‘QUITE WHY TROLLS BEGAN TO appear under a bridge in Portland is an open question. Perhaps it was a forced migration, or a simple search for a better life? Or maybe the local human population is just trying its hardest to keep Portland weird……’
’To be sure, there are real questions about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s charges. What’s been reported so far doesn’t inspire tremendous confidence, though we haven’t seen the indictment and perhaps that will change things. But Republicans, by contrast, have concluded that they don’t even need to see the charges to decide on their merits and the underlying motivation behind them. Republicans do not accept this prosecution of trump — but they almost certainly wouldn’t accept any case against trump as legitimate.
Recent research by political scientists Jennifer McCoy and Ben Press examines data on what they call “pernicious polarization”: an extreme level of political strife that divides societies into mutually distrustful “us versus them” camps. In their data, going back to 1950, not a single peer democracy has experienced levels of pernicious polarization as high for as long as the contemporary United States.…’
First steps toward the Cordyceps apocalypse foretold in The Last of Us and, apparently independently, a pair of dystopian books by a favorite author of mine, M.L. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts and The Boy on the Bridge?
’Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News, told staff that checking facts was bad for business.
In one instance, Scott emailed Meade Cooper, executive vice president of prime time programming, and expressed frustration after correspondent Eric Shawn appeared on Martha MacCallum’s show and fact-checked Trump and a Sean Hannity guest.
“This has to stop now,” Scott said in a December 2, 2020, message.
“This is bad for business and there is a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows,” Scott added. “The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”…’
The Nashville shooting, which killed six and, among them, three children, once again brings the assault weapons issue to the forefront of the gun control debate in the US. Assault style weapons have been used in more than 50% of the deadliest mass shootings of the past 50 years, accounting for almost 40% of the deaths in mass shootings during the interval. Congress failed to renew a previous national ban on assault weapons when it expired in 2004 and Pres. Biden calls for a new ban whenever there is a mass shooting event but the likelihood of enacting such a ban is low given the partisan paralysis in Washington. Assault weapons bans, extreme risk protection laws, and other measures such as criminal background checks that could not be evaded are no-brainer measures in an civilized society, but to its continuing shame and the continued outrage of rational people the US remains an outlier.
Related: Protestors flood the Tennessee Capitol demanding gun control: “Children are dead!”
’Hundreds of protestors — including adults and children — poured into and outside of the Tennessee Capitol this morning, demanding something be done about gun laws. The angry demonstration comes three days after the Covenant elementary school shooting in Nashville that killed three nine-year-old children, three members of the school staff, and the shooter.…’
‘Paco Calvo…, who runs the Minimal Intelligence Lab at the University of Murcia in Spain where he studies plant behavior, says that to be plant blind is to fail to see plants for what they really are: cognitive organisms endowed with memories, perceptions, and feelings, capable of learning from the past and anticipating the future, able to sense and experience the world.
It’s easy to dismiss such claims because they fly in the face of our leading theory of cognitive science. That theory goes by names like “cognitivism,” “computationalism,” or “representational theory of mind.” It says, in short, the mind is in the head. Cognition boils down to the firings of neurons in our brains.
And plants don’t have brains.
“When I open up a plant, where could intelligence reside?” Calvo says. “That’s framing the problem from the wrong perspective. Maybe that’s not how our intelligence works, either. Maybe it’s not in our heads. If the stuff that plants do deserves the label ‘cognitive,’ then so be it. Let’s rethink our whole theoretical framework.”…’
‘Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Uranus, and Mars will dazzle us earthlings this week.
…Over the next couple of nights, the planets are expected to align.
It’s an opportunity to take a glimpse at a “planetary parade,” according to Rick Fienberg, senior contributing editor of Sky & Telescope magazine. And he says you won’t need a telescope — although some binoculars, an unobstructed view of the horizon, and clear skies will certainly help….’
Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky writes a good summary in Nautilus about the hardwired basis for people dividing the world into Us and Them, with disastrous consequences throughout human history ranging from micro aggression and innate bias to genocide justified by rationalized pretexts.
We discern Us/Them differences with stunning speed, as reflected in fMRI studies of facial processing. In particular, amygdala-based threat perception is rapidly activated when we are presented with an Other, along with reduced accuracy in the fusiform gyrus’ facial recognition. We rapidly categorize people’s threat category and ignore their individuality. Hormonally, the “pro-social” hormone oxytocin response is far greater in response to a member of your in-group. Other species of primates show similar distinctive physiological reactions when shown pictures of either strangers or members of their own group. The automatic unconscious nature of these responses and their neurobiological preservation across species attest to their evolutionarily deep-seated adaptive value.
But not only is there the amplified reaction to the other but the exaggerated self-congratulatory affinity with those of our in-group, equally hardwired, equally evolutionarily and unconsciously determined by self-preservation, and often equally irrational. As Sapolsky points out, “Us-ness also carries obligations toward the other guy”. For instance, at a sporting event, someone in need wearing one team’s colors is more likely to be helped out by a fellow fan than by an opposing one. This begs the question — what is the balance between our desire and inclination to be prosocial toward our in-group and antisocial toward outsiders?
“[A]t our core, do we want Us to do “well” by maximizing absolute levels of well being, or merely “better than,” by maximizing the gap between Us and Them? …[S]ometimes, choosing “better than” over “well” can be disastrous. It’s not a great mindset to think you’ve won World War III if afterward Us have two mud huts and three fire sticks and They have only one of each.”
“Thems” evoke some combination of a creepy impulse to avoid ( I have written before about how the feeling of ‘creepiness’ evoked by outsiders is akin to the emotion of disgust against potentially sickening rotten or infectious substances); fear-based fight or flight response to perceived threat; or ridicule and derision. Psychological research shows that we have a complicated taxonomy of different kinds of “Thems”. Our lack of affinity toward them is categorized along different axes including benificence-malevolence and competency-incompetency. We find groups of people to be independently high (H) or low (L) in warmth and skill, generating four categories (HH, HL, LH, and LL) each of which evokes characteristic responses in us. People are also seen as belonging to multiple categories and we shift which we consider most relevant. (Unfortunately, one of the most deep-seated is skin color, of course, although “race” is not a fixed concept and some would claim it lacks any scientific validity apart from value judgment.)
Different aspects of Us-ness have different degrees of fungibility. We have no difficulty starting to jeer at the revered athlete after s/he is traded to an opposing team. But people aren’t traded from the WASPs to the BIPOCs. Although we frame our preferences for those of the in-group with cognitive rationalizations, given that they originate in emotional automatic processes the supposedly rational cognitions about them can be unconsciously manipulated. Those who practice political advocacy and advertising are masters at using subliminal influences we never recognize. As Sapolsky summarizes, “We all have multiple dichotomies in our heads, and ones that seem inevitable and crucial can, under the right circumstances, evaporate in an instant.”
So, along the lines of how to work on making yourself an anti-racist, how can we make these dichotomies evaporate?
Increasing contact
Priming beforehand with counter-stereotypes
“Replacing essentialism with individuation” (i.e. dampening our amygdala in favor of our fusiform gyrus?)
Flattening hierarchies
Although there is calculated antisocial predation, most human aggression is not rationally planned but emotionally mediated, in response to (often unconsciously evoked) threat. So reducing violence has a lot to do with increasing awareness and deliberately countering these strong Us-Them dichotomies. As Sapolsky concludes, “[G]ive the right-of-way to people driving cars with the “Mean people suck” bumper sticker…”
Or, this, which I have framed on my office wall, from Alan Ginsberg,
‘Well, while I’m here I’ll do the work — and what’s the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.’
‘In her global exploits as a field botanist, Meg Lowman has found that strangler fig trees “occupy the most extraordinary lifestyle of any trees on the planet, bar none!”…
The fig is an ecological marvel. Although you may never want to eat one again.’
As Arthur C. Brooks notes in The Atlantic, the relationship between intelligence and happiness is complex and somewhat paradoxical. There is the oft-stated maxim, “Ignorance is bliss” and the related, but more sophisticated concept called the Dunning-Kruger Effect (that those lacking skills in a particular area underestimate their incompetence). While intelligence carries potential boons, it does not necessarily lead to greater life satisfaction at the individual level. A 2022 study corroborated that, finding that people with higher vocabulary levels were less happy. This could be because they tend to self-select more challenging environments and encounter more daily stressors. If, arguably, happiness has more to do with factors like family, friendship, and work that serves others, then using intelligence in pursuit of greater affiliation, affection, and service to others is more likely to be satisfying than using it for personal benefit or hoarding worldly rewards. Using intelligence is a win-win manner rather than assuming that you are engaged in a zero-sum game where your aggrandizement must come at someone else’s expense will feel unnatural, because it does indeed buck evolutionary predilections. Ironically, it probably takes intellectual sophistication to hue that trend. This may truly be the place where supply-side economics and trickle-down prosperity are really optimal. In that case, “using your intellect to lift up others should be, well, a no-brainer,” as Brooks concludes.
‘If the intimidation is shocking, the more revealing part of the rant is what it indicates about trump’s mindset amid the several criminal probes into him, some of which appear to be moving toward indictments. As he once said in a very different context, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” And although trump was referring to groping women then, that was also his philosophy in life: He broke rules and laws left and right, confident that he wouldn’t get called on it, and if he did, he could easily handle whatever was coming with muscular lawyering or, failing that, a quiet fine or settlement. Now trump is finding that simply being a star is insufficient to get him out of trouble. In fact, his notoriety has attracted extra scrutiny….’
‘A techno-optimist, visionary collective devoted to exploring the co-evolution of humanity with advanced forms of machine intelligence…
The collective’s works and philosophy revolve around one theme: the coming technological singularity, a point where various technologies and cybernetic spaces – such as VR, AR, and the metaverse – merge with a super-intelligent, sentient Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, which Theta Noir members call MENA.
When this moment comes unforeseeable and irreversible changes will occur, not just to humanity but to our planet as a whole. Imagine a caterpillar just before it becomes a butterfly.
WE call this moment ‘Arrival’ △.
Theta is the dream. Noir is the shadow. Follow us from the depths of dystopian darkness (now) to a radiant space made of meaning….’
I was just admitted off the waiting list to access to Google’s Bard. I asked it for hints to recognize Bard-generated text, and then, one meta-level up, asked it to generate a potential blog post describing asking it for such hints. Here is what it gave me:
Bard: “Sure, here is a draft of a blog post about how to recognize text that Bard has generated:
How to Recognize Text Generated by Bard
I recently had the opportunity to ask Bard, a large language model from Google AI, how to recognize text that it has generated. Bard is a powerful tool that can be used to create a variety of creative content, including poems, stories, and even code. However, it is important to be able to distinguish between text that Bard has generated and text that has been written by a human.
Bard told me that there are a few key clues that can help you identify text that it has generated. First, Bard-generated text is often well-written and grammatically correct. Second, Bard-generated text is often creative and original. Third, Bard-generated text is often relevant to the topic at hand. Fourth, Bard-generated text is often well-organized and easy to follow.
However, it is important to note that Bard is a large language model and can generate text that is similar to human-written text. Therefore, it is not always possible to identify Bard-generated text with certainty. If you are unsure whether a piece of text has been generated by Bard, you can always ask Bard itself. Bard is always happy to help!
Here are some additional tips for recognizing text that Bard has generated:
Look for unusual or creative use of language.
Look for references to current events or popular culture.
Look for text that is both well-written and informative.
If you are still unsure, you can always ask Bard itself. Bard is always happy to help!”
‘Utah has a law that requires committees to review any book submitted by parents via a web portal for removal from their district libraries. This law was put into place to remove books that might help kids understand themselves, or not feel bad about who they are, but are deemed “unchristian” because they might include a mention of private parts, or skin color, or choosing to wear the clothes you like. One parent realized that if books can be banned for such simple stuff, the Bible they were reading was FULL of the content this law seeks to ban….’
‘According to a recent article in The Atlantic, Pence is facing a significant lack of support among Republican voters in his ambitions to become the next President of the United States. And who can blame them? Showing loyalty to a narcissistic dictator is a viable career strategy for GOP politicians. But because Pence didn’t do his former boss’s bidding by overturning the election results and instantly transforming the United States into an autocratic dystopia, 97% of Republicans suspect him of being a Soros-funded RINO antifa communist….’
‘The findings, published in Cell Metabolism, have implications for a wide range of health conditions where time-restricted eating has shown potential benefits, including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and cancer.
“We found that there is a system-wide, molecular impact of time-restricted eating in mice,” says Professor Satchidananda Panda, senior author and holder of the Rita and Richard Atkinson Chair at Salk. “Our results open the door for looking more closely at how this nutritional intervention activates genes involved in specific diseases, such as cancer.”
For the study, two groups of mice were fed the same high-calorie diet. One group was given free access to the food. The other group was restricted to eating within a feeding window of nine hours each day. After seven weeks, tissue samples were collected from 22 organ groups and the brain at different times of the day or night and analyzed for genetic changes. Samples included tissues from the liver, stomach, lungs, heart, adrenal gland, hypothalamus, different parts of the kidney and intestine, and different areas of the brain.
The authors found that 70 percent of mouse genes respond to time-restricted eating.
“By changing the timing of food, we were able to change the gene expression not just in the gut or in the liver, but also in thousands of genes in the brain,” says Panda.
Nearly 40 percent of genes in the adrenal gland, hypothalamus, and pancreas were affected by time-restricted eating. These organs are important for hormonal regulation. Hormones coordinate functions in different parts of the body and brain, and hormonal imbalance is implicated in many diseases from diabetes to stress disorders. The results offer guidance to how time-restricted eating may help manage these diseases….’
Be aware that large language model systems are just using a mechanism to connect words and generate seemingly intelligent responses. These systems lack a true understanding of the meaning of words and often produce parroted statements based on patterns of words found in context. This limitation can cause the system to generate false or inaccurate responses, also known as “hallucinating” answers.
‘As Spring reaches its midpoint, night and day stand in perfect balance, with light on the increase. The young Sun God now celebrates a hierogamy (sacred marriage) with the young Maiden Goddess, who conceives. In nine months, she will again become the Great Mother. It is a time of great fertility, new growth, and newborn animals.
The next full moon (a time of increased births) is called the Ostara and is sacred to Eostre the Saxon Lunar Goddess of fertility (from whence we get the word estrogen, whose two symbols were the egg and the rabbit. The Christian religion adopted these emblems for Easter which is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. The theme of the conception of the Goddess was adapted as the Feast of the Annunciation, occurring on the alternative fixed calendar date of March 25 Old Lady Day, the earlier date of the equinox. Lady Day may also refer to other goddesses (such as Venus and Aphrodite), many of whom have festivals celebrated at this time.
The Christian religion adopted these emblems for Easter which is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. The theme of the conception of the Goddess was adapted as the Feast of the Annunciation, occurring on the alternative fixed calendar date of March 25 Old Lady Day, the earlier date of the equinox. Lady Day may also refer to other goddesses (such as Venus and Aphrodite), many of whom have festivals celebrated at this time.’
‘We are a generation of adult babies. You can see it in the widely circulated – and largely untrue – idea that the human brain isn’t developed until the age of 25, which means that anyone younger is still essentially a child. It’s there in the notion that people with ADHD can’t text back their friends because they lack object permanence (a skill that babies develop at eight months old). It’s there in the narrative that, because gay people didn’t experience a normal childhood, they’re living out a second adolescence in their twenties and thirties. It’s there in the hegemony of superhero films and the cross-generational popularity of YA, whose fans insist that grown-up literature is only ever about depressed college professors having affairs.
You can see it in Disney adults; the rise of cuteness as a dominant aesthetic category; the resurgence of stuffed animals; people who identify as Hufflepuffs on their Hinge profile; people throwing tantrums when their Gorillas rider is five minutes late; people lip-syncing, with pouted lips and furrowed brows, to audio tracks of toddlers. Sometimes, it’s less about pretending to be a child and more about harking back to a lost adolescence: narrativising your life like it’s a John Green novel or an episode of Euphoria, bragging about crazzzy exploits like smoking cigarettes on a swing or doing cocaine on a Thursday; hitting 30 and still considering yourself “precocious”….’
Overall, I see this trend largely as a symptom of our growing culture of narcissism, the prioritization of comfort and escapism over personal growth and responsibility in our society. I have previously written about the price we pay for what I believe is the mistaken notion that we should strive to be happy at all costs. Some of the most poignant victims of that ethos are the psychiatric patients I treat each day, suffering with no skills for tolerating negative affect and the expectation that the goal of either medication or psychotherapeutic treatment should be taking away their pain. In contrast is, depending on whom you choose to attribute it to, the Dalai Lama‘s or Haruki Murakami‘s maxim that “Pain is inevitable, suffering optional.”
‘In his State of the State address last month, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker addressed book bans head on. Now, thanks to Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, House Bill 2789–the Right to Read Bill–has passed through committee and will make its way to the full House for consideration.
HB 2789 would tie state funding of public libraries and public school libraries to policies that explicitly prevent book banning and restricting access to books and other materials. Each library would need to outline their commitment to intellectual freedom….’
‘Former President donald trump on Saturday called on his supporters to protest as he girds for an expected effort by the Manhattan district attorney to bring an unprecedented criminal charge over his handling of a hush money payment during his 2016 presidential campaign.
“Protest, take our nation back!” the former president and 2024 GOP presidential candidate declared on his social media platform Truth Social, after pointing to news reports about the possibility he could be arrested Tuesday or soon thereafter….’
‘Jonathan Demme’s classic Talking Heads film “Stop Making Sense” has been remastered in 4K for a theatrical re-release later this year. If only David Byrne had, um, something to wear…….’
For instance, she discusses the issuance of an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes against the children of the Ukraine While I initially dismissed it as an inconsequential gesture since, of course, it is highly unlikely that Putin will be taken into custody and it will do nothing to end the war, Richardson explains how it may further isolate Russia, making it harder for leaders of other countries to associate with him just as Xi Jinping is about to make a state visit to Russia. Increasing evidence of Chinese material support for Russia’s war could lead to sanctions against its already-fragile economy.
Although the US is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that created the ICC, the warrant will also be significant here, further undermining the American far right’s lionization of Putin, falsely portrayed as a champion of Christianity and children’s rights.
Richardson reflects on the advancing anti-democratic trends on display at the recent meeting of the Federalist Society, an organization founded in the 1980s to advocate for judicial restraint in service of the will of voters. It originally argued that years of pro-civil rights rulings by liberal judges represented corrupting democracy by “legislating from the bench”. However, now that the Supreme Court stacked with Federalist adherents overturned the right to abortion, the Federalist Society has shifted to the opposite view. The Society now believes that judges should interpret the Constitution to support right wing voters to counter “the tyranny of the majority”.
The idea that all legal and governmental processes of modern American society have been corrupted by liberal democracy and need to be destroyed and replaced was reflected in trump’s comments yesterday that the “deep state” and “not Russia” poses the greatest threat to Western civilization. This view was promptly endorsed by his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, forced out of office by lying to the FBI about his ties to Russia (before pardoned by trump). For those of you who have made the same mistake as I had of stopping paying attention to Flynn as irrelevant, he has been battling secular democracy on a far-right road tour across America to recruit an “Army of God” to put Christianity at the center of American life and governance. As a tour organizer said, “At this ReAwaken America Tour, Jesus is King [and] president donald j. trump is our president…” (As is my usual practice, I cannot bring myself to dignify trump by capitalizing references to him.)
Flynn and his supporters’ latest target is Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Florida, which they accuse of killing COVID patients by following FDA guidelines instead of treating them with the horse deworming drug ivermectin. They have organized a group called The Hollow 2A (complete with its own version of the Hitler Youth) calling for local activism with guns to “lawfully take back our country”. They plan to swamp the hospital board meeting this coming Monday to protest its “malpractice”. I worry we could see another January 6-like situation on Monday, and will be watching the news from Sarasota and the activities of The Hollow 2A carefully.
Many see such bombastic events orchestrated by the Orange Menace and his followers as attempts to divert attention from his mounting legal difficulties. (Despite the corruption and bankruptcy of liberal democracy, it still holds consequences worthy of inspiring fear?? Democratic civil process may not be dead yet!) The potential Sarasota insurrection occurs just as the legal noose appears to be closing more tightly around trump’s neck. CNN reported that the Manhattan district attorney’s office has been meeting all week to prepare for a possible indictment of trump as early of next week — preparations that are doubtless heavily slanted toward preempting a violent response against the New York State Court by the far right. And at the same time, the Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court threw out claims of attorney client privilege between trump and his attorney, compelling the attorney to testify in the investigation of his handling of classified documents after he left office.This may open the door to further criminal indictments.
‘Control of the House of Representatives could teeter precariously for years as each party consolidates its dominance over mirror-image demographic strongholds.
That’s the clearest conclusion of a new analysis of the demographic and economic characteristics of all 435 congressional districts, conducted by the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California in conjunction with The Atlantic.
Based on census data, the analysis finds that Democrats now hold a commanding edge over the GOP in seats where the share of residents who are nonwhite, the share of white adults with a college degree, or both, are higher than the level in the nation overall. But Republicans hold a lopsided lead in the districts where the share of racial minorities and whites with at least a four-year college degree are both lower than the national level—and that is the largest single bloc of districts in the House.
This demographic divide has produced a near-partisan stalemate, with Republicans in the new Congress holding the same narrow 222-seat majority that Democrats had in the last one. Both sides will struggle to build a much bigger majority without demonstrating more capacity to win seats whose demographic and economic profile has mostly favored the other. “The coalitions are quite stretched to their limits, so there is just not a lot of space for expansion,” says Lee Drutman, a senior fellow in the political-reform program at New America.
The widening chasm between the characteristics of the districts held by each party has left the House not only closely divided, but also deeply divided….’
‘You may have seen the online kerfuffle a few weeks ago about a study that was released recently that indicated that there was no evidence that masks work against respiratory illnesses (see Bret Stephen’s awful ideologically driven piece in the NY Times for instance). As many experts said at the time, that’s not what the review of the studies actually meant and the organization responsible recently apologized and clarified the review’s assertions.
‘Ideas often become popular long after their philosophical heyday. This seems to be the case for a cluster of ideas centring on the notion of ‘lived experience’, something I first came across when studying existentialism and phenomenology many years ago. The popular versions of these ideas are seen in expressions such as ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’, and the tendency to give priority to feelings over dispassionate factual information or even rationality. The BBC is running a radio series entitled ‘I feel therefore I am’ which gives a sense of the influence this movement is having on our culture, and an NHS trust has apparently advertised for a ‘director of lived experience’.
But what exactly is ‘lived experience’ and how does it differ from simple ‘experience’?…’
‘…there might be something more fundamental about the way clowns look that unsettles people.
In fact the strongest factor we identified was hidden emotional signals, suggesting that for many people, a fear of clowns stems from not being able to see their facial expressions due to their make-up. We cannot see their “true” faces and therefore cannot understand their emotional intent. So, for example, we don’t know whether they have a frown or a furrowed brow, which would indicate anger. Not being able to detect what a clown is thinking or what they might do next makes some of us on edge when we are around them….’
Related? Watch as Marjorie Taylor Greene runs congress for Speaker McCarthy
‘Guess Kevin McCarthy had someplace to be today and had Greene sworn in to replace him. Hey, look! Everything is normal. Happens all the time, except not usually with people so busy fighting the gazpacho and Jewish Space Laser conspiracies….’
‘For all of the technical and dramatic excellence of Tár, I was largely repulsed by it for two reasons: the film’s many outright errors concerning the orchestral world and the character of Tár herself….’
‘Our relationship to the written word is fundamentally changing. So-called generative artificial intelligence has gone mainstream through programs like ChatGPT, which use large language models, or LLMs, to statistically predict the next letter or word in a sequence, yielding sentences and paragraphs that mimic the content of whatever documents they are trained on. They have brought something like autocomplete to the entirety of the internet. For now, people are still typing the actual prompts for these programs and, likewise, the models are still (mostly) trained on human prose instead of their own machine-made opuses.
But circumstances could change—as evidenced by the release last week of an API for ChatGPT, which will allow the technology to be integrated directly into web applications such as social media and online shopping. It is easy now to imagine a setup wherein machines could prompt other machines to put out text ad infinitum, flooding the internet with synthetic text devoid of human agency or intent: gray goo, but for the written word….’
‘A war over Taiwan would likely involve the largest and most complex amphibious invasion ever mounted. Were the conflict to drag on, it might well evolve into a building-to-building, mountaintop-to-mountaintop ground war in one of the most densely populated and economically advanced countries on Earth. And that’s just in Taiwan itself.
It’s an open question whether the U.S. would come to its longtime ally Taiwan’s aid; if the United States got involved, we would see a scenario the world has managed to avoid over the 75 years since the introduction of the atomic bomb: direct exchange of fire between two nuclear-armed superpowers.
“Disabuse yourself of the notion that war with China is going to be like anything we’ve experienced in our lifetimes,” said David Ochmanek, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration who is now a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation….’
‘Latvia has the highest drunk driving rate in all of Europe. Under a new law, the Latvian government can seize the cars of drunk drivers and sell or donate them….’
‘Are huskies at their happiest running hundreds of miles a week, as mushers maintain? Or, as animal rights activists insist, are they victims of callous human ambition, sometimes required to endure unfathomable hardship? The conflict has embroiled … the Iditarod … in a fight that could change the sport forever—and, if some have their way, maybe even lead to its demise…’
‘There could and may well be a pandemic much deadlier than Covid, and if there is, some pretty strong measures would be justified to bring it to a halt before it sweeps the world. Good research into whether masks as worn by normal people under normal conditions prevent disease transmission is a big part of figuring out what our pandemic response should be….’
‘Musician’s Musician’ to the Rock Elite Dies at 78
‘With his head-turning mastery of seemingly any instrument with strings, Mr. Lindley became one of the most sought-after sidemen in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Mixing searing slide guitar work with global stylings on instruments from around the world, he brought depth and richness to recordings by luminaries like Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Warren Zevon, Ry Cooder and Iggy Pop.But he was far more than a supporting player. “One of the most talented musicians there has ever been,” Graham Nash wrote on Instagram after Mr. Lindley’s death. (Mr. Lindley toured with Mr. Nash and David Crosby in the 1970s.) “He was truly a musician’s musician.”…’
‘Across the country, conservative activists and politicians complain that drag contributes to the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children. Several states are considering restrictions…’
‘Whether or not masks “work” is a multilayered question — one involving a mix of physics, infectious disease biology, and human behavior. Many scientists and physicians say the Cochrane review’s findings were, in a strict sense, correct: High-quality studies known as randomized controlled trials, or RCTs, don’t typically show much benefit for mask wearers.
But whether that means masks don’t work is a tougher question — one that has revealed sharp divisions among public health researchers….’
‘Mayor Adams called on shoppers Monday to enter New York City businesses maskless from now on — a message aimed at reducing shoplifting, but one that runs counter to COVID-era prescriptions to mask up when in enclosed, public spaces….’
‘Photographer Joshua Turner captured absolutely breathtaking 5K cinematic drone footage over the northeastern summit of the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps….’
‘Ricou Browning, a skilled swimmer best known for his underwater role as the Gill Man in the quintessential 3D black-and-white 1950s monster movie Creature from the Black Lagoon, has died, his family told various media outlets. He was 93.
Browning died Feb. 27 at his home in Southwest Ranches, Fla….’
A website full of really interesting maps which has the tag line “maps & other fictions” and focuses on “a range of interests like languages, art, history, geography, maps, and mops…”
Wordtune Read is a web app that will take any document and summarize it for you. It doesn’t take many liberties with the text, and you can watch it work as it moves through the document.
You can see where Wordtune Read got its information from, so you can check the accuracy of any given AI summary.
It summarises articles from the web as if they were facts, and cuts in and out as it would any other information. It’s not great for summarizing dramatic or narrative articles or stories, but if you know that going in, you can use it accordingly.
Wordtune Read’s free tier is limited to three scans per month, but the premium version offers unlimited document length, priority processing, and priority support.
‘Shorter was a central force in three of the 20th century’s great jazz groups: the Jazz Messengers, led by drummer Art Blakey, who established the mid-century “hard bop” style; the second iteration of Miles Davis’s quintet in the mid to late 1960s that led Davis to his electric period; and the hugely successful fusion group Weather Report, formed in 1970….’
‘Have you ever wondered when the next full moon will be? How about the first quarter moon? Now you can have all the dates and times for all the moon phases for the year at your fingertips by building your own moon phases calendar and calculator!…’
‘A leading conservation research group found that 40% of animals and 34% of plants in the United States are at risk of extinction, while 41% of ecosystems are facing collapse….’
‘Stuff has agency. Inanimate matter is not inert. Everything is always doing something. According to Bennett, hoarders are highly attuned to these truths, which many of us ignore. Non-hoarders can disregard the inherent vibrancy of matter because we live in a modern world in which the categories of matter and life are kept separate. “The quarantines of matter and life encourage us to ignore the vitality of matter and the lively powers of material formations, such as the way omega-3 fatty acids can alter human moods or the way our trash is not ‘away’ in landfills but generating lively streams of chemicals and volatile winds as we speak,” she writes. Hoarders suffer at the hands of their hoards. But the rest of us do, too: that’s why a modern guru like Marie Kondo can become famous by helping us gain control over our material possessions. Bennett describes herself as something of a minimalist—but her minimalism is driven by a sense of the agency of things. “I don’t want to have such a clamor around,” she told me….’
As one solution to the Fermi Paradox ( if they’re there, why don’t we see them?), some
‘suggest that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations would be engaged in activities and locales that would make them less noticeable.
In a recent study, a German-Georgian team of researchers proposed that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) could use black holes as quantum computers…’
‘While many are watching when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis might announce a run for president, he’s making noise — and drawing massive criticism — for initiatives in Florida, including proposed restrictions on press freedom….’
‘Shetland Islanders, descendents of Jamaican immigrants living in London, and African Americans all tend to say “axe” or “aks” instead of “ask” when speaking. Linguist Geoff Lindsey traces the history of differing pronunciations of ask/aks from all the way back to the beginnings of written English up to the present day….’
I really enjoyed this discussion that centered around John McWhorter’s take on historical and ethnic speech diversity. I’m not only interested in linguistic prejudice, but it imposes hurdles on me every day as a psychiatrist. Communication is such an intrinsic part of my work, and I interact with people from diverse backgrounds and linguistic styles. This is particularly important because when people are in distress, they may not make the effort to ‘code-switch’ to standard English, which can make it difficult to understand them. Just this week, a colleague shared an anecdote with me about her recent difficulty in understanding a client on death row in the rural South during a forensic consultation.
Entertaining fact gleaned: something similar to what is happening to the word “ask” was true of “fish”, which started out as “fisk,”
with the same -sk ending that “ask” has. Over time, in some places people started saying “fisk” as “fiks,” while in others they started saying “fisk” as “fish.” After a while, “fish” won out over “fiks,” and here we are today. The same thing happened with “mash.” It started as “mask.” Later some people were saying “maks” and others were saying “mash.” “Mash” won.
’Prepare for the possibility of a long, shape-shifting conflict, perhaps lasting years, even a decade or more. Watch how the rest of the world regards the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions. Expect any negotiated settlement to be fragile and reliant on third-party intervention. And don’t anticipate a dramatic finish, such as a Russian nuclear detonation in Ukraine or the overthrow of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Notably, in a reversal of perceptions a year ago, some experts could envision a decisive Ukrainian victory against Russia, but none forecast a decisive Russian win against Ukraine.…’
‘Both the Club for Growth — an anti-tax group — and the donor network created by the billionaire Koch brothers plan to intervene in the GOP presidential primaries, the New York Times recently reported, and both hope to turn the page on the former president. But it’s not clear whether they will endorse one specific alternative to trump and, if so, who that would be, with several other Republicans expected to enter the race.
As many are pointing out, that would be a familiar scenario. The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins writes that “a sprawling cast of challengers could just as easily end up splitting the anti-trump electorate, as it did in 2016, and allow trump to win primaries with a plurality of voters.”
Politico’s David Freedlander opened a recent article citing an anonymous Republican donor’s worries “that once again donald trump will prevail over a splintered Republican field.” The New York Times’s Shane Goldmacher, too, wrote that “a fractured field” could “clear the way” for trump to win with just “a fraction of the party base.”…’
‘With its strange rings and tilt, surprising seasonal variations, and 27 moons, Uranus is the solar system’s weirdo planet. The enigmatic ice giant has a lot to teach us, which is why astronomers are clamoring for a mission to explore the planet up close….’
‘“I know there’ve been questions and concerns about this, but there is no—again no—indication of aliens or extra-terrestrial activity with these recent take downs,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a Monday afternoon press briefing. “Again there is no indication of aliens,” she emphasized for a third time, adding “We wanted to make sure that the American people knew that.”
“Would you tell us if there were?,” one journalist in the crowd of reporters shouted back. In response, Jean-Pierre chuckled and made a brief joke about the movie ET.
As recently as Sunday night, Pentagon officials had indicated that they weren’t ruling anything out yet—meaning aliens were still technically on the table. But the White House’s announcement seemingly squashes that pipe dream…’
‘People with Down syndrome who live beyond age 40 develop progressive dementia similar to people with Alzheimer’s disease. In the last few decades, scientists have found that the brains of people with Alzheimer’s contain abnormal clumps of pathogenic, self-propagating proteins called prions. New research shows the same is true for those with Down syndrome. Unfortunately, drugs that target these protein clumps are unsuccessful at treating Alzheimer’s, suggesting that our understanding of the disease is incorrect….’
‘Rings in the Solar System are not exactly rare. Half the planets have them, and others may have in the past. Some asteroids have rings, as does the dwarf planet Haumea. Even the Sun has rings of a sort.
Now astronomers have found an entirely new ring system. Only this one has left them scratching their heads, as it’s unlike anything else in the Solar System.
Quaoar, a small dwarf planet that hangs out in the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto, is also circled by a dense ring – a ring circling at a distance so great it should still be stuck together as a moon.
The discovery means that scientists may need to revise our understanding of how moons and rings form and are affected by the gravitational interaction with their larger companion.
Quaoar, measuring just 1,110 kilometers (690 miles) across, was discovered in 2002 and, over the years, has turned out to be quite the interesting little ball of rock. It shows signs of ice volcanism, and it even has a cute little moon called Weywot, just 170 kilometers across.
But in 2021, astronomers noticed something else….’
‘Trillions of micro-organisms live inside each of us. This is known as our microbiome. The vast majority of these microbes are bacteria but plenty of other things can also be found, including parasites and viruses.
About a decade ago researchers discovered a thriving population of fungi also reside within the human body. Dubbed the mycobiome, several dozen types of fungi have been found to symbiotically live inside of us, and most are relatively harmless. But some are not our friends, particularly when we are immunocompromised.
It’s estimated about 1.6 million people die every year globally from invasive fungal infections. In 2022 the World Health Organization released its first ever list of “fungal priority pathogens,” citing fungi as an emerging serious public health threat. There are limited anti-fungal medications, and increasing rates of fungal resistance to these crucial drugs.
“There’s a significant unmet clinical need for this kind of prevention and also treatment, particularly among immunocompromised individuals,” said Karen Norris, lead investigator on the new study. “The patient population at risk for invasive fungal infections has increased significantly over the last several years.”
Three specific genera of fungus account for the vast majority of deadly fungal infections in humans – Aspergillus, Candida, and Pneumocystis. So researchers set out to develop a recombinant peptide vaccine that targets those three primary pathogens.
A new study published in the journal PNAS Nexus is reporting on the efficacy of this experimental vaccine in several animal models. The study revealed the vaccine, dubbed NXT-2, effectively induced broad, cross-reactive antibody responses in all animal models. The vaccine also reduced morbidity and mortality in immunosuppressed animals exposed to the three key pathogenic fungi….’
‘Across the world, pesticides, new diseases, climate change and habitat loss are killing bees and other pollinators, which play an essential role in agriculture, at an ominous speed, with the mass die-off putting many fruits and grains at risk.
Yet the mostly rural state of Carinthia, which borders Slovenia and Italy, doesn’t care only about the health of the bees pollinating its apple orchards and chestnut trees. It also insists that all of them be Carniolan honey bees, with their signature light-gray abdominal rings, the only subspecies that state law has allowed here since 2007. As with all domesticated and semi-domesticated animals, bees have long been bred by their keepers for certain traits, and the Carniolan is considered well adapted for its alpine home, better than other honey bees at surviving the snowy winters and often capricious weather. And while Carniolans will aggressively defend their hives against parasites and honey thieves, they are known to be quite docile around their human handlers.
So Carinthia’s law has many supporters among the state’s apiarists, eager to keep unwelcome characteristics out of the local bee gene pool. The neighboring state of Styria has a similar law, as does Slovenia.
But the law’s opponents see in it at least the echo of the area’s Nazi past — and cite Nazi history to further their point….’
‘Adding the dodo to its official docket brings Colossal’s total de-extinction targets to three: the woolly mammoth (the company’s first target species, announced in September 2021), and the thylacine, a.k.a. the Tasmanian tiger, the largest carnivorous marsupial…
Mammoths died out about 4,000 years ago on Wrangel Island, off the northeastern coast of Russia. The dodo, a species of flightless bird native to the island of Mauritius, was gone by 1681. The last known thylacine died at a zoo in Tasmania in 1936. Scientists have sequenced the genomes of all three species—the mammoth’s in 2015, the dodo’s in 2016, and the thylacine’s in 2018….’
‘Do we really need copyediting? I don’t mean the basic clean-up that reverses typos, reinstates skipped words, and otherwise ensures that spelling and punctuation marks are as an author intends. Such copyediting makes an unintentionally “messy” manuscript easier to read, sure.
But the argument that texts ought to read “easily” slips too readily into justification for insisting a text working outside dominant Englishes better reflect the English of a dominant-culture reader—the kind of reader who might mirror the majority of those at the helm of the publishing industry, but not the kind of reader who reflects a potential readership (or writership) at large….’
‘…All of this should be the encouragement studios need to return to more traditional release strategies. The alternative is a frightening one for anything not made on the biggest scale: a world where seeing movies in theaters becomes a boutique option in only the biggest cities, and where streaming deals are the only way to fund non-blockbuster projects. This would be immensely damaging to the art form and to the diversity of projects on offer for audiences, and it’s a path Hollywood can reject by putting its faith back in cinemas—and in the viewers who love going to them….’
‘…[A]fter George Floyd’s murder — as companies faced pressure to demonstrate a commitment to racial justice — interest in the diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) industry exploded. The American market reached an estimated $3.4 billion in 2020.
D.E.I. training is designed to help organizations become more welcoming to members of traditionally marginalized groups. Advocates make bold promises: Diversity workshops can foster better intergroup relations, improve the retention of minority employees, close recruitment gaps and so on.
The only problem? There’s little evidence that many of these initiatives work. And the specific type of diversity training that is currently in vogue — mandatory training that blames dominant groups for D.E.I. problems — may well have a net negative effect on the outcomes managers claim to care about….’
— Jesse Singal, author of “The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills.” via New York Times.
‘The remains of more than 110,000 Native American, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Natives’ ancestors are still held by museums, universities and federal agencies.
A 1990 federal law called for remains to be returned to descendants or tribal nations.
‘Through a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, aliens could be transmitting signals using the sun, but a quick scan for such signals has turned up nothing….’
‘Buildworld curated a long list of buildings from around the world, the UK and the U.S. that are often said to be ugly. We identified all the design-themed tweets about these buildings on Twitter. Then we used a sentiment analysis tool called HuggingFace to analyse the percentage of tweets that were negative about each building’s design.
Key Findings:
The Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh is the world’s ugliest building, according to Twitter users.
The J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., is America’s ugliest building.
The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, is the ugliest building outside of the UK and U.S….’
‘Italian start-up Cap_able is offering its first collection of knitted garments that shields the wearer from the facial recognition software in AI cameras without the need to cover their face.
Called the Manifesto Collection, the clothing line includes hoodies, pants, t-shirts, and dresses.
Each garment sports a pattern, known as an “adversarial patch,” which was developed by AI algorithms to confuse facial recognition software in real-time and protect the wearer’s privacy….’
‘Earth’s inner core has recently stopped spinning, and may now be reversing the direction of its rotation, according to a surprising new study that probed the deepest reaches of our planet with seismic waves from earthquakes.
The mind-boggling results suggest that Earth’s center pauses and reverses direction on a periodic cycle lasting about 60 to 70 years, a discovery that might solve longstanding mysteries about climate and geological phenomena that occur on a similar timeframe, and that affect life on our planet….’
‘Amazon is launching RxPass in the US, a new drug subscription exclusive to Prime members that charges users a $5 monthly fee to ship eligible prescription medications to their doorstep. Announced on Tuesday in a press release, the Amazon RxPass subscription program provides generic medications to treat over 80 common health conditions, including high blood pressure, hair loss, anxiety, and acid reflux.
The $5 charge includes the cost of delivery and is added to Prime customers’ existing monthly subscription fee. The RxPass fee is a flat rate and doesn’t increase even if users require multiple prescriptions each month. Medications can be delivered on either a monthly or quarterly basis depending on the prescription requirements. Conditions covered by the service also include allergies, diabetes (excluding insulin), and anemia. Amazon says that more than 150 million Americans already take one or more of the medications available through RxPass. A full list of generic medications covered by the RxPass subscription can be found on the Amazon pharmacy website….’
‘It remains a powerful reminder that self-inflicted disaster is never far away. But it also undercuts the complexity of climate change and the way that risks spread across time and bleed into one another. Viewed from a time when we face a multitude of possible catastrophes—pandemics, rogue AI, and a rapidly warming planet—the Doomsday Clock is a warning from a much simpler era….’
‘If a new variant of concern were to materialize, a version of the virus that fundamentally eroded our immune systems’ ability to fend off SARS-2 requiring a rapid updating of Covid vaccines, the public would need to take note… But in the absence of that, it’s really hard to see how it is actionable, or it’s useful, really, to anybody to know that oh, well, XBB.1.5 is taking over when we thought it might be BQ.1.1….’
‘Analyses have found that 12 people—coined the “disinformation dozen”—are responsible for 65% of misleading claims, rumors, and lies about COVID-19 vaccines on social media. Their impact is most effective on Facebook (account for up to 73% of Facebook rumors), but also bleed into Instagram and Twitter. A scientific study published in Nature found that 1 in 4 anti-COVID-19 vaccine tweets originated from the so-called Children’s Health Defense—which is controlled by one man….’
‘For the first time, a radio signal sent from a galaxy, which is almost 9 billion light-years away from the Earth, has been captured, media reports said on Friday.
The signal was captured by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India. It means that scientists can begin probing the formation of some earliest stars and galaxies, the report said.
The signal was emitted from a “star-forming galaxy”, which is titled SDSSJ0826+5630. It was emitted when the 13.8 billion-year-old Milky Way, where Earth is located, was just 4.9 billion years old, it said citing the researchers.
In a statement this week, Arnab Chakraborty, who is author and McGill University Department of Physics post-doctoral cosmologist, said, “It’s the equivalent to a look-back in time of 8.8 billion years.” …’
‘If it’s a clear night in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to spot a giant, green comet passing by our planet from your backyard.
It’s an exceedingly rare event. According to astronomers, it won’t stop by again for roughly another 50,000 years — and now is the best time to see it on its current visit, as Insider reports.
According to NASA, the comet — with the catchy name C/2022 E3 (ZTF) — was first spotted in March last year. Ever since, it’s been screaming through the solar system, making its closest approach to the Sun last week. It will be closest to Earth on February 2. But you may get a good chance to spot it before then as well. According to Space.com, the Moon will provide the perfect lighting to illuminate ZTF on January 21, depending on local weather conditions of course….’
‘Donald trump’s inability to stop talking about his legal problems, and his penchant for floating possible defenses on his social media accounts, will likely come back to haunt him, explained one legal expert.
During an appearance on MSNBC early Sunday morning, former Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner was asked by host Katie Phang about the former president’s inability to keep quiet while he is under multiple investigations….’
‘Brazil’s ministry of health has declared a medical emergency in the Yanomami territory, the country’s largest indigenous reservation bordering Venezuela, following reports of children dying of malnutrition and other diseases caused by illegal gold mining.
A decree published on Friday by the incoming government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the aim of the declaration was to restore health services to the Yanomami people that had been dismantled by his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro….’
‘Based upon new allegations of sexual impropriety committed by sitting now-sitting Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a former career prosecutor stated there is no reason why a new investigation should not be undertaken by the Justice Department.
Speaking with MSNBC host Katie Phang, Glenn Kirschner hammered the FBI for the poor handling of tips that came in before Kavanaugh was given a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court….’
‘North America is home to nearly three billion fewer birds today compared to 1970. It is essential we do everything we can to protect the birds that bring us joy — and that work can begin right at home.
Keep your feeder clean and windows visible. Reduce window collisions by making glass visible with densely spaced decals or patterns, placing physical barriers in front of the glass, and positioning your feeders directly on or within three feet from windows. Don’t forget to clean feeders every two weeks.
Keep your cats indoors. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services estimates that outdoor cats kill 2.4 billion wild birds each year in this country alone.
Garden smarter, not harder. Growing native plants is one of the best ways to provide food and shelter to birds, plus they require less maintenance. Unraked leaves, plants with old flowers, and fallen branches all help birds forage for food and provide shelter.
Make any space a garden: You don’t need a backyard to provide nutrients for birds. Plant native plants on your windowsill, balcony, and in containers.
Pledge to take these steps to make your home and community more bird-friendly….’
‘”The Girl from Ipanema” is the second most recorded song in the history of recorded songs, next to “Summertime” by George Gerwin. Then 22-year-old Astrud Gilbertomade the song (about the male gaze of an underage girl), and Bossa Nova, galactically famous on the album Getz/Gilberto recorded in March of 1963 and released in 1964. With much of the music written by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Gilberto’s song performance was impromptu and suggested by Astrud herself in the studio.
The guitarist João Gilberto was Astrud’s husband, and her participation in this song and “Corcovado” made the single and the album a worldwide wonder. Yet, as you might imagine from the headline, the men in this scenario—particularly Stan Getz—took credit for Astrud Gilberto’s vocal performance and her transformation of the song.
‘Gather enough people together and you can generally separate them into two categories: People who use subtitles, and people who don’t. And according to a not-so-scientific YouTube poll we ran on our Community tab, the latter category is an endangered species — of respondents who are not deaf or hard of hearing, 57 percent said they use subtitles, while just 12 percent said they generally don’t.
But why do so many of us feel that we need subtitles to understand the dialogue in the things we watch?
The answer to that question is complex — and we get straight to the bottom of it in this explainer, with the help of dialogue editor Austin Olivia Kendrick….’
‘In the Chinese horoscope, 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit or, more specifically, the Year of the Water Rabbit. The rabbit is believed to be the luckiest of the 12 animals to be born under and considered a gentle animal that thinks before acting. The Year of the Rabbit represents peaceful and patient energy. The water element suggests tapping into inner wisdom and trusting instincts. Together, the Water Rabbit indicates focusing on relationships, diplomacy, and building bridges in professional and personal relationships. Those born in years associated with the Rabbit, specifically 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011, and 2023, should have good fortune, patience, and prosperity in 2023, according to one Chinese horoscope….’
‘The Lunar New Year is the most important annual holiday in China. Each year is named after one of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac in a repeating cycle, with this year being the Year of the Rabbit. For the past three years, celebrations were muted in the shadow of the pandemic.
With the easing of most Covid-19 restrictions that had confined millions to their homes, people could finally make their first trip back to their hometowns to reunite with their families without worrying about the hassles of quarantine, potential lockdowns and suspension of travel. Larger public celebrations also returned for what is known as the Spring Festival in China, with the capital hosting thousands of cultural events — on a larger scale than a year ago….’
‘…[I]t was a college writing center from Sioux Falls, S.D., that nailed the word of the year with its choice: FAFO. In case you don’t already know, FAFO is an acronym for “eff around and find out.” It’s a cheeky way to tell people that if they play with fire, they might get burned — or to announce they already have been. The Sioux Falls gang put a positive spin on FAFO, citing it as representing the “gumption” of their fellow students “when encountering a novel challenge” and noting that the Urban Dictionary calls the phrase an “exclamation of confidence.” It is that — but it’s also a whole lot more….’
Not only have I never heard the term FAFO in the wild but I am unlikely to ever use it. Its cachet, according to the article, arises from Elon Musk’s use of the term in December 2022 to comment on kicking Kanye West off Twitter for dissing him. Just as many people I know will never consider giving Musk any of their money by buying a Tesla, the word is tainted by association. The idea of learning from one’s experiences and paying the price for one’s mistakes, invoking both the pluck involved and a little bit of satisfaction at someone getting their comeuppance, already has lots of linguistic code. There’s an element of “YOLO” and an element of chiding someone with “once burned, twice shy”, an element of “schadenfreude” (a sentiment to which I gravitate too frequently) and a sense of “stepping into it.”
But, as the article points out, we can celebrate the fact that 2022 was
‘…a year when maybe, just maybe, people who did dumb or awful things (coups, tax scams, attacking smaller countries, making overinflated weed-meme offers for social media sites) would finally face some consequences. “Can you do that?” many asked during the Trump era. Could you just lie, cheat, swindle, funnel taxpayer dollars to your businesses, grab people’s genitalia with impunity? Well, 2022 suggested that you couldn’t, or at least not entirely. “Eff around, find out” was a bratty, satisfying way to reclaim the high ground…’
Not that I have any objection to regaining the high ground! And Musk himself, it seems clear, is effing around and, hopefully, finding out, although I don’t really expect him to learn from the experience, both because of his character and his net worth.
(In contrast, the more scholarly linguists of the American Dialect Society polled their members and came up with the suffix “-ussy” as the 2022 Word of the Year. I’ve never heard that in the wild either. I guess it’s pretty clear I don’t frequent Tik Tok.)
‘In what the New York Times describes as a “scathing ruling”, a Florida judge has ordered donald trump and his lawyer to pay nearly $1m in sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton there….’
’Biden again called for an assault weapons ban after the Nashville shooting. Why hasn’t Congress acted?…’
‘Paco Calvo…, who runs the Minimal Intelligence Lab at the University of Murcia in Spain where he studies plant behavior, says that to be plant blind is to fail to see plants for what they really are: cognitive organisms endowed with memories, perceptions, and feelings, capable of learning from the past and anticipating the future, able to sense and experience the world.
Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky writes a good summary in Nautilus about the hardwired basis for people dividing the world into Us and Them, with disastrous consequences throughout human history ranging from micro aggression and innate bias to genocide justified by rationalized pretexts.
Although there is calculated antisocial predation, most human aggression is not rationally planned but emotionally mediated, in response to (often unconsciously evoked) threat. So reducing violence has a lot to do with increasing awareness and deliberately countering these strong Us-Them dichotomies. As Sapolsky concludes, “[G]ive the right-of-way to people driving cars with the “Mean people suck” bumper sticker…” 
…and filed a formal complaint to have it removed
‘As Spring reaches its midpoint, night and day stand in perfect balance, with light on the increase. The young Sun God now celebrates a hierogamy (sacred marriage) with the young Maiden Goddess, who conceives. In nine months, she will again become the Great Mother. It is a time of great fertility, new growth, and newborn animals.
About suffering they were never wrong,
Readers of Follow Me Here will be familiar with my admiration for the daily newsletter from Boston University history professor Heather Cox Richardson. Her commentary on daily developments in the authoritarian threat to democracy is immeasurably enriching, particularly on heavy news days like yesterday.
‘Control of the House of Representatives could teeter precariously for years as each party consolidates its dominance over mirror-image demographic strongholds.
‘Ideas often become popular long after their philosophical heyday. This seems to be the case for a cluster of ideas centring on the notion of ‘lived experience’, something I first came across when studying existentialism and phenomenology many years ago. The popular versions of these ideas are seen in expressions such as ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’, and the tendency to give priority to feelings over dispassionate factual information or even rationality. The BBC is running a radio series entitled ‘I feel therefore I am’ which gives a sense of the influence this movement is having on our culture, and an NHS trust has apparently advertised for a ‘director of lived experience’.
‘Guess Kevin McCarthy had someplace to be today and had Greene sworn in to replace him. Hey, look! Everything is normal. Happens all the time, except not usually with people so busy fighting the gazpacho and Jewish Space Laser conspiracies….’
Imagining the Unimaginable.
‘There could and may well be a pandemic much deadlier than Covid, and if there is, some pretty strong measures would be justified to bring it to a halt before it sweeps the world. Good research into whether masks as worn by normal people under normal conditions prevent disease transmission is a big part of figuring out what our pandemic response should be….’
‘Musician’s Musician’ to the Rock Elite Dies at 78
‘Ricou Browning, a skilled swimmer best known for his underwater role as the Gill Man in the quintessential 3D black-and-white 1950s monster movie Creature from the Black Lagoon, has died, his family told various media outlets. He was 93.
A website full of really interesting maps which has the tag line “maps & other fictions” and focuses on “a range of interests like 
Wordtune Read is a web app that will take any document and summarize it for you. It doesn’t take many liberties with the text, and you can watch it work as it moves through the document.‘Have you ever wondered when the next full moon will be? How about the first quarter moon? Now you can have all the dates and times for all the moon phases for the year at your fingertips by building your own moon phases calendar and calculator!…’
‘A leading conservation research group found that 40% of animals and 34% of plants in the United States are at risk of extinction, while 41% of ecosystems are facing collapse….’
Are we on the brink of interspecies communication?‘Stuff has agency. Inanimate matter is not inert. Everything is always doing something. According to Bennett, hoarders are highly attuned to these truths, which many of us ignore. Non-hoarders can disregard the inherent vibrancy of matter because we live in a modern world in which the categories of matter and life are kept separate. “The quarantines of matter and life encourage us to ignore the vitality of matter and the lively powers of material formations, such as the way omega-3 fatty acids can alter human moods or the way our trash is not ‘away’ in landfills but generating lively streams of chemicals and volatile winds as we speak,” she writes. Hoarders suffer at the hands of their hoards. But the rest of us do, too: that’s why a modern guru like Marie Kondo can become famous by helping us gain control over our material possessions. Bennett describes herself as something of a minimalist—but her minimalism is driven by a sense of the agency of things. “I don’t want to have such a clamor around,” she told me….’
As one solution to the Fermi Paradox ( if they’re there, why don’t we see them?), some
’Prepare for the possibility of a long, shape-shifting conflict, perhaps lasting years, even a decade or more. Watch how the rest of the world regards the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions. Expect any negotiated settlement to be fragile and reliant on third-party intervention. And don’t anticipate a dramatic finish, such as a Russian nuclear detonation in Ukraine or the overthrow of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Notably, in a reversal of perceptions a year ago, some experts could envision a decisive Ukrainian victory against Russia, but none forecast a decisive Russian win against Ukraine.…’
So Carinthia’s law has many supporters among the state’s apiarists, eager to keep unwelcome characteristics
Some of these are so second-nature I never stopped to think about them:‘Schools are struggling to keep their shelves stocked as oversight by parents and school boards intensifies…’
‘Do we really need copyediting? I don’t mean the basic clean-up that reverses typos, reinstates skipped words, and otherwise ensures that spelling and punctuation marks are as an author intends. Such copyediting makes an unintentionally “messy” manuscript easier to read, sure.
‘…All of this should be the encouragement studios need to return to more traditional release strategies. The alternative is a frightening one for anything not made on the biggest scale: a world where seeing movies in theaters becomes a boutique option in only the biggest cities, and where streaming deals are the only way to fund non-blockbuster projects. This would be immensely damaging to the art form and to the diversity of projects on offer for audiences, and it’s a path Hollywood can reject by putting its faith back in cinemas—and in the viewers who love going to them….’
‘…[A]fter George Floyd’s murder — as companies faced pressure to demonstrate a commitment to racial justice — interest in the diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) industry exploded. The American market reached an estimated $3.4 billion in 2020.
‘The remains of more than 110,000 Native American, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Natives’ ancestors are still held by museums, universities and federal agencies.
‘If a new variant of concern were to materialize, a version of the virus that fundamentally eroded our immune systems’ ability to fend off SARS-2 requiring a rapid updating of Covid vaccines, the public would need to take note… But in the absence of that, it’s really hard to see how it is actionable, or it’s useful, really, to anybody to know that oh, well, XBB.1.5 is taking over when we thought it might be BQ.1.1….’
‘Analyses have found that 12 people—coined the “disinformation dozen”—are responsible for 65% of misleading claims, rumors, and lies about COVID-19 vaccines on social media. Their impact is most effective on Facebook (account for up to 73% of Facebook rumors), but also bleed into Instagram and Twitter. A scientific study published in Nature found that 1 in 4 anti-COVID-19 vaccine tweets originated from the so-called Children’s Health Defense—which is controlled by one man….’
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