“Matthew Fisher, a prominent condensed matter physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, had been wondering whether entanglement between molecules in the brain might play a role in how we think. In the model he and his collaborators were developing, certain molecules occasionally bind together in a way that acts like a measurement and kills entanglement. Then the bound molecules change shape in a way that could create entanglement. Fisher needed to know whether entanglement could thrive under the pressure of intermittent measurements — the same question Nahum had been considering.”
https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-observe-unobservable-quantum-phase-transition-20230911/?mc_cid=2cff2948f5&mc_eid=f83944a043
Absolutely fascinating how much we are learning about quantum systems. The potential is enormous and in very odd and weird ways – if we could ever preserve the arrow of time between entangled states, or figure out how to apply the measurement destroying informational states into cryptography, that’d be huge in terms of energy extraction and deployment.
“The tightening of intellectual property laws on farms throughout the African Union would represent a major victory for the global economic forces that have spent the past three decades in a campaign to undermine farmer-managed seed economies and oversee their forced integration into the “value chains” of global agribusiness. These changes threaten the livelihoods of Africa’s small farmers and their collective biogenetic heritage, including a number of staple grains, legumes, and other crops their ancestors have been developing and safeguarding since the dawn of agriculture.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/new-colonialist-food-economy/
It’s much more en vogue to get angry about colonialism in other places right now, but this is maybe a less complicated, naked cash grab that should deeply infuriate you. At best, a really dumb move by businesses that should know better than to try to recreate evolution’s products in a lab, because we definitely can predict everything that can happen.
“Until recently walking away from academia, I worked as a professor of History and Classics for fifteen years, teaching undergraduate and graduate students. Repeatedly, some of the best students I have taught have been homeschooled. What set them apart was precisely the spirit of bold curiosity that I see in my own kids: that bright light in their eyes, an interest in asking questions and in pursuing rabbit trails independently.
Public school curricula, with their strictly set state standards and increased emphasis on standardized testing, simply cannot allow this sort of flexibility. As a result, no matter how amazing the teachers are (and, believe me, many are truly amazing!), students do not get the opportunity to cultivate curiosity, wonder, and a genuine love of learning. More control and oversight is not helping American public schools, and it certainly would not help homeschoolers.”
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/09/homeschooling-and -red-herrings/
As a product of homeschooling, I’m doubtless biased. That said, I don’t think it works for everyone for a lot of reasons, some of which are pretty controversial (let’s just say that it’s a GOOD thing some people should never go to college and can just read what they want), but would work for many more than currently do homeschool.
“Unlike benzodiazepines, NBACs have a low addiction profile, according to Dr. Bachu. They are non-euphoric, meaning patients don’t feel “high” while on them. Patients also don’t build up a tolerance to these drugs. That is, it doesn’t take larger and larger doses to achieve the same effect. When they work, NBACs simply relieve symptoms and make patients feel normal. Sleep, appetite, mood—all return to normal. The only difference is patients often attain a complete indifference to alcohol, leading to long-term sobriety without effort.
Science is not completely sure how NBACs alleviate symptoms while avoiding the pitfalls of addiction, tolerance, and intoxication, but it’s theorized that they impact brain chemistry in uniquely subtle ways. For example, benzodiazepines target GABA type A receptors, which produce a quick and pleasurable surge of dopamine to the brain. This receptor plays a central role in dangerously addictive drugs like heroin. NBACs, on the other hand, tend to target GABA type B receptors, which produce slower, more prolonged inhibitory signals. Some NBACs sidestep GABA receptors altogether, acting instead on voltage-gated calcium or sodium channels.”
https://quillette.com/2023/08/28/medications-can-help-keep-alcoholics-sober-why-are-they-being-ignored/?ref=quillette-weekly-newsletter
If possible I do think we should be even warier of our tendency to try to prescribe our problems away, but that said, I believe we were gifted human ingenuity to try and help our less fortunate brethren, and if this could represent a non-opioid/benzo future, that is a very good thing.
“Learning to identify such species not only gives us pleasure in a deeper understanding of the natural world but can also help us evaluate the health of a grassland and, therefore, its value to biodiversity and wildlife. A predominance of aggressive or coarse grasses, such as Yorkshire-fog, cock’s-foot, tall fescue, or perennial ryegrass, accompanied by nettles, docks, and thistles, signal that the land has been “improved” with fertilizer. An abundance of nonaggressive grasses, on the other hand – common bent, sweet vernal grass, meadow foxtail, crested dog’s-tail, and the various fine-bladed fescues – provide the best matrix for wildflowers to flourish and are natural indicators of an unimproved grassland. In these environments, a typical quadrant of four square meters can reveal a diverse grass population, usually between eight to fourteen species, whereas in an improved pasture or ley you’d be lucky to find four.”
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/learning-to-love-grass
It’s an interesting thought to contemplate the appeal of a lawn’s uniformity, etc. versus a truly diverse natural meadow, and why we are drawn to parts of one versus the other.
“Our responsibility is not to despair, but to work and to enjoy with hope. For Christians, there is a basis for this hope that does not see the world as doomed and disposable and mostly a thing to be escaped. Maximus the Confessor, the Greek theologian of the 6th century, emphasized that, because God had united himself with human nature in the person of Christ, he had united his divinity with the whole of creation: “The unspeakable and prodigious fire hidden in the essence of things, as in the bush, is the fire of divine love and the dazzling brilliance of His beauty inside every thing. . . a shining forth, an epiphany, of the mysterious depths of being.” The world, Maximus thought, was destined to be like the burning bush, on fire with love and yet not consumed—united to God, perfect, divinized, and yet still itself. “Earth’s crammed with heaven,” Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, echoing Maximus, “and every common bush is afire with God.”
https://www.ekstasismagazine.com/blog/2023/a-burning-stomach-a-fickle-globe
Little more remains to be said, otherwise than it is the season for good cheer and hope for a Savior has come.
“Today’s new cables use 16 pairs of fibers, but a new cable that NTT is building between the US and Japan employs 20 fiber pairs to reach 350Gbps. Another Japanese tech giant, NEC, is using 24 fiber pairs to reach speeds on its transatlantic cable to 500Tbps, or a half petabit per second.
“Especially after the pandemic, we observed a capacity shortage everywhere. We urgently need to construct new cables,” Sumimoto said. “The situation is a bit crazy. If we construct a cable, the capacity is immediately sold out.”
https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/features/the-secret-life-of-the-500-cables-that-run-the-internet/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The complexity of modern infrastructure is nearly impossible to keep track of, which is why I’m always a bit dubious of our ability to manage increasingly complex systems without failures popping up more frequently.
“However, there are things you can do to slow the death of fun. For one, don’t accelerate it. Most startups needlessly accelerate their corporatization by copying the processes of larger companies, usually by poaching managers from large companies who bring their playbooks with them. For example, many startups use Jira because large companies use Jira. Don’t use Jira. Y Combinator has helped the world realize that inspiration should go the other way–large companies should try to operate more like startups.”
https://blog.johnqian.com/startup-spark?utm_source=hackernewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=fav
Have seen this firsthand, both via study and work. That said, I think it’s more about choice of tools and philosophies can be surprisingly more applicable in various areas than may be suspected.
“The lengthiest essay in A Dream Deferred is titled, “The Loneliness of the Black Conservative,” and it is here that Steele first considered how he came to accept that unfamiliar label: “I realized, finally, that I was a black conservative when I found myself standing on stages being publicly shamed,” he wrote. His previous book had argued that racism was no longer the major issue for black people in America, and that America’s obsession with uncovering white persecution of blacks resembled an extension of the country’s stormy racial history, not a break from it. This view was considered heresy in many quarters.”
https://quillette.com/2023/08/22/a-dream-deferred-revisited/?ref=quillette-weekly-newsletter
Pretty unpopular, but also, it is inevitable that political lines begin transcending racial boundaries over the next few decades. Blacks used to be more Republican, until the great flip in the 1960s. That was 60 years ago – it is now reversing yet again.
