Scott Siskind on progress in AI art.
Marginal Revolution summarizes a study that says blood plasma centers reduce crime.
Possible new class of antibiotics.
Perun on using drones to shoot down other drones, 1-hour video.
Large neolithic timber hall unearthed in Scotland.
Using DNA from a third "parent" to correct a harmful genetic condition.
Short article on water consumption by data centers.
Archaeologists still trying to figure out what Neolithic "roundels" were; in this Czech project they say they will excavate 90% of a large and very well preserved example. My prediction: they still won't know what it was.
One of Scott Siskind's readers summarizes a theory about how the brain works that purports to explain illusions, trance states, multiple personalities, and more.
Tyler Cowen says people writing that AIs might decide to exterminate humanity are giving AIs bad ideas.
Bari Weiss asks Tyler Cowen and Kyla Scanlon why young people are drawn to socialism, 1-hour podcast. Cowen: "This is the most volatile time I have seen in my life."
Neolithic bags decorated with dogs' teeth found in Germany. Which interests me because the only other such bag I ever heard of was found at a Neolithic site in Syria. Connection? Coincidence?
In the coal country of the Powder River Valley in Wyoming, Ramaco Resources announces that they are opening a new coal mine mainly to get at the rare earth minerals that are found both above and below the coal seam. (Mining.com, RareEarthExchange, Yahoo, company press release) I considered the possibility that this is just a coal mine with some rare earth hype, but the economics of opening a new coal mine in the US are awful, so I suppose the rare earths must be the main point.
Rebecca Heinrichs says all the smoke about WW II coming from right wingers should be considered a "1939 Project," parallel to the left-wing "1619 Project," that is, a way to influence future politics by reframing America's past. I agree and consider this truly awful.
Thread on Twitter/X arguing that declining residential mobility in the US strongly correlates with support for populist politicians; says one reason for lack of mobility is that housing is so much more expensive in the places with jobs.
In Montgomery County, Maryland (suburban DC) a new rent control law went into effect a year ago. Construction of new multi-family housing promptly ceased in the county.
Elon Musk goes on a Twitter/X binge about Trump and Epstein.
The long-term consequences of a bizarre 1960s experiment with teaching children a new alphabet.
Scott Siskind, long but fascinating meditation on the weirdness of life among Australian Aborigines.
Samuel Pepys' diary grew only slowly in the English imagination; hardly anyone had read it until well into the 1800s, and hardly anybody had read the problematic bits – owning a slave, offering men promotion in exchange for having sex with their wives – until after 1980. His description of the Great Fire of London got famous during the Blitz.
One young man explains to Tyler Cowen how he became a conservative.
2 comments:
Marginal Revolution summarizes a study that says blood plasma centers reduce crime.
Crime is usually an act of desperation. Giving the extremely poor a way to obtain money that doesn't require actual employment is a way to reduce their desperation, and thus reduce crime.
However, the American model has serious issues. For one thing, it not only allows people to have plasma drawn far more frequently than most other countries consider safe, it actively encourages it. Indeed - part of the reason for the relatively high compensation is the desire to harvest more plasma more frequently.
This dovetails into the other major issue - the relative lack of American welfare (and subsequently higher cost of living) for the poor compared to other countries. In short, most other affluent countries provide more help to the poor, reducing the incentive to have plasma drawn for financial compensation.
In short, America operates its blood plasma industry on essentially a sort of privatized "poorhouse" model, seeking to exploit existing poverty for productive gains for the wealthy, meaning the poor constitute an unusually high percentage of "donors" for plasma. In other countries, the poor tend to instead be given more direct assistance to lift them out of poverty, and the need for blood plasma is filled by actual voluntary donations drawn from across the wealth spectrum of the population.
The long-term consequences of a bizarre 1960s experiment with teaching children a new alphabet.
Clicking through, the first thing you see is a graphic of the phrase "If you are able to read these words you might have been part of a failed English teaching initiative", written in the "new alphabet". I was immediately able to read it without difficulty, I presume because of my familiarity with other languages and alphabets besides English.
I also note it's more than just an alphabet shift: it also includes spelling differences beyond simple 1-to-1 letter transposition. Based purely on the graphic at the top, it would appear to have adopted a more phonetic approach to spelling, which I can see the reasoning behind, although I note that a switch to a purely phonetic system for English would cause issues with people being able to read text from even the recent past.
I also note the lack of capitalization, as well as punctuation. Additionally, there is the inclusion of what I would consider archaic English characters, ligatures, etc. At first brush, it is indeed quite bizarre.
Being able to read it gives me an odd sensation - it reminds me a lot of Middle and Old English, just with word structures and etymologies that are much more immediately familiar because they are drawn from modern roots, not ancient ones. It also feels like it has strange echoes of Dutch and Frisian. Which I suppose all makes sense, from a linguistics standpoint and the origins of the English language... as well as the fact that this was originally a British initiative.
Ultimately, though, I think the idea of creating a "Hangul-but-for-English" system is centuries too late to work. It would be extremely awkward in so many ways to try to shift to a system like this, and create a sort of historical cultural "break point" that would have massive effects going forward. (At least at this current point in time.)
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