’Marie Kondo has convinced us of the morality of purging. If we knew where our clothes ended up, though, we’d feel differently… The problem is that most of our donated clothing does not reach any sort of higher purpose; it just ends up as waste. Clothing is one of the fastest-growing categories in landfills in the U.S. Almost 24 billion pounds of clothes and shoes are thrown out each year, more than double what we tossed two decades ago. And there’s every reason to believe the show only added to the problem, Adele Meyer, executive director of the Association of Resale Professionals, confirmed to me.…’

Via Slate

’It’s been eight years since the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The resulting damage led to hydrogen explosions and a partial meltdown, releasing radiation into the surrounding area. After workers’ brave efforts stabilized the situation, they began to focus on long-term cleanup. The cleanup recently reached a major milestone when workers began removing nuclear fuel rods for disposal. But how do you really clean up a nuclear accident?…’

Via JSTOR Daily

’RECENTLY AT THE Laboratory for Laser Energetics in Brighton, New York, one of the world’s most powerful lasers blasted a droplet of water, creating a shock wave that raised the water’s pressure to millions of atmospheres and its temperature to thousands of degrees. X-rays that beamed through the droplet in the same fraction of a second offered humanity’s first glimpse of water under those extreme conditions.

The X-rays revealed that the water inside the shock wave didn’t become a superheated liquid or gas. Paradoxically—but just as physicists squinting at screens in an adjacent room had expected—the atoms froze solid, forming crystalline ice…

The findings, published this week in Nature, confirm the existence of “superionic ice,” a new phase of water with bizarre properties. Unlike the familiar ice found in your freezer or at the north pole, superionic ice is black and hot. A cube of it would weigh four times as much as a normal one. It was first theoretically predicted more than 30 years ago, and although it has never been seen until now, scientists think it might be among the most abundant forms of water in the universe.

Across the solar system, at least, more water probably exists as superionic ice—filling the interiors of Uranus and Neptune—than in any other phase, including the liquid form sloshing in oceans on Earth, Europa and Enceladus. The discovery of superionic ice potentially solves decades-old puzzles about the composition of these “ice giant” worlds.…’

Via WIRED

How to do nothing: resisting the attention economy:

’In 2015, Jenny Odell started an organization she called The Bureau of Suspended Objects. Odell was then an artist-in-residence at a waste operating station in San Francisco. As the sole employee of her bureau, she photographed things that had been thrown out and learned about their histories. (A bird-watcher, Odell is friendly with a pair of crows that sit outside her apartment window; given her talent for scavenging, you wonder whether they’ve shared tips.)

Odell’s first book, “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” echoes the approach she took with her bureau, creating a collage (or maybe it’s a compost heap) of ideas about detaching from life online, built out of scraps collected from artists, writers, critics and philosophers. In the book’s first chapter, she remarks that she finds things that already exist “infinitely more interesting than anything I could possibly make.” Then, summoning the ideas of others, she goes on to construct a complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto.…’

Via The New York Times

’“Prohibitionist strategy is unsustainable,” reads the policy plan…. The five-year policy plan calls for prescribing treatment programs instead of punishments to drug users. It’s unclear what effects the laws would have on Mexican cartels, which make the bulk of their money selling drugs in the U.S.…’

Via Big Think

People who live further west in a time zone experience fewer days with natural morning light. As a result, they depend upon electric light to get ready for work and other business of the day. Lighter colors mean more mornings per year in light.

’Writing in the Journal of Health Economics, authors Osea Giuntella of the University of Pittsburgh and Fabrizio Mazzonna of Università della Svizzera Italiana took an innovative slant on the effect of position in a time zone on health and economics. They were interested in something called “social jet lag.”

The idea is that given the constraints of modern life, most people are out of sync with their natural circadian rhythms, which should follow the sun. Instead, we use electric light to synchronize most of our societal activities regardless of where the sun is at in its course through the heavens.

The conflict is that the primordial cycle of light and dark from the sun is deeply embedded within our evolutionary past as coded in our DNA; we have a “built-in” biological time for body temperature, hormone levels, sleep, and much more, that cycles very close to 24 hours.

Modern society requires synchronization in such things as school start times, work times and television watching times. All of these can desynchronize our social activity from our biological time. There is mounting evidence that chronic circadian rhythm disruption leads to several serious diseases as well as depression and mood disorders. On a societal level, the economic impact may also be large.

Lefties of a boundary healthier than righties?

As a test of this idea, Giuntella and Mazzonna predicted that at the boundaries between time zones within the United States, people on the left side of the boundary would be healthier than people on the right side, and the economies stronger; the left side would be the eastern extreme of one time zone, and the right side would be the western extreme of the adjacent time zone. The sun sets about an hour later on the right side.

Their primary unit of analysis was the county. They used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from the U.S. Census, as well as information on sleep duration and quality from two national surveys. They did several different analyses, one of which was to group counties within 100 miles of the time zone boundary into two groups, one on the left side and one on the right side. They then compared the two groups for health outcomes.

As they predicted, there were discontinuities between counties on either side of time zone boundaries in sleep and in risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and breast cancer. In each case, counties on the right side of the boundary did worse: shorter sleep and higher risk of disease. They then calculated an overall composite health index using the diseases cited above, and it, too, was lower in the counties on the right side. They ascribe their findings to the later clock time of sunset on the right side of the boundary.…’

Via The Conversation

’While browsing the GOES Image Viewer a few months ago, I had an idea: with the data frequency that these new GOES satellites provide, I could build a Mac app that pulls the newest image every 20 minutes and sets it as your desktop background.

What resulted was a simple little menu bar app that gives you a near real-time view of Earth all day long. I’ve been using it for a few weeks as I’ve built it, and it is an absolute joy to have a window to Earth all day.…’

Via Main Engine Cut Off (thanks to Jason Snell)

’Just 100 companies produce 71 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. This map lists their names and locations, and their CEOs. The climate crisis may be too complex for these 100 people to solve, but naming and shaming them is a good start.…’

Via Big Think

On the risks of immersing oneself in a role:

’In 2008, actor Heath Ledger accidentally overdosed on sleeping pills and died, aged 28.
One myth that attached itself to Ledger’s death was that it was somehow a result of immersing himself in the character of the Joker.
New research suggest that fully immersed actors “forget themselves” in the sense that they actively ignore facts about who they are, temporarily subordinating their own thoughts and feelings to those of their character.…’

Via Big Think

And humans will suffer as a result:

• The United Nations reported that nature is declining at an unparalleled rate, and humans are the cause. [Washington Post / Darryl Fears](https://voxcom.cmail19.com/t/d-l-pttihdt-puyhiujv-t/)
• The UN’s biodiversity report outlines a shocking reality: 1 million species are on the verge of extinction, which threatens human survival as well. [[National Geographic / Stephen Leahy](https://voxcom.cmail19.com/t/d-l-pttihdt-puyhiujv-i/)
• Climate change is the driving force behind this decline. Overfishing, the use of fossil fuels, pollution, and neglect of the growth of invasive species have also been identified as the cause behind the dwindling biodiversity. [NYT / Brad Plumer](https://voxcom.cmail19.com/t/d-l-pttihdt-puyhiujv-d/)
• While this isn’t the first report to predict Earth’s grim future, this report stands out because it details how humans drastically rely on the well-being of these specimens. The health of our ecosystem is directly tied to food security and access to clean water. [Smithsonian Magazine / Maddie Burakoff](https://voxcom.cmail19.com/t/d-l-pttihdt-puyhiujv-h/)
• The situation has already gotten so bad that small efforts will not suffice, and governments will need to make transformative changes if they want to save the planet. Some of the solutions suggested by the authors include adopting techniques that grow more food on less land and cracking down on illegal logging and fishing. [AP / Seth Borenstein](https://voxcom.cmail19.com/t/d-l-pttihdt-puyhiujv-k/)
• Nations have begun to recognize the threat of a failing ecosystem, and two high-level summits have already been scheduled for world leaders to discuss their conservation goals in 2020. [CNN / Isabelle Gerretsen](https://voxcom.cmail19.com/t/d-l-pttihdt-puyhiujv-b/)
• The UN report sends a dire message to all nations that action needs to be made –– quickly. Changing lifestyles to prevent a climate catastrophe may seem arduous, but the cost of doing nothing will be much higher. [Guardian / Robert Watson](https://voxcom.cmail19.com/t/d-l-pttihdt-puyhiujv-n/)

Study: People who swear are more honest:

’There are two conflicting perspectives regarding the relationship between profanity and dishonesty. These two forms of norm-violating behavior share common causes, and are often considered to be positively related. On the other hand, however, profanity is often used to express one’s genuine feelings, and could therefore be negatively related to dishonesty. In three studies, we explored the relationship between profanity and honesty. … We found a consistent positive relationship between profanity and honesty; profanity was associated with less lying and deception at the individual level, and with higher integrity at the society level.…’

Via Stanford Graduate School of Business

Suzie Lopez:

’The Wake has been called “the most colossal leg pull in literature” and even Joyce’s patron fell out with him over it. But Wake scholarship is thriving more than ever. In the words of Joyce Scholar Sam Slote almost “any analysis will be incomplete.” After Ulysses, Joyce was interested in the subconscious interior monologue, our dreaming lives. He also wanted to shatter the conventions of language to form an almost eternal every-language. It sounds somewhat like the dial of a radio in Joyce’s time, static turning into myriad languages. Joyce intentionally made passages more obscure to evoke radio. PHD candidate Yuta Imazeki has calculated “numbers of portmanteaux and foreign words in the radio passage” that are higher in frequency than any others; intentionally obscure. So is it an indecipherable ruse or a harbinger of hypertext? Could it even be… therapeutic? As a self-taught enthusiast, how did I even get into this?…’

Via Literary Hub

’Jon Stewart was once asked to describe his importance as a political commentator on The Daily Show. He replied: “On a scale of zero to 10, I’d go with a zero, not very important.”

That was dead wrong, according to a new study that suggests Stewart’s 2015 departure from the left-leaning show caused not only a drop in ratings, but also a slight drop in voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election – enough to tip the scales in favor of President Donald Trump.…’

Via Big Think

’All life as we know it relies on carbon and water. But researchers speculate this doesn’t have to be the case..…’

Via Big Think

NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller explains how the universe itself has been a salve for her fears:

’The universe chooses people to be interested it, she says. What has the universe chosen you for?…’

Via Big Think

Dementia, disrespect, and loneliness – that is not your future, says aging expert Ashton Applewhite:

’The best anti-aging advice? Stop stereotyping old people! Cultural messaging about the pitfalls of old age causes undue stress that prematurely ages the brain and shortens life spans.
People who have a positive outlook on aging can live 7.5 years longer than those who buy into cultural stereotypes about getting old.…’

Via Big Think

Brian Dooley:

’Choosing the right candidate to beat Trump is obviously a massively important decision, but American progressives look like they’re making the same mistakes that we on the left in Britain made in the 1980s in responding to Margaret Thatcher.
At the age of 16 I campaigned in the 1979 general election against Thatcher. Despite my endearing appeals across hundreds of doorsteps, she won, ushering in 18 years of continuous Conservative Party rule.
During the early 1980s I was a local Labour Party activist in Britain, and like many others on the left responded to Thatcher’s win by deriding those who had voted for her. It’s a mistake I see happening in America now.
We thought we would win by making it socially unacceptable to support Thatcher, and we focused on proving how uncool it was to vote Conservative. We called Thatcher supporters much worse things than deplorables, and felt good mocking their narrow nationalism.…’

Via Medium

’“Nobody cared or nobody understood that without this next vial of insulin, I wouldn’t live to see another week,” said 28-year-old Kristen Whitney Daniels.

She started rationing her insulin after she was kicked off her parents’ insurance plan two years ago.

“I can’t really explain how isolating and how terrifying it is,” she said.

She’s now a patient at the Yale Diabetes Center, where a recent Journal of American Medical Association study found one in four patients reported “cost-related underuse.” Dr. Kasia Lipska treats patients at the clinic, and was the study’s lead author. She testified on Capitol Hill last week.

“This vial of insulin cost just $21 when it first came on the market in 1996. It now costs $275,” she said.…’

Via Boing Boing

’In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky gave a short summary of how the modern Republican Party coalition between the rich and the religious, white working class was built, decade by decade.

They have a primary constituency, a real constituency: extreme wealth and corporate power. That’s who they have to serve. That’s their constituency. You can’t get votes that way, so you have to do something else to get votes. What do you do to get votes? This was begun by Richard Nixon with the Southern strategy: try to pick up racists in the South. The mid–1970s, Paul Weyrich, one of the Republican strategists, hit on a brilliant idea. Northern Catholics voted Democratic, tended to vote Democratic, a lot of them working-class. The Republicans could pick up that vote by pretending — crucially, “pretending” — to be opposed to abortion. By the same pretense, they could pick up the evangelical vote. Those are big votes — evangelicals, northern Catholics. Notice the word “pretense.” It’s crucial. You go back to the 1960s, every leading Republican figure was strongly, what we call now, pro-choice. The Republican Party position was — that’s Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, all the leadership — their position was: Abortion is not the government’s business; it’s private business — government has nothing to say about it. They turned almost on a dime in order to try to pick up a voting base on what are called cultural issues.

Same with gun rights. Gun rights become a matter of holy writ because you can pick up part of the population that way. In fact, what they’ve done is put together a coalition of voters based on issues that are basically, you know, tolerable to the establishment, but they don’t like it. OK? And they’ve got to hold that, those two constituencies, together. The real constituency of wealth and corporate power, they’re taken care of by the actual legislation…

Appealing to those fears and issues has been very effective and has been joined in recent years by conservatives and conservative media eroding trust in many of America’s familiar institutions, such as the scientific community, journalism, and government (some of which erosion, to be fair, has been self-inflicted). Keep in mind that as recently as 10 years ago, Republicans believed in climate science until their constituency (aka the wealthy industrialists) steered them away from that path.…’

Via Kottke

J.D. Durkin on Twitter: “…beginning of the end for us idiots… ”:

Via Twitter

Not one driver’s fault, but everybody’s:

’…[P]hantom jams are not the fault of individual drivers, but result instead from the collective behavior of all drivers on the road. It works like this. Envision a uniform traffic flow: All vehicles are evenly distributed along the highway, and all drive with the same velocity. Under perfect conditions, this ideal traffic flow could persist forever. However, in reality, the flow is constantly exposed to small perturbations: imperfections on the asphalt, tiny hiccups of the engines, half-seconds of driver inattention, and so on. To predict the evolution of this traffic flow, the big question is to decide whether these small perturbations decay, or are amplified.

If they decay, the traffic flow is stable and there are no jams. But if they are amplified, the uniform flow becomes unstable, with small perturbations growing into backwards-traveling waves called “jamitons.” These jamitons can be observed in reality, are visible in various types of models and computer simulations, and have also been reproduced in tightly controlled experiments.…’

Via Nautilus

’George Conway appears to have come up with a brand-new scathing nickname for President Donald Trump.

The conservative attorney and frequent Trump critic, who is married to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, on Thursday repeatedly called his wife’s boss “Deranged Donald.” It seemed to have stuck, with the hashtag #DerangedDonald trending on Twitter.

Conway used the mocking moniker in a series of tweets in which he criticized Trump and also took a swipe at widely watched conservative cable network Fox News, whose prime time hosts staunchly defend the president…’

Via HuffPost

Navy drafts reporting guidelines:

’A recent uptick in sightings of unidentified flying objects — or as the military calls them, “unexplained aerial phenomena” — prompted the Navy to draft formal procedures for pilots to document encounters, a corrective measure that former officials say is long overdue.

As first reported by POLITICO, these intrusions have been happening on a regular basis since 2014. Recently, unidentified aircraft have entered military-designated airspace as often as multiple times per month, Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, told The Washington Post on Wednesday. Citing safety and security concerns, Gradisher vowed to “investigate each and every report.” He said, “We want to get to the bottom of this. We need to determine who’s doing it, where it’s coming from and what their intent is. We need to try to find ways to prevent it from happening again.”

Luis Elizondo, a former senior intelligence officer, told The Post that the new Navy guidelines formalized the reporting process, facilitating data-driven analysis while removing the stigma from talking about UFOs, calling it “the single greatest decision the Navy has made in decades.”

[The government admits it studies UFOs. So about those Area 51 conspiracy theories …]…’

Via The Washington Post

The fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 30 years on:

’Chernobyl was the worst nuclear accident in human history and its legacy is still being felt today. The public is often led to believe that the exclusion zone, a depopulated 20-mile circle around the blown plant, safely contained Chernobyl radioactivity. But there is a second zone in southern Belarus. In it, people lived for 15 years in levels of contamination as high as areas within the official zone until the area was finally abandoned in 1999.

That is just one of the things Kate Brown discovered during the 10 years she spent interviewing doctors, scientists and international officials involved in the Chernobyl disaster and scouring over 20 archives to unearth never-before-seen documents. She talks to Anushka Asthana about the impact of international organisations lying about the disaster and why we should be asking far more questions about the global health effects of radioactivity as we enter a new nuclear age.…’

Via The Guardian (podcast)

Study published Thursday in Antarctic Science:

’Climate change may be contributing to the penguin population crash at Halley Bay which is “unprecedented in the historical record.”…’

Via Motherboard

’In Italy, a team of scientists is using a highly sophisticated detector to hunt for dark matter. The team observed an ultra-rare particle interaction that reveals the half-life of a xenon–124 atom to be 18 sextillion years.…’

Via Big Think

’Psychopaths are manipulative, violent, impulsive, and lack empathy — but research suggests that psychopathy may be an evolutionary strategy rather than a disorder.…’

Via Big Think

’After selling himself to American voters as the great negotiator and dealmaker, maybe Donald Trump was simply too embarrassed by the truth: He’d been taken advantage of, deeply and systemically, by everyone around him, including by Russia and Vladimir Putin and by his own staff. During the campaign, they grifted him without his knowledge. In the White House, they simply ignored him.

The bottom line of the Mueller report is that if Trump wasn’t guilty of conspiracy, he was simply conned by everyone around him. To a man as egotistical as he is, the reality that everyone was in on the con but him might hurt more than Mueller’s handcuffs.…’

Read article at WIRED

Related: Mueller’s report: A profile of a president willing to sell out his country (Salon.com)

In three decades of advocating for prison abolition, the activist and scholar has helped transform how people think about criminal justice.

’Instead of asking whether anyone should be locked up or go free, why don’t we think about why we solve problems by repeating the kind of behavior that brought us the problem in the first place? [We should] consider why, as a society, we would choose to model cruelty and vengeance.…’

Read article at The New York Times Magazine

“How are we to account for such glaring defects in the performances of someone who is indisputably one of the most important musicians in the history of jazz?…’

Read article at JSTOR Daily

’Legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis recorded the second and final session of his seminal album Kind of Blue on April 22nd, 1959. It remains the best-selling jazz album of all time. Its unforgettable solos by Davis, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, and pianist Bill Evans create an ethereal atmosphere; the album continues to be one of the most beloved records in jazz.

Kind of Blue popularized a new approach to improvisation. Rather than basing its five tunes on a rigid framework of changing chords, as was conventional for post-bop music, Davis and Evans wrote pieces with a more limited set of scales in different modes. “Modes” maintain the basic intervals of an underlying major or minor scale, but move the tonic (first note) to one of its other notes, creating different moods or coloration. As this detailed video on modal jazz by Polyphonic explains, this creates a more open network of harmonic relationships. Davis and Evans’s “cooler” approach shifts the musical emphasis from “harmonic rhythm” of post-bop jazz, toward the melodic inventiveness of individual players.

The modal approach to jazz became so popular it changed the way jazz was taught and analyzed.
The modal approach to jazz became so popular it changed the way jazz was taught and analyzed. This has justified the significance of the album for many players and aficionados. Music scholar Samuel Barrett argues, however, that this narrative oversimplifies both the way Kind of Blue was composed and performed, and its true cultural impact.…’

Read article at JSTOR Daily

’The Extinction Symbol was created in January 2011 by ESP, an artist from London whose identity is kept secret.[1] It represents the Holocene or Sixth Mass Extinction.

The symbol is described on the Extinction Symbol website as “The circle signifies the planet, while the hourglass inside serves as a warning that time is rapidly running out for many species.”

After its creation the symbol gradually attracted an online following amongst environmentalists and activists. It came to be used by environmental action group Extinction Rebellion, created in 2018, and has been sprayed in removable chalk paint on government buildings during actions to raise environmental awareness in the UK. The aims of Extinction Rebellion go beyond species extinction, including climate change and other issues that could lead to human extinction.…’

Via Wikipedia

Ezra Klein:

’As I understand the House Democrats’ plan, it’s to use the Mueller report to launch investigations, send out subpoenas, and hold public hearings. All of that could lead to revelations that tilt the public toward impeachment, it could prove that the public doesn’t consider these revelations important enough to merit impeachment, or it could simply inform the public to help them make a decision in the 2020 election.

Either way, it keeps the focus on Trump’s crimes and his lies, rather than overwhelming that conversation with a debate over removing Trump from office at a time when there’s no prospect of marshaling the votes to actually remove him from office. It seems like a reasonable strategy to me.…’

Read article in Vox

Recreated using an ancient skull:

’A forensic artist in Scotland has made a hyper realistic model of an ancient dog based on the skull of a dog dug up in Orkney, Scotland, which lived and died 4,000 years ago.
The model gives us a glimpse of some of the first dogs humans befriended.…’

Via Big Think

’Warren is the first 2020 presidential candidate to call for Donald Trump’s impeachment as a result of the findings in the redacted Mueller Report released yesterday.

Warren going on the record means every candidate will be put on the spot this weekend regarding impeachment. Things are about to get interesting.…’

Via Boing Boing

’The contacts with Russians documented in the report amount to a devastating indictment of Trump’s approach to politics.…’

Via Vox

’“If this is what a complete and total exoneration looks like, I’d hate to see a damning report.”…’

Via Vox

’In short, Mueller did not find evidence that Trump directly colluded with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election — so he probably wasn’t obstructing justice to cover up a secret plot with the Russians.

But that doesn’t exonerate Trump; it’s possible Trump still tried to obstruct an investigation against him just because it might make him, his campaign, or his family look bad or guilty of other crimes. (Crucially, obstruction of justice doesn’t necessarily require an underlying crime.)…’

Via Vox

’Upon hearing he would be investigated, Trump’s first reaction was, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.” This is according to the notes kept by Jody Hunt, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff.

That exclamation, so far, appears to have been incorrect. The report does not recommend impeachment of Trump or urge his resignation, and as of this writing, it appears unlikely to lead to either. But it’s a startling first response to the news from the president.…’

Via Vox

’Consciousness has long been difficult to define, whether you’re a biologist, neuroscientist, or philosopher. So Frans de Waal looks at what actions humans take that require conscious thought. Comparing them to actions in certain animals suggests consciousness is not a human trait alone.…’

Via Big Think

’Luke O’Neil put a call out for his readers’ stories of their loved ones’ capture by Fox News, being overtake by its paranoid, racist conspiracy mindset: he got back a heartbreaking collection of tales of “funny, compassionate” older relatives turning into someone who was “increasingly angry, bigoted, and paranoid” – some people even found their older relatives dead in front of a TV playing Fox.

The stories mostly involve people who saw themselves as “conservative” but who kept any kind of racial animus or other socially unacceptable views to themselves, but whose conservative worldviews were deepened and weaponized, in part by sprawling and aggressive direct-mail ad campaigns for quack remedies, prepper supplies, gold bullion, and so on.

Many of the people transformed by Fox seemed to begin their transformation in 2008, with the election of America’s first Black president, and at the dawn of the financial crisis, when the slow upward redistribution of America’s wealth to the 1% took a precipitous leap.…’

Via Boing Boing

Ten Spots haul a truck across the Boston Dynamics parking lot. 

Via YouTube (thanks to Boing Boing)

’If two men in a world of more than 7 billion people can provide €300million to restore Notre Dame, within six hours, then there is enough money in the world to feed every mouth, shelter every family and educate every child. The failure to do so is a matter of will, and a matter of system.

The failure to do so comes from our failure to recognise the mundane emergencies that claims lives all around us every single day. Works of art and architectural history and beauty rely on the ingenuity of people, and it is people who must be protected above all else.

Brick and mortar and stained-glass might burn, but they do not bleed, and they do not starve, and they do not suffer. Humans suffer. Everywhere in the world, from Paris to Persepolis, people are suffering. But their suffering is every day. It does not light up a front page, and it does not inspire immediate donations from the world’s wealthiest men.…’

Via JOE

In fact, it might reinforce tribalism:

’Researchers who study empathy have noticed that it’s actually really hard to do what we were striving for in my generation: empathize with people who are different than you are, much less people you don’t like. But if researchers set up a conflict, people get into automatic empathy overdrive, with their own team. This new research has scrambled notions of how empathy works as a force in the world. For example, we often think of terrorists as shockingly blind to the suffering of innocents. But Breithaupt and other researchers think of them as classic examples of people afflicted with an “excess of empathy. They feel the suffering of their people.”

Breithaupt called his new book The Dark Sides of Empathy, because there’s a point at which empathy doesn’t even look like the kind of universal empathy I was taught in school. There is a natural way that empathy gets triggered in the brain — your pain centers light up when you see another person suffering. But out in the world it starts to look more like tribalism, a way to keep reinforcing your own point of view and blocking out any others.…’

Via NPR

I’m not really surprised at this finding, as I think connections to our in-group are evolutionarily hardwired and empathy is the currency for those affiliations. But it inherently entails excluding the Other. The conceit of universal empathy attempts to force the human round peg into the square hole. 

’A Florida man was killed by “the world’s most dangerous bird” last Friday, becoming one of the few known cases of death-by-cassowary in modern history.

The victim was identified as Martin Hajos, a 75-year-old man who owned a farm near Alachua, according to the Gainesville Sun. On Friday morning, Hajos was rushed to UF Health Shands Hospital “under a trauma alert,” and later succumbed to undescribed injuries.

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“He was doing what he loved,” said a woman who claimed that Hajos was her fiance.

Emergency responders said that Hajos was killed by a cassowary, a large and flightless relative of the emu with a dangerous reputation and, most notably, weaponized feet punctuated by talons up to five inches long.

Cassowaries are ratites, belonging a group of birds characterized by their inability to fly. Native to tropical forests in Australia and New Guinea, they can reach heights of more than five feet and weigh up to 135 pounds.

“It looks like it was accidental,” Alachua County Fire Rescue deputy chief Jeff Taylor told the Gainesville Sun about the incident. “My understanding is that the gentleman was in the vicinity of the bird and at some point fell. When he fell, he was attacked.”…’

Via Motherboard

Pseudoscience and Psychobabble:

’The brain became a celebrity this week when Ariana Grande shared the results of a scan of her brain seemingly showing signs of severe PTSD:

Is there any science behind this?

Not really.

The source of the scan isn’t clear but I’m 99% sure that the image was taken at one of Dr Daniel Amen‘s controversial clinics. Amen uses similar graphics in his brain scans. If it is an Amen scan, then the ‘blobs’ seen on Grande’s brain represent areas of increased or decreased cerebral blood flow (CBF) as assessed using a method called SPECT. SPECT is a fairly old neuroimaging methodology that forms the heart of Amen’s network of clinics.

Bear in mind that the blobs on an image like this are statistical illustrations. A scan like this is not a photograph or x-ray of structural changes, and without knowing the context in which the scan was taken and the methods used to analyze it, it doesn’t mean much.

Most psychiatrists and neuroscientists would not use SPECT or any other type of brain scan to diagnose PTSD. Dr Amen claims to be able to do so, and in 2015 published a paper reporting on this, but I wouldn’t put much faith in it.…’

Via Neuroskeptic

’If you grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, have children, or have ever been to a kid’s birthday party, then you’ve probably heard the Canadian crooner’s timeless bangers “Baby Beluga” and “Banana Phone.”

Raffi’s saccharine melodies and lyrics actually read like discrete guides on how to live and love with dignity, starting at childhood. With an adult’s ear, the chorus of Raffi’s biggest hit — “Baby beluga in the deep blue sea / Swim so wild and you swim so free” — appears to be about learning how to individuate while still feeling safe and held by your caretakers. It’s a valuable message, even for adults. The last line of “Everything Grows,” an ode to the universality of the life cycle, is, “Mamas do and papas too / everything grows.” It’s a subtle reminder to parents that while we may be done with the physical part of our growth, emotional growth is a lifelong journey.

But learning to live with dignity means learning about what it’s like to live without it and the nefarious forces that try to take it away. … In recent months, the 70-year-old singer has gained a bit of attention for his active, politically engaged Twitter feed where many posts are accompanied with the dissenter’s slogan du jour: #Resist and #ResistFacism. Raffi’s outspokenness around Trump and his policies goes back to when he was elected. Just last week the singer called Trump unfit for office, racist, and misogynistic. In December he said we must “fight fascism with everything we’ve got.” Seemingly trite, the addition of Raffi’s voice to the American political landscape is actually invaluable — the singer-songwriter is the premier emissary for children and his positions carry with them an incredible weight. And the children, after all, are the future.…’

Via New York

After 50 years, Angels vacate notorious Greenwich Village headquarters brownstone for new digs in former Baptist church on Long Island.

’“The parties used to be great,” Nancy said. “Until the explosion.” In 1990, a garbage-can firecracker killed a fourteen-year-old boy. Over the years, the East Village Angels both caused and prevented mayhem. In 1994, the Times characterized this mayhem, part “lore and part police reports,” as “countless decibel-cranking parties, LSD-laced misadventures, drug deals, orgies and random acts of violence against passers-by.” In recent years, parking-space tussles resulted in beatings and a shooting; a woman who pounded on the door, screaming, was badly beaten. In 1978, the chapter president, Vincent (Big Vinny) Girolamo, of plaque fame, allegedly pushed his girlfriend off the roof, to her death. (He died, of stab wounds, before he could stand trial.) Innumerable bad vibes were doled out after unwanted bench-sitting, dog-peeing, and photography incidents. But, from the scuzz era to the N.Y.U.-and-condos era, club members also defended their neighbors; the Angels’ block was considered the safest around.

“I haven’t heard anybody say ‘Good riddance,’ ” Janet said.

“I’ll miss the way they decorated at Christmas,” Nancy said.

“They used to break people’s cameras,” Janet said. In the Instagram age, unwanted photography had skyrocketed.…’

Via The New Yorker (thanks to Boing Boing)

’Peter Temin says 80 per cent of the population is burdened with debt and anxious about job security 

Via The Independent

New version of friendly fire:

’Two F–16s were conducting firing exercises on January 21. It appears that the damaged aircraft actually caught up with the 20mm rounds it fired as it pulled out of its firing run. At least one of them struck the side of the F–16’s fuselage, and parts of a round were ingested by the aircraft’s engine. The F–16’s pilot managed to land the aircraft safely at Leeuwarden Air Base.

The incident reflects why guns on a high-performance jet are perhaps a less than ideal weapon. The Vulcan is capable of firing over 6,000 shots per minute, but its magazine carries only 511 rounds—just enough for five seconds of fury. The rounds have a muzzle velocity of 3,450 feet per second (1050 meters per second). That is speed boosted initially by the aircraft itself, but atmospheric drag slows the shells down eventually. And if a pilot accelerates and maneuvers in the wrong way after firing the cannon, the aircraft could be unexpectedly reunited with its recently departed rounds.…’

Via Ars Technica

’Bruh. I give up, breh. I’m telling you, brah, I endeavored to find a pattern: I wanted so badly to uncover the blueprint or even the architect behind the “Bro,” Bruh,” “Breh,” “Brah” and “Bruv” complex. Which bros used which version, and where, and why. I believed in my gut that bros — even if unbeknownst to themselves — must be adhering to some intrinsic fraternal “Bra-Vinci Code.” For days, I fed myself stories of a cryptograph lying in the depths of a hidden Bro-tlantis that specifically said: This is when you use “Bruh,” instead of “Bro.” Or for that matter, this is when it’s more succinct to use “Breh” instead of “Bruh.” At the very least, I thought, there has to be a specific “Brah” demographic that was at least faintly in contrast to the folks who use “Breh,” or “bruh.”
I wanted clear answers. But I was a fool. The bros are many things, including — even if unbeknownst to themselves — complex. And so, while I did largely find that purveyors of the many masks of “bro” often swing freely from one usage to the next, entangling themselves in a bro-lingo labyrinth, there are still some, albeit mostly overlapping, norms.…’

Via MEL Magazine

Here’s why…

’Some friendships last a lifetime, but most have a lifespan. In the U.S., best friends tend to last for 10 years on average, says Nicholas Christakis.
In friendships, one person may begin to defect or “free ride”, which causes the other person to choose between cooperation or defection. People tend to choose the latter so they won’t be taken advantage of.
A certain amount of social fluidity, taking a breather from a friendship, can actually make a friendship last longer.…’

Via Why do good friends drift apart? – Big Think

The battle to make science more uncertain:

’The scientific world is abuzz following recommendations by two of the most prestigious scholarly journals – The American Statistician and Nature – that the term “statistical significance” be retired.

In their introduction to the special issue of The American Statistician on the topic, the journal’s editors urge “moving to a world beyond ‘p<0.05,’” the famous 5 percent threshold for determining whether a study’s result is statistically significant. If a study passes this test, it means that the probability of a result being due to chance alone is less than 5 percent. This has often been understood to mean that the study is worth paying attention to.

The journal’s basic message – but not necessarily the consensus of the 43 articles in this issue, one of which I contributed – was that scientists first and foremost should “embrace uncertainty” and “be thoughtful, open and modest.”…’

Via Neuroscience News

Matthew Miller, former Director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Justice Department, writes:

’The attorney general’s actions raise suspicions about whether he is acting primarily to benefit the president because they don’t make sense when viewed through any other lens. Barr is neither inexperienced nor naive, yet when deciding among the several options available to him when he received Mueller’s report, he chose the one course of action that would raise questions about his own integrity and plunge the Justice Department into political controversy.…’

Via POLITICO Magazine

‘It’s probably fair to say that we’ve spent the last thirty years acting as if we don’t live in a post-Chernobyl world.…’

Via Kottke

’“Congress has to act,” Trump said. “They have to get rid of catch and release, chain migration, visa lottery, they have to get rid of the whole asylum system because it doesn’t work, and frankly, we should get rid of judges. You can’t have a court case every time somebody steps foot on our ground.”

Trump’s comments marked the second time this week he has urged Congress “to get rid of judges” — a proposal that, thankfully, for those of us who value checks and balances, has little chance of gaining traction now that Democrats control the House.

The president, however, is not even trying to hide the fact he’d like to have the power to summarily deport migrants and asylum seekers, and has already demonstrated a willingness to try and seize emergency powers toward that end.

Later, while Air Force One was on its way to California, Trump posted a tweet in which he characterized the entire “press” as “truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

Trump’s tweet represented an escalation of his anti-press rhetoric. In the past, Trump had been careful to qualify his “enemy of the people” attacks as applying to “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA,” the “Fake News,” or only pertaining to “much of the Media.”…’

Via Vox

57 images:

’How striking scenes from ‘The Shining,’ ‘The Wicker Man,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ and other iconic horror movies make an indelible mark on us.…’

Via The Outline

How many are seared into your memory?

’The world’s law enforcement agencies have a terrible blind spot when it comes to far-right, white supremacist terror groups, treating them as unimportant lone wolves despite their prolific and bloody acts of violence.

The pro-Brexit side in the UK has more than its share of murderous right-wing thugs, who were critical to the passage of the initial Brexit vote, going so far as to stab an anti-Brexit MP to death for her political views.

Now, with the future of Brexit in doubt, there’s reason to worry that these terror cells will exact vengeance on the UK. Yesterday, a video surfaced of British soldiers using a picture of Jeremy Corbyn – who could well be the next Prime Minister of Britain – for target practice.

On the same day, the trial of a neo-Nazi who had plotted the murder of an anti-Brexit MEP concluded.

Other soldiers have been recorded cheering for Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defense League, a far-right hate group, who is now an advisor to the UKIP, the political party that led the pro-Brexit movement. Priti Patel, a Tory MP, has called Corbyn “a man who sides with terrorists and socialist dictators.” The right-wing terrorist Darren Osborne – who murdered a man when he drove his van onto the pavement in front of the Houses of Parliament – has said that one of his goals was to murder Corbyn, saying “it would be one less terrorist [on] our streets.”…’

Via Boing Boing

First image of black hole to be unveiled next week:

’They’ve captured our imaginations for decades, but we’ve never actually photographed a black hole before – until now.

Next Wednesday, at several press briefings around the world, scientists will apparently unveil humanity’s first-ever photo of a black hole, the European Space Agency said in a statement. Specifically, the photo will be of “Sagittarius A,” the supermassive black hole that’s at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

But aren’t black holes, well, black, and thus invisible, so none of our telescopes can “see” them? Yes – therefore the image we’re likely to see will be of the “event horizon,” the edge of the black hole where light can’t escape. 

Even that will be challenging, however, as the black hole at the center of our galaxy is “shrouded in a thick cloud of dust and gas,” according to Science Alert. Even more confounding is that spacetime around a black hole is “weird.”…’

Via USAToday

’Since 2012, paleontologist Robert DePalma has been excavating a site in North Dakota that he thinks is “an incredible and unprecedented discovery”. What’s potentially so special about this site? Fossils from dinosaurs and other animals from thousands of years before the asteroid impact are very hard to come by, leading some to believe that dinosaurs died out before the impact, not because of it. DePalma believes the site preserves, as if in amber, the day, the precise and exact day (and perhaps even the exact hour), that the massive asteroid believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs hit the Earth 65 million years ago.…’

Via Kottke

’The tragic deaths of Sydney Aiello and Calvin Desir, teen survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, remind us that for too many survivors, the pain and suffering endure and do not diminish. Instead, they are left reeling in the aftermath with no sense of closure. This is especially true of teens.…’

Via The Conversation

’…In a world of endless distraction, Mueller kept his focus. It is hard not to see the inquiry as an epic cultural and moral clash between the honorable American and the irredeemably ugly one; between the war-hero public servant and a draft-dodging liar and thug; between elegant, understated class and fathomless, bullhorn vulgarity….

…I’m grateful Mueller did not find a clear-cut case of provable treasonous criminality either on the president’s part or his family’s. The reason I’m relieved is that, however grave the crime, Trump would almost certainly have gotten away with it. In our current politics, there is simply no way for this Senate to convict Trump of an impeachable offense. And so there was always a real danger that this entire ordeal would end with an obviously proven high crime and misdemeanor, a thereby unavoidable impeachment process, and then an inevitable failure to convict in the Senate. And so Trump would become an openly criminal president, a walking inversion of the rule of law, leverage impeachment into his reelection, and our slide into strongman politics would have accelerated still further.…’

Via New York Magazine

Via Sam Smith (@skdtactical) • Instagram photos and videos

’This is a map of ARPANET circa May 1973 via David Newbury, who found it among his father’s papers. The first part of ARPANET was built nearly 50 years ago and became the basis of the modern internet. The network was so small in the early days that those circles and squares on the 1973 map represent individual computers and routers, not universities or cities.…’

Via Kottke

Can you see me on the map? (Striped shirt, beanie cap, thick glasses)

’Previous studies have shown that dogs can smell low blood sugar levels in their diabetic owners, along with certain cancers. They can even sniff out malaria in worn socks. Their keen sense of smell allows them to detect the associated changes to a person’s body odor resulting from an illness or health condition, a specific scent scientists refer to as an “olfactory profile.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests dogs are capable of detecting epileptic seizures before they happen—sometimes as much as 5 hours before an attack—but scientists haven’t been able to conclusively prove this, or figure out how our four-legged friends might be able to do it. Dogs might be picking up on cues beyond scent, such as detecting certain behaviors, movements, or postures in their epileptic owners prior to the onset of a seizure. At the same time, an olfactory profile for seizures doesn’t seem entirely plausible, given how variable seizures are in nature, and the specific ways in which each individual is affected.

…The aim of the new study, published today in Scientific Reports and co-authored by Amélie Catala from the University of Rennes in France, was to see if dogs are in fact capable of detecting a general epileptic seizure odor. The results of this preliminary investigation were undeniably encouraging.…’

Via Gizmodo

“Infections” found on brand new PCs:

’Office Depot and [Office Max] tricked customers into buying unneeded tech support services by offering PC scans that gave fake results, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Consumers paid up to $300 each for unnecessary services.

The FTC yesterday announced that Office Depot and its software supplier, Support.com, have agreed to pay a total of $35 million in settlements with the agency. Office Depot agreed to pay $25 million while Support.com will pay the other $10 million. The FTC said it intends to use the money to provide refunds to wronged consumers.…’

Via Ars Technica

As if you needed more reason not to shop there.

’California state lawmakers this week introduced a bill that would grant the state’s health department the power to approve all medical exemptions for childhood vaccinations, revoke fraudulent exemptions, and maintain a database of exemptions and the physicians who issue them.

The bill, SB 276, is designed to thwart the state’s recent problem of “unethical” doctors exempting children from mandatory vaccinations based on dubious or outright bogus medical grounds—often for fees.…’

Via Ars Technica

’During one Scottish woman’s lifetime, she has broken bones, burned her skin, and undergone surgery without feeling any pain—and she didn’t realize she’d been experiencing anything unusual until she was well into her 60s, according to a new case study.

Scientists are interested in people who feel little pain, as they hope to find ways to help those who do suffer from it. In this case, the woman had visited the hospital for a “normally painful” hand surgery but didn’t require any painkillers afterward. Thinking that seemed odd, a team of researchers were able to pinpoint her condition as linked to a pair of genetic mutations.

The woman had previously been diagnosed with arthritis in her hip, which she didn’t feel despite the “severe degree of joint degeneration,” according to the paper. She lived a long life of painlessness before realizing something strange was happening, reporting dental surgeries without anesthesia, painless cuts and broken bones, and even burns in which it took smelling her charred flesh to notice something was amiss. She even told the researchers she could eat scotch bonnet chili peppers with no effects other than a “‘pleasant glow’ in her mouth.” Oh, and she rarely felt any sort of anxiety, depression, fear, or panic—not even during a recent car accident, according to the paper.…’

Via Gizmodo

A number theorist with programming prowess has found a solution to 33 = x³ + y³ + z³, a much-studied equation that went unsolved for 64 years:

’Mathematicians long wondered whether it’s possible to express the number 33 as the sum of three cubes — that is, whether the equation 33 = x³+ y³+ z³ has a solution. They knew that 29 could be written as 3³ + 1³ + 1³, for instance, whereas 32 is not expressible as the sum of three integers each raised to the third power. But the case of 33 went unsolved for 64 years.

Now, Andrew Booker, a mathematician at the University of Bristol, has finally cracked it: He discovered that (8,866,128,975,287,528)³ + (–8,778,405,442,862,239)³ + (–2,736,111,468,807,040)³ = 33.

Booker found this odd trio of 16-digit integers by devising a new search algorithm to sift them out of quadrillions of possibilities. The algorithm ran on a university supercomputer for three weeks straight. (He says he thought it would take six months, but a solution “popped out before I expected it.”)…’

Via Quanta Magazine

’The Arctic community that’s home to the “doomsday vault” may be warming faster than any other town on Earth. Longyearbyen, Norway, is the world’s northernmost town, just 800 miles from the North Pole. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault — where copies of crop seeds are stored in case of global catastrophe — is located there. But the climate in Longyearbyen is heating up faster there than anywhere else, a Norwegian researcher says, because of accelerated Arctic warming: warmer temps reduce ice and snow cover, causing less sunlight to be reflected and more solar energy to be absorbed. So the vault, which was supposed to be an insurance policy of sorts against disasters like climate change, is being threatened by climate change itself..…’

Via CNN

’While foraging for mushrooms is fun, this video affirms that you really shouldn’t go hunting for some unless you’re with someone who really knows what they’re doing.…’

Via Digg

Whiting Awards Celebrate 10 Emerging Writers:

’Fair warning: It may be tough to find some of the 2019 Whiting Award winners on the shelves of your local bookstore. Most of the emerging writers have little more than a single widely published book to their name. A couple of them don’t even have that.

But what the 10 new Whiting recipients lack in publishing credits and international awards, they more than make up for in talent and promise — at least, according to the prize’s judges, who are bestowing $50,000 on each of them in the hopes of giving the winners “a first opportunity to devote themselves fully to writing, and the recognition has a significant impact.”

The winners announced at a ceremony Wednesday night in New York City, listed in alphabetical order, are: poet Kayleb Rae Candrilli, poet Tyree Daye, novelist Hernan Diaz, playwright Michael R. Jackson, nonfiction writer Terese Marie Mailhot, nonfiction writer Nadia Owusu, short fiction writer Nafissa Thompson-Spires, novelist Merritt Tierce, poet Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, and playwright Lauren Yee.…’

Via NPR

’The Sun is getting grumpy again after years of relative peace.…’

Via Motherboard

But the real story may be more disturbing:

’A new exhibit at the British Museum seems to clear up a longstanding debate. The figure in the painting is not screaming, but hearing a scream.

In a new exhibit titled Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, the museum features a lithograph version of the image that predated the iconic 1893 painting. Scrawled along the bottom is an inscription by the artist: “I felt the great scream throughout nature.”

The cryptic sentence refers to a walk Munch took near a fjord overlooking Oslo. He described it in a diary entry headed “Nice 22 January 1892”: I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

Another bit of supporting evidence: The painting’s original German title was “Der Schrei der Natur,” or “The Scream of Nature.”…’

Via Quartz

’After more than two years of criminal indictments and steady revelations about contacts between associates of Donald J. Trump and Russia, we already know a lot about the work done by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Here are the main findings and lines of inquiry and the people involved in each.…’

Via The New York Times

Ruling: Interior Department violated federal law by failing to take into account the climate impact of its oil and gas leasing…[F]irst time the Trump administration has been held to account for the climate impact of its energy dominance agenda, and it could have sweeping implications for the president’s plan

Via nola.com

This is good news, and I’m tickled to learn that it comes from legacy activism. The friend, Yvonne, who pointed me to this development, noted that the case was brought by advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility. Nearly forty years ago, both she and I were strongly involved in the disarmament activities of this group, founded by charismatic Australian physician Helen Caldicott. PSR took the stance that the threat of nuclear war was an urgent public health threat and organized large numbers of physicians and other health professionals to make it a core issue. So pleased to learn that Caldicott and PSR are still out there fighting the good fight. Thanks, Yvonne!

’…[K]ey supporters are expressing misgivings as they sour on displays of his abrasive, abusive personality. In recent days, Trump has attacked the late Republican war hero John McCain, his own aide’s staunchly conservative, influential husband George Conway, and an autoworker union boss in Ohio.

…[T]here are signs that some voters in key blocs are expressing misgivings. Here are a few examples…’

Via Quartz

…One can only hope.