesting signal of other plant medicines that are non-psychogenic.
The study, was recently published in the journal Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology.
A promising new treatment for COVID-19 infection
A flowering plant native to North Africa and Western Asia could be utilized in the future treatment of COVID-19 infection.
The seeds of the plant, Nigella sativa, 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.
"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.
"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.
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.
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.
A small signal of the possibility of domesticating light to make matter - an alchemy of the future.
Colliding photons were spotted making matter. But are the photons ‘real’?
In a demonstration of Einstein’s E=mc2, collisions of light yielded electrons and positrons
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.
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.
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 Physical Review Letters.
A small signal of progress in transformation of heat into electricity.
New material offers ecofriendly solution to converting waste heat into energy
A team of scientists from Northwestern University and Seoul National University in Korea now has demonstrated a high-performing thermoelectric material 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 heat 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.
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.
Details of the thermoelectric material and its record-high performance will be published Aug. 2 in the journal Nature Materials.
The fragility of our environment and the robustness of life.
Researchers find oxygen spike coincided with ancient global extinction
Two hundred fifty-two million years ago, much of life on planet Earth was dying.
In an event that marked the end of the Permian period, more than 96 percent of the planet's marine species and 70 percent of its terrestrial life suddenly went extinct. It was the largest extinction in Earth's history.
Now Florida State University researchers have found that the extinction coincided with a sudden spike and subsequent drop in the ocean's oxygen content. Their findings were published in Nature Geoscience.
"There's previous work that's been done that shows the environment becoming less oxygenated leading into the extinction event, but it has been hypothesized as a gradual change," 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."
#micropoem
mhm -
anti-science panics -
could it be founded -
on decades of -
corporate-marketing complexes -
leveraging scientism -
to sell bad products -
that vamp-ire on -
decades of building -
institutional trust -
by gaslighting -
experiences of -
non-existent benefits -
anti-science panics -
could it be founded -
on decades of -
corporate-marketing complexes -
leveraging scientism -
to sell bad products -
that vamp-ire on -
decades of building -
institutional trust -
by gaslighting -
experiences of -
non-existent benefits -
Am I clear -
the very people -
who claim that masks mandates -
threaten personal rights of freedom of choice -
want to mandate -
what women can do -
with their own bodies? -
