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You can do better
UncommonDescent’s take on the Lawrence Livermore fusion advance: Could fusion energy be God’s design for supplying humanity’s energy needs in a future era? Come on, you can do better than that. The fusion-powered SUN is God’s design for supplying energy to life. We still haven’t turned fusion into a practical and controllable energy source, and…
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Science and sausage
As usual I was reading some article by some “independent” who naively assumes that science actually proceeds by questioning. First thought: As usual I was thinking about the peculiar disconnect between the public myth of science and the reality of science. Anyone who has worked in research for a while realizes that self-censorship is automatic…
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EVs returning to sanity?
EV hype began well before the free money era of QE. It came along with the coal movement (usually called the “environmental” movement for some reason.) Coalists have been pushing EVs since the ’70s. The EV hype didn’t really take off until Elon masculinized the EV, first with outright Lambo-type sports cars, then with fast…
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WOW!
This is a HUGE development. Currently, electrical activity is mainly associated with ‘excited’ brain neurons or heart cells, however, this may not be an isolated event. As the novel research suggests, this communication may enable cells within the same tumor to coordinate cell growth and promote tumor survival. In essence, cancerous cells start behaving more…
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Where are the goddamn philosophers?
A young congresscritter named Himes was discussing Sam’s arrest and yesterday’s “hearing”. He said that Sam had spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill in the last two years, “educating” Congress about how bitcoin works. Himes thinks he “knows” how it works thanks to Sam, so he will help to craft the regulations that…
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Kirn back in action
Here’s an evocative question from Kirn: We didn’t need AI to make quasi-counterfeit art that many find indistinguishable from original works by human artists. It’s an old game, long mastered. The question is why are we prepared now to grant these machine forgeries, though they may be more complex, special esteem? Damn good question. The…
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We weren’t allowed
Vintage.es has a set of pix from Moscow in December 1959. The first thing I noticed is the lack of snow. Obviously cold, but all dry. (Not meaningful, just personally salient because I’ve been shoveling and raking 10 inches this week.) The second thing is a group of workers putting up a statue of Sputnik,…
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Spoiled brat
Supposedly Sam’s lawyers tried to prevent his arrest and jailing by pleading vegan and ADHD. He won’t be able to get his chosen diet in jail, and he shouldn’t be jailed because he needs his Adderall or whatever. Fortunately the Bahamas authorities didn’t listen. A couple weeks in a REAL jail might do him a…
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YES!
Brad Sherman told the truth about the entire blockchain enterprise in the “investigation” this morning. “Sam is not a snake in the Garden of Eden. The whole area is a garden of snakes.” Just now in an interview with Yahoo: “I would urge them to take those animal spirits and invest in real companies that…
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Two cheers for nuclear!
Yahoo Financial interviewed the head of Constellation Energy, which owns several existing nuclear power plants. He is optimistic about the future of nukes, since the omnibus “Inflation” “Reduction” “Act” includes a new tax credit to level the economic playing field for nukes vs fake “renewable” sources. He also (finally) sees some real action in the…
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Waiting for Shannon
I’m following the latest “revelations” from Twitter. So far no Shannon, no actionable information. Deepstates know how to reveal without revealing, and spy agencies know how to test a defector who claims to be revealing. Is he telling us something we already know, either from experience or monitoring? Is he simply lying? Or is he…
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Missing a difference
Via MindMatters as usual, a new study on the linguistics of cussing. The authors find that most cuss words lack ‘soft’ consonants and emphasize plosives. In a following study, the authors also looked at minced oaths – which are variations of swear words deemed less offensive, for example “darn” instead of “damn”. The authors found…
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Gotcha.
Sam was arrested yesterday by the authorities in the Bahamas. Lesson: When your criminal syndicate depends on currying the favor of demons who are BIGGER THAN YOU and MORE EXPERIENCED AT THE DEMON GAME, you shouldn’t go around taunting the demons. His accomplice Caroline played a smarter game by turning snitch against Sam. Musical accompaniment.
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Speaking of genes and epigenes
Speaking of genes and epigenes… Another ‘earlier than thought’ for fire and cooking. Via MindMatters, a pre-Sapiens species with 1/3 of modern brain size was frying up antelopes: Such behavior has not been attributed to H. naledi before, largely because of its small brain. But it’s now clear that a brain roughly one-third the size…
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Another waste of talent
Skimming through the thousands of updates on nonsense projects like NFT and DAO, I’m struck by another waste. The waste of tech skill is obvious to a nerd like me, but I was slow to notice the waste of sales skill. Every one of these offers is creatively persuasive, putting together nonsense buzzwords in a…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 