Matryoshka Diagnostics
-
The Quantum Butterfly Noneffect (scientificamerican)
A familiar concept from chaos theory turns out to work differently in the quantum world
-
Cognition all the way down (aeon)
Biology’s next great horizon is to understand cells, tissues and organisms as agents with agendas (even if unthinking ones)
-
Researchers unveil roadmap for a carbon neutral China by 2060
Three weeks after China told the world it is aiming for carbon neutrality, an important study outlines a roadmap to that goal, and challenges along the way.
-
Artificial Intelligence Reveals Hundreds of Millions of Trees in the Sahara
If you think that the Sahara is covered only by golden dunes and scorched rocks, you aren’t alone. Perhaps it’s time to shelve that notion.
Satellites could soon map every tree on Earth
An analysis of satellite images has pinpointed individual tree canopies over a large area of West Africa. The data suggest that it will soon be possible, with certain limitations, to map the location and size of every tree worldwide.
How Egypt is growing forests in middle of the desert
Amid the success of the Serapium Forest, a massive plantation in Egypt, the country is now looking to plant more desert lands with trees as part of plans to fight climate change.
-
Nat Friedman, the CEO of GitHub, frequently comes across as an old-school tech-bro idiot. Microsoft (Github's owner) "embracing open source" is truly an exercise in deceptive bullshit.
-
Daimler Trucks partners with Waymo to build self-driving semi trucks
#Comment: Here we go. As I've been predicting for years, the German car industry is totally clueless and will cheaply give away control over the brains of next-gen cars to silicon valley. In turn, that will guaranteed downgrade the entire industry to OEM's that just produce fancy metal boxes, while the real value is captured else where. Sehr peinlich und sehr lustig!
-
#fuckcars: GM, Ford knew about climate change 50 years ago
#Comment: How is anyone surprised by the fact that some knew already decades ago that industrialisation rapidly destroys Nature, but kept it "secret"? Henry Ford - a prominent supporter of the German Nazi party and eugenics - and many of his corporate elite friends which dominated the 20st century, today would be classified as Mafioso with serious mental health conditions (Hitler and Ford each kept a framed picture of the other on his desk). But as the late George Carlin once correctly state: "This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders."
-
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable” - John F. Kennedy (via)
-
The Great Firewall of the West is advancing - and it is as shitty as the Chinese one, if not worse.
-
No Implants Needed For Precise Control Deep Into The Brain (spectrum.ieee)
Optogenetics can now control neural circuits at unprecedented depths within living brain tissue without surgery.
-
NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon (NASA)
NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places.
Water on the moon should be more accessible than we thought (MIT)
If you don’t already know: Yes, there is water on the moon. NASA suggests there’s as much as 600 million metric tons of water ice there, which could someday help lunar colonists survive. It could even be turned into an affordable form of rocket fuel (you just have to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, and presto—you have propulsion for spaceflight).
-
55% of Small and Medium Firms in Europe Expect to Shut Down by September Next Year if Things Stay as They Are - Together they employ two-thirds of European workers. (reuters)
-
Billionaires' wealth rises to $10.2 trillion amid Covid crisis
#Comment: Predictably the super-rich increased their already perverse fortunes by more than a quarter in 2020. At this point, the global kleptocrat class is truly above and beyond sanity. As their sense of omnipotence keeps growing exponentially, they can't seem to hear the sound of people around the world preparing the guillotines for them. Once the impact of corona fully unfolds (corona is a most convenient shield for the kleptocrats, allowing them to pretend that they did not cause this crisis through the usual means - greed and stupidity - but its all due to a evil virus), the anger in western economies will be uncontrollable, even for a modern cybernetic surveillance police state. A real shame, as a solution without violence is preferable for all.
