"We Be The Humans"
Older Retired White Guy. Buddhist.
"Non nobis solum"
Likes trees better than people. Books better than trees.
"We Be The Humans"
Joined Aug 2018
(This actually changes the way we should test)
This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic.
It’s not R.
The definition of k is a mouthful, but it’s simply a way of asking whether a virus spreads in a steady manner or in big bursts, whereby one person infects many, all at once. After nine months of collecting epidemiological data, we know that this is an overdispersed pathogen, meaning that it tends to spread in clusters
By Zeynep Tufekci
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/
To Read:
Black Feminist Ecological Thought: A Manifesto
Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature, art, and the environment.
Despite having many aligned priorities, there’s an alarming lack of diversity within ecocriticism, and how Black, African-descended women have cared about the natural environment and sustainability all along.
By Dr. Chelsea Mikael Frazier
https://atmos.earth/black-feminist-ecological-thought-essay/
To Read:
On Long Island, a Beachfront Haven for Black Families.
In the 1930s, a group of trailblazing African-Americans bought plots for themselves in Sag Harbor.
"All the children in the subdivisions belonged to every adult that lived there. If a child scraped her knee in front of the Grangers’ house, she could walk in scuffed and walk out with a bandaged wound. If one mother cooked, all the kids nearby ate."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/t-magazine/sag-harbor.html
More:
On story telling of the future you want to live in.
A Message From The Future II:
The Years Of Repair
Can we imagine a better future? If we stop talking about what winning actually looks like, isn’t that the same as giving up?
Video by Molly Crabapple, Opal Tometi, Avi Lewis
https://theintercept.com/2020/10/01/naomi-klein-message-from-future-covid/
Detecting Deep Fakes with a Heartbeat.
The researchers at SUNY and Intel found that “biological signals are not coherently preserved in different synthetic facial parts” and that “synthetic content does not contain frames with stable PPG.” Translation: Deep fakes can’t convincingly mimic how your pulse shows up in your face.
From:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/10/detecting-deep-fakes-with-a-heartbeat.html
What Does It Mean If a Vaccine Is ‘Successful’?
The pharma companies are all using different playbooks to test their Covid-19 shots,
By Adam Rogers
Even weirder, the trials all use slightly different definitions for those mild symptoms, which means they’re tracking different end points. The vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, both requiring two doses, will have subtly different criteria for success.
https://www.wired.com/story/what-does-it-mean-if-a-vaccine-is-successful/
How our imaginations can help decide Earth's future.
Storytelling can help in this task. In the following vignettes, we've imagined three possible futures for Australia. They involve different challenges, trade-offs and worldviews.
By Michelle Lim, Carina Wyborn, Federico Davila and Laura Pereira,
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-earth-future.html
Two Papers:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378015300546
and
Google/Fitbit will monetise health data and harm consumers.
The essential concern around this deal is the way that it enables Google to implement conduct that will strengthen its ability to gather and exploit health data, and undermine the ability of rivals to do so, in order to leverage its power into health and insurance markets.
By Marc Bourreau et.al.
https://voxeu.org/article/googlefitbit-will-monetise-health-data-and-harm-consumers
Is post-election violence impossible in 2020 America? No.
However, data suggests it is unlikely.
Ninety-five percent of the 12,607 political demonstrations in the U.S. between May 24 and Sept. 19, 2020, were peaceful. There were 351 other kinds of incidents, including imposing curfews and perpetrating physical attacks. In 29 of those, there was violence against civilians, where 12 people were killed, nine of them by the police.
And
https://acleddata.com/2020/07/09/introducing-the-us-crisis-monitor/
It’s Time for a Debt “Jubilee”
Why freeing American households and businesses from crippling private debt would be a boon to the economy.
By Richard Vague
https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/its-time-for-a-debt-jubilee/
And an interview with Richard Vague:
The deep Anthropocene
It tells a completely different story of Earth’s transformation than is commonly acknowledged in the natural sciences. ArchaeoGLOBE reveals that human societies transformed most of Earth’s biosphere much earlier and more profoundly than we thought – an insight that has serious implications for how we understand humanity’s relationship to nature and the planet as a whole.
https://aeon.co/essays/revolutionary-archaeology-reveals-the-deepest-possible-anthropocene
To Watch:
To understand the aversion to powerful women, look to the Greeks, says Mary Beard
Beard makes the case that, to truly overcome archetypes of powerful women as irresponsible, dangerous and conniving, female power needs a new framework focused on results, and decoupled from prestige.
Book:
"We Be The Humans"
boosted
Recovered from a "medic" in Portland.
Llama M-1911A1 copy in .32ACP.
This is the 3rd time I've seen a handgun recovered from a self-proclaimed "Antifa/BLM" "medic".
There aren't any rules or laws that prevent medics from being armed (all US combat medics are armed). But it is a bad precedent to set for protestors.
Also, fucking clean your fucking tools.
Providing decent living with minimum energy: A global scenario
“We’d probably have a changed mindset, where people’s basic human needs are met, so you get a shot at life. There may be lower working times because we’re not working more hours to create more stuff for ever-expanding markets or to consume more. There may be more time for families, for leisure, for the things that, for many people, are what really matter.”
By JoelMillward-Hopkinsa et.al.
(We are still 5 years out. But this is probably the best shot we have yet.)
Validating the physics behind the new MIT-designed fusion experiment.
David L. Chandler
"They realized the emergence of high-temperature superconducting technology enables a high magnetic field approach to producing net energy gain from a magnetic confinement system."
https://news.mit.edu/2020/physics-fusion-studies-0929
All seven papers, and an overview, here: (open access)
"We Be The Humans"
boosted
PSA:
ICAP has created fact sheets for all 50 states explaining the laws barring unauthorized private militia groups and what to do if groups of armed individuals are near a polling place or voter registration drive:
Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen
In this experimental feature-length film, director György Pálfi constructed a love story using clips from 450 films that span nearly the entire history of cinema. I was afraid this would be gimmicky, but it’s so well constructed and so smoothly adheres to the tropes of romantic movies that I got totally sucked in.
🤔
A sudden, and very morbid thought.
Joe did not impress me last night.
(I read the transcripts)
Yes I will vote for him......
But what if. Sometime after the inauguration, he passes.
And Harris becomes president.
We take the Senate, and add seats to the house.
Can we then have a functioning government again ?
"We Be The Humans"
Older Retired White Guy. Buddhist.
"Non nobis solum"
Likes trees better than people. Books better than trees.
"We Be The Humans"
Joined Aug 2018