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  • First_WarriorFirst_Warrior Posts: 3,469 ✭✭✭✭✭

    " L. A. Requiem by Robert Crais. 1999

  • OutdoorsSmoke_21191OutdoorsSmoke_21191 Posts: 2,803 ✭✭✭✭✭

    A good cigar and whiskey solve most problems.

  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭

    looking at the risks posed by AI now that it has been released to the world. I doubt it will be possible to keep hostiles from harnessing it. No doubt our military is looking into the potential for weaponization by others or ourselves, despiite efforts to mitigate these risks. In a world that is increasingly turning to authoritarian rule....

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(24)00001-3/fulltext

  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭
  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The average liter of bottled water has nearly a quarter million invisible pieces of ever so tiny nanoplastics, detected and categorized for the first time by a microscope using dual lasers.

    Scientists long figured there were lots of these microscopic plastic pieces, but until researchers at Columbia and Rutgers universities did their calculations they never knew how many or what kind. Looking at five samples each of three common bottled water brands, researchers found particle levels ranged from 110,000 to 400,000 per liter, averaging at around 240,000 according to a study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    https://apnews.com/article/plastic-nano-bottled-drinking-water-contaminate-b77dce04539828207fe55ebac9b27283

  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭

    How to think like a Bayesian

    In a world of few absolutes, it pays to be able to think clearly about probabilities. These five ideas will get you started

    https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-think-like-a-bayesian-and-make-better-decisions

    "No two people ever have the same course of evidence, and no two people ever have the same sequence of opinions over their lives. We should keep these divergent paths in mind when we encounter different views. But we should also remember one beautiful piece of Bayesian mathematics: if we apply Bayes’s Rule every time we update our opinions, then, no matter where our opinions begin, there’s a high probability that gathering more and more evidence will move them ever closer towards the truth. If we keep learning, and keep updating, then Bayes’s guide will lead us to our destination."

  • ShawnOLShawnOL Posts: 9,675 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I wouldn't have trusted one before the incident.

    Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.

  • YaksterYakster Posts: 27,916 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Huge ancient lost city found in the Amazon

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67940671

    Join us on Zoom vHerf (Meeting # 2619860114 Password vHerf2020 )
  • First_WarriorFirst_Warrior Posts: 3,469 ✭✭✭✭✭

    "Chosen Prey" by John Sandford 1989

  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭

    https://protagonist-science.medium.com/disparage-disorient-dispute-ff494e7f3ec4

    "Confusion is a natural part of life arising from error-prone communication, conflicting information, or unexpected observations. When confused, we often misinterpret information or situations in a way that conforms to our prior expectations, knowledge, and biases. The latter is what makes confusion interesting for anti-science actors as a tool of information warfare.
    Media manipulators — a mix of influencers, media owners, politicians, activists, grifters, entertainers, marketing departments, shadowy businesses, and clandestine actors — sow confusion in order to create space for unsubstantiated worldviews we might already be inclined to hold. Beliefs that are ultimately either unjustified given the current evidence, or directly contradicted by scientific knowledge."

  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭

    reminds me of the Firesign Theater's line "everything you know is wrong":

    The Big Ring, located 9 billion light years from Earth, is so huge that it challenges our current understanding of the universe.

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bwea/scientists-discover-big-ring-ultra-large-structure-in-space

  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭

    "But why do we remember the past and not the future? The reason for this asymmetry has to do with entropy — the amount of disorder in the universe. We have memories and historical records only because entropy in the past was lower than the entropy of the present."

    https://www.astronomy.com/science/what-is-time-an-astronomer-explains-the-search-to-find-its-origins/

  • Rdp77Rdp77 Posts: 6,730 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Huh?

  • ShawnOLShawnOL Posts: 9,675 ✭✭✭✭✭

    If we could remember the future we'd all be lottery winners.

    Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.

  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Or we would think 'why bother'.

  • Amos_UmwhatAmos_Umwhat Posts: 8,898 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited January 26

    @silvermouse said:
    Or we would think 'why bother'.

    I have this problem to a degree. My wife would always ask me "what will come next?" as I start a phase of a project. "I don't know yet, I'll solve that when I get there." was a typical response. She couldn't understand that if I thought the problem through to completion, I'd never complete the project because my brain considered it finished. Once that happens, I move on, and the original project never gets done. So, I keep it a little fuzzy.

    Regarding entropy, you could read What Entropy Means to Me by George Alec Effinger. I did. Didn't know any more at the end than I did at the beginning.

    WARNING:  The above post may contain thoughts or ideas known to the State of Caliphornia to cause seething rage, confusion, distemper, nausea, perspiration, sphincter release, or cranial implosion to persons who implicitly trust only one news source, or find themselves at either the left or right political extreme.  Proceed at your own risk.  

    "If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed.  If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." --  Mark Twain
  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I have settled on a 'whatever is next' approach.

  • YaksterYakster Posts: 27,916 ✭✭✭✭✭

    This seems to be an easier read because I've been streaming episodes of House lately.

    Join us on Zoom vHerf (Meeting # 2619860114 Password vHerf2020 )
  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭

    "Such a vision is one of negative capability, comfortable with the polyphonous complexity of motivations, of triumphs and failings. Bruegel’s moral imagination embraces what I’d call sympathetic debauchery, where the figures in Carnival’s army can decamp for Lent’s realm, and vice versa. He was a masterful conveyer of both the connections and conflicts between body and spirit. He is the fleshy prodigy of the soul, capable of expressing the subtle interlacing of salvation and sin. “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent” exemplifies an empathetic understanding of human frailty, ironically more sophisticated than those offered by the new Reformation and Counter-Reformation. What is most remarkable about Bruegel’s eerie, uncanny fever dream is that he offers us no interpretation, no side onto which to project our sympathies. In the fight between Carnival and Lent, humans must endeavor to be partisans of both."

    https://hyperallergic.com/869261/the-temptations-of-pieter-bruegel-the-elder/

  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,089 ✭✭✭✭✭

    What Is an Electronic Sackbut? It’s probably not what you think it is

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/electronic-music

  • Rdp77Rdp77 Posts: 6,730 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Vision …ain’t happening brother

  • VisionVision Posts: 8,623 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Rdp77 said:
    @Jrflickster
    I’m dumb…but I ain’t stoopid

    That's exactly what I said hence the quoting of @Jrflickster 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂 I said you wouldn't bite!

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