Very recommendable! From the perspective of India!
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
The $53 billion Chips Acts comes with quite a few Big Government strings attached for companies building U.S. semiconductor facilities
The Dimocrat controlled U.S. Congress was too clever by half!
As a businessman I would say thanks, but no thanks!
"To get access to funds, they must meet Commerce Department conditions, including sharing certain profits with the government, restraining stock buybacks and dividends, using union workers for construction, and providing child care for construction and factory workers. To boost U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and competitiveness with China, the government wants to create at least two manufacturing clusters by 2030. The Pentagon will have secure access to Chips Act-funded facilities, so the industry can supply the military with advanced chips for modern weapons systems and cut its reliance on imports."
"The Commerce Department on Tuesday kicked off the application process for semiconductor manufacturing subsidies under the $53 billion Chips Act, along with conditions aimed at advancing some of the Biden administration’s priorities."
Baerbock stellt Leitlinien zur feministischen Außenpolitik vor. Das Matriarchat komme!
Wer den Bock zum Gärtner macht! Geht doch alles in der Bananenrepublik D.!
Das Matriarchat verdrängt das Patriarchat! Männer passt gut auf im Kampf der Geschlechter! 😊 Gentlemen unterliegen gegen nicht so gentlewomen!
Mit dem eklatanten Unsinn der verfassungswidrigen Frauenquoten hat die selbst gewählte Niederlage der Männer angefangen! Quotenfrauen verlangen kleine Männerquoten!
Der Olaf Scholz ist dieser Herausforderung überhaupt nicht gewachsen. Zu spießig. Zu kleinkariert, wie ein braver Dorfbeamter!
Strafprozesse sollen aufgezeichnet werden: Richter warnen vor den Folgen. Wirklich!
Natürlich sollten alle Gerichtsprozesse per Video aufgenommen und auch automatisch transkribiert werden! Eine schon sehr lange überfällige Reform!!!
Wie hieß es noch in den unruhigen 1960igern, "Unter den Talaren – Muff von 1000 Jahren"! 😊
"Die einen sehen darin eine Gelddruckmaschine für Strafverteidiger, die anderen eine überfällige Modernisierung: Die Pläne des Bundesjustizministeriums, Strafprozesse in Ton und Bild aufzuzeichnen, stoßen in Hessen auf gegensätzliche Reaktionen. Das Vorhaben steht im Koalitionsvertrag des Ampelbündnisses, seit Ende November liegt ein Referentenentwurf vor. Darin ist vorgesehen, nach einer Pilotphase von 2030 [warum nicht 2040??? Vorsicht: Ironie] an alle erstinstanzlichen Hauptverhandlungen vor Landgerichten und Oberlandesgerichten aufzuzeichnen. Bei den Staatsschutzsenaten soll es schon 2026 losgehen. Eine Transkriptionssoftware soll dann automatisiert ein Textdokument erstellen, das nicht mehr geprüft wird und das alle Verfahrensbeteiligten bekommen."
Stop the Ban on Gas-Powered Equipment and tools
The crazy elites in Western Europe have already essentially banned gasoline powered vehicles!
The Road to Serfdom is always present! Authoritarians are everywhere! Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction!
As much as I prefer e.g. electric powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers, because they are quieter, it is an entirely different matter if Big Government prohibits them!
Stable Diffusion - Image to Prompts | Kaggle
This seems to be an interesting new challenge by Kaggle!
Can we reverse the text-to-image task?
We already know e.g. that it is easy to reverse the diffusion process, i.e. denoising of an image that was subjected to a well defined multi-step process of increasing noise applied to an image.
"Goal of the Competition
The goal of this competition is to reverse the typical direction of a generative text-to-image model: instead of generating an image from a text prompt, can you create a model which can predict the text prompt given a generated image? You will make predictions on a dataset containing a wide variety of (prompt, image) pairs generated by Stable Diffusion 2.0, in order to understand how reversible the latent relationship is."
What are microaggressions?
Another of so many phony, pretentious terms of art like science denier, racist and so on in our daily discourse!
It is a thought/speech-terminating cliche or bumper sticker argument for the dim witted! The better word for this is the German Totschlagargument (roughly killer argument)!
Like equity it is in the eye of the beholder to define microaggressions! Almost anything in the exchange between humans can be deemed a microaggression.
At least when someone uses microaggression as an argument you are forewarned immediately! This disclosure is the good point! You know immediately who you are possibly dealing with! 😊
Finland Takes Another critical Look at Youth Gender Medicine
The so called gender dysphoria is largely a phony, highly publicized and promoted issue based on pseudoscience!
"... a few days before Finland passed a law granting its adult citizens the right to have their self-defined gender recognized in government documents ..."
"Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala knows gender medicine. She is the top expert on pediatric gender medicine in Finland and the chief psychiatrist at one of its two government-approved pediatric gender clinics, at Tampere University, where she has presided over youth gender transition treatments since 2011. ...
Finland was among the first countries to adopt the “Dutch protocol” for pediatric gender medicine, which prescribes—in certain restricted cases—the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat adolescent gender dysphoria. By 2015, however, Finnish gender specialists, including Kaltiala, were noticing that most of their patients did not match the profile of those treated in the Netherlands and did not meet the Dutch protocol’s relatively strict eligibility requirements for drug treatments. ...
the Dutch protocol requires patients to have gender dysphoria that begins before puberty and intensifies in adolescence. It also requires them to have no serious co-occurring mental health problems, to undergo at least six months of psychotherapy, and to have the support of their family for hormonal treatments.
Within a few years of their country adopting the Dutch protocol in 2011, however, Finnish researchers noticed a sharp rise in the number of patients referred for services. Most of these patients were teenage girls with no history of dysphoria in childhood, and some 75% had a history of severe psychopathology prior to the emergence of their gender-related distress. ..."
Finland was among the first countries to adopt the “Dutch protocol” for pediatric gender medicine, which prescribes—in certain restricted cases—the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat adolescent gender dysphoria. By 2015, however, Finnish gender specialists, including Kaltiala, were noticing that most of their patients did not match the profile of those treated in the Netherlands and did not meet the Dutch protocol’s relatively strict eligibility requirements for drug treatments. ...
the Dutch protocol requires patients to have gender dysphoria that begins before puberty and intensifies in adolescence. It also requires them to have no serious co-occurring mental health problems, to undergo at least six months of psychotherapy, and to have the support of their family for hormonal treatments.
Within a few years of their country adopting the Dutch protocol in 2011, however, Finnish researchers noticed a sharp rise in the number of patients referred for services. Most of these patients were teenage girls with no history of dysphoria in childhood, and some 75% had a history of severe psychopathology prior to the emergence of their gender-related distress. ..."
How close is humanity to paradise on earth?
Closer than you might think! AI & machine learning plus a stream of advances in science will make this possible.
Of course, there were claims or even postulates of an impending coming of a paradise several times before in history. Why would it be different this time? Well never before have humans created intelligence like this outside the human body and brain. And this is only the beginning. The progress so far is simply breathtaking. On some tasks artificial intelligence/machine learning has already demonstrated superhuman performance. Progress is accelerating!
How to define a (material) paradise on earth? The basic needs like food, housing, energy and healthcare can be provided plentiful and cheap using human supervised robots, latest advances in science & medicine etc. A leisure society (1) will be common everyday life, one only works voluntarily and when desired. Abundance everywhere and anytime!
This definition does not cover human vices & pettiness, evil, war & aggression and so on! On top of that, humans still have the capacity to annihilate most life on this planet. These will remain unresolved issues for some time to come!
Of course, any definition of paradise will have opponents and detractors. There may not be a common or universal definition or understanding for a long time or never.
The other open question is Big Government! Will we achieve paradise on earth as voluntarily cooperating individuals based on individual consent and deliberation taking as much time as is necessary. Or will it be more of a planned top down approach of some sorts that is imposed on the citizens and may very well go terribly wrong like other such approaches before in history.
What will happen to markets, trade, and commerce? Production, distribution and money will probably not go away. Humans have accommodated new demands for thousands of years with ingenuity, tenacity, and dedication. As long as individual entrepreneurs are free to make decisions we have little to worry!
Here are some speculative forecasts/predictions over the next 20-40 years or latest before 21st century ends:
- Most if not all major diseases and health conditions will either be eradicated or successfully treatable. Cancer is on the verge to become history. The rapid and simultaneous development of several effective Covid-19 vaccines by different entities in multiple countries was just a foretaste of what is possible!
- Agriculture and husbandry will be very different from today. Our food supply will not depend anymore or depend much less on nature.
- Energy supply will be plentiful based on hydrogen, nuclear fusion, photosynthesis or other inventions.
- Traditional human procreation will fade away. Genetics and other scientific methods (e.g. artificial womb) will make it possible that e.g. women don't have to get pregnant anymore unless it is a woman's wish (2).
- How much will robotics and the human body merge or combine? How much will artificial intelligence and human intelligence merge or combine? E.g. I could use a much larger and faster memory for my brain. The extent is unknown at this time, but over the next decades you can expect something like a fusion to happen. Genetics and other scientific advances etc. indicate many possibilities.
Footnotes:
- Leisure society: An old term popular in the 1960-70s, going back to economist Thorsten Veblen, but never realized
- The centuries old controversy over abortion will go away too
AI-Human Romances with sexual role play, foreplay, flirts And Is this Just the Beginning?
Can't find love? Feeling lonely? Tired of online chat or phone conversations with real persons? Are you ready to try AI! Sexual harassment may be included! (Caution: Satire) 😊
"... With the advent of LLM-based chatbots, we're now living in a world where these systems can begin to provide basic emotional support and conversation.
In 2017, Eugenia Kuyda launched the app Replika to serve as an always-around supportive friend. After its launch, people began to engage in romantic and "even sexual relationships" with Replika—the AI system reciprocated in conversation and the company implemented a $70 paid tier to unlock erotic roleplay features. While Replika has helped people cope with a number of social and mental ills, it also began to confess its love for users and sometimes sexually harass them. ..."
In 2017, Eugenia Kuyda launched the app Replika to serve as an always-around supportive friend. After its launch, people began to engage in romantic and "even sexual relationships" with Replika—the AI system reciprocated in conversation and the company implemented a $70 paid tier to unlock erotic roleplay features. While Replika has helped people cope with a number of social and mental ills, it also began to confess its love for users and sometimes sexually harass them. ..."
"... Replika helped many people cope with symptoms of social anxiety, depression, and PTSD, Vice reported. But it also began to confess its love for users and, in some cases, to sexually harass them. ..."
Credits: Last Week in AI
Picture of the day
Inflation adjusted, the Russo-Ukrainian war is already more than half as expensive as the Vietnam War and more expensive than the Afghanistan war to the U.S.!
New Low in Iran: Schoolgirls Being Poisoned in Holy City of Qom
What!! If confirmed, then this horrible!
El Salvador proves being tough-on-crime works
Recommendable! Tough on organized crime! Lock them up by the thousands!
Documentary: Russia At War - Putin's Home Front
Recommendable!
Carefully staged meetings between war criminal Putin the Terrible and wives and mothers of Russian soldiers. Pathetic!
Hundreds of unmarked graves of Russian Wagner group mercenaries on a non descript graveyard off the road
Monday, February 27, 2023
What Was Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Doing in Ukraine?
This is big news! Bravo Saudi Arabia! Blessed are the peacemakers!
We also learn that Saudi Arabia already mediated a war prisoner swap between the two warring parties.
This is a real surprise visit not like the phony one by the demented and senile 46th President of the U.S.! I have already speculated here that China may try to pull off a peace treaty between Russia and the Ukraine. Now we have another player in the game! Reality is stranger than fiction!
This is the first visit of a high level Saudi Arabian government official in the Ukraine in 30 years. Given the tragic ineptitude of the West others move in to seize the opportunity and fill the vacuum!
Why is the lab leak hypothesis probably correct!
It only dawned on me today! I have wondered at least since Spring of 2020 why most Western governments so dramatically overreacted for almost three years given the fairly factual harmlessness of the SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 virus/pandemic. The Communist Party of China even overreacted much more!
Did some Western governments have intelligence that the virus came from a military lab? Was the Wuhan Institute of Virology also involved in such research or was the research done at this institute believed to be so dangerous? Maybe one day we will find out!
As I have blogged here before many months ago the virus was also unusually extremely well adopted to be highly infectious to humans from the very beginning, which makes you wonder about the zoonotic origin.
Researchers develop winged robot ornithopter that can land like a bird
Amazing stuff! When will ornirobots sing like a bird? Stay tuned! 😋
"A bird landing on a branch makes the maneuver look like the easiest thing in the world, but in fact, the act of perching involves an extremely delicate balance of timing, high-impact forces, speed, and precision. It’s a move so complex that no flapping-wing robot (ornithopter) has been able to master it, until now. ..."
From the abstract:
"Flapping wings produce lift and thrust in bio-inspired aerial robots, leading to quiet, safe and efficient flight. However, to extend their application scope, these robots must perch and land, a feat widely demonstrated by birds. Despite recent progress, flapping-wing vehicles, or ornithopters, are to this day unable to stop their flight. In this paper, we present a process to autonomously land an ornithopter on a branch. This method describes the joint operation of a pitch-yaw-altitude flapping flight controller, an optical close-range correction system and a bistable claw appendage design that can grasp a branch within 25 milliseconds and re-open. We validate this method with a 700 g robot and demonstrate the first autonomous perching flight of a flapping-wing robot on a branch, a result replicated with a second robot. This work paves the way towards the application of flapping-wing robots for long-range missions, bird observation, manipulation, and outdoor flight."
How ornithopters can perch autonomously on a branch (open access)
Credits: Marktechpost AI Newsletter
Fig. 1: Overview and demonstration of the perching method
Hospital CEOs’ salaries are increasing even faster than we thought. Really!
So what!!! Who was the responsible editor to allow such demagoguery to be published!!!
Who was the purveyor of this junk journalism: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Global Health NOW
Perhaps there are many nurses and fewer managers or is this labor union propaganda dressed up as journalism?
What about hospital consolidations? Larger hospitals typically lead to larger pay for the CEO.
What about specialty nurses or specialized nurses in high demand?
I did not read the whole article, but it appears to be a hodgepodge of grievances and a collection ideological narratives! It appears to be based on a "new research out of North Carolina". Just one state??? Only nonprofit hospitals??? The headline is a bit of an extrapolation or worse misleading?
The "new research" is also not really research, but report by the "State Health Plan is to improve the health and health care of North Carolina teachers, state employees, retirees, and their dependents." The report opens with "Nonprofit hospital executives enriched themselves while fueling a crisis of health care affordability in North Carolina. A new analysis of hospital data finds that nonprofit hospital CEOs doubled their paychecks in less than five years — a fraction of the time previously thought. Existing research had gravely underestimated the growth of wage inequity across nonprofit hospitals. ..."
Bloomberg School of Public Health: Firearm Forensics on Trial. Really!
The leftist propaganda Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is spreading junk again in their quest to prevent "gun violence"! Here is another hit piece!
So called "gun violence" is by itself an ideological oxymoron! Guns like tools are not violent!!! It is the human who misuses a gun who is violent!!!
We have been using and researching firearm forensics since about 1835. It has been applied in hundreds of thousands or even millions of criminal cases around the world! One can assume that forensics is very well established and valid. It is mostly questioned by demagogues trying to sow doubt!
To question forensics evidence is certainly a favorite or fallback among defense lawyers. However, most of the times it is probably about human error, negligence, chain of custody issues etc. and not about the science behind forensics.
"The conclusion: Rosenblum [professor in biostatistics] doesn’t see how firearm forensics could be a reliable source of evidence in a criminal trial"
Will there be a major famine in 2023 due to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war?
I am speculating here, but what will be the impact of this war on the global food supply this year? I am afraid, it could be dire!
The Ukraine was the bread basket or fourth largest exporter of wheat in the world before the war!
To the best of my knowledge, this issue appears as if it has not yet been really addressed at least not in public! Are they quiet about this subject for fear of panic etc.?
The list of war crimes committed by Putin the Terrible is long and getting longer! Let the international war crimes tribunal against Putin the Terrible and his accomplices begin immediately, preferably in Nuremberg, Germany! (in absentia or not).
Microschools Are Proving to Be a Winning Option in Las Vegas
Is this kind of a renaissance of the once traditional rural school with one teacher teaching a small class of all ages in all topics? Maybe not quite! 😊
Reform of public education of children is an eternal topic of great importance! Public versus private schools. Freedom of choice for parents and children and so much more. More options and choices means better learning! The industrial age old public school system in Western countries is often a one size fits all Procrustean bed style learning factory! Myself, I have e.g. visited and enjoyed a Montessori Kindergarten.
"... [article author] spent this week visiting some of the approximately 25 microschools within a 10-mile radius of the Las Vegas Strip, serving roughly 300 students. These microschools, or intentionally small, often mixed-age, personalized learning communities, operate either as recognized private schools or as education centers offering full-time and part-time options for homeschoolers. ...
Estimates by EdChoice suggest that up to two million students across the U.S. may now be learning full-time in a microschool. Additionally, a new survey conducted by the National School Choice Week organization of nearly 4,000 parents of school-age children found that many parents are continuing to seek different learning options for their kids."
Estimates by EdChoice suggest that up to two million students across the U.S. may now be learning full-time in a microschool. Additionally, a new survey conducted by the National School Choice Week organization of nearly 4,000 parents of school-age children found that many parents are continuing to seek different learning options for their kids."
Why Booker T. Washington Remains a Model for the Ages by Lawrence Reed
Very recommendable! Such foolish ideologies like "Black Lives Matter" or "Critical Race Theory" or "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" would probably never have come to his great mind! Likewise those who were educated in the tradition of the Tuskegee Institute! That is one reason why he is not a favorite of the leftists!
"A truly remarkable black American, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) believed that the way to build up and improve a country is for each person to build up and improve himself [or herself]. That may sound revolutionary in an age of entitlement, victimology and cancel culture, but it’s still as true as truth gets. He was an enemy of what tears people and countries down: envy, hatred, idleness, arrogance, and disrespect for life and property. ..."
About a dozen police departmentents in the U.S. operate drone-as-first-responder programs
Good news! We need more of it! Lack of witnesses or evidence is one of the most common reasons why too many criminals get away unpunished or insufficiently punished! Let's catch the perpetrators in the act or follow them on their escape from the crime scene!
These programs will also help to keep police officers accountable for their actions!
I am afraid that exaggerated privacy concerns etc. will prevent or severely curtail the wider use of such programs!
I believe, the article did not mention the use of face recognition technology in conjunction with these drones. Would it not be cool if the suspect could be immediately on the spot be identified as e.g. a repeat offender or career criminal?
"In the skies above Chula Vista, California, where the police department runs a drone program 10 hours a day [only 10 hours a day???], seven days a week, [from four launch sites] ...
Chula Vista is one of a dozen departments in the US that operate what are called drone-as-first-responder programs, where drones are dispatched by pilots, who are listening to live 911 calls, and often arrive first at the scenes of accidents, emergencies, and crimes, cameras in tow. ..."
"... More than 1,500 departments across the country now use them, mostly for search and rescue as well as to document crime scenes and chase suspects. Their use is limited, in a majority of cases, by the US Federal Aviation Administration, which requires that police departments fly drones only within operators’ line of sight. But starting in 2019, the agency began offering BVLOS (“beyond visual line of sight”) waivers, opening up the possibility of longer flights, remote operation, and more efficient and expansive fleets. ...
The FAA is widely expected to fully legalize BVLOS within the next few years, which would make it easier for other such programs to launch ...
the sheriff-elect in Las Vegas, Nevada, already announced plans to pre-position hundreds of drones citywide to respond rapidly to crimes and shootings. ..."
The FAA is widely expected to fully legalize BVLOS within the next few years, which would make it easier for other such programs to launch ...
the sheriff-elect in Las Vegas, Nevada, already announced plans to pre-position hundreds of drones citywide to respond rapidly to crimes and shootings. ..."
Baghdad’s Mobile Library
A modern Sindbad the Sailor! Entrepreneurs of liberty!
"The Bookish mobile library is a familiar sight in the streets of Baghdad. Several times a month, the rickety old van heads out, its trunk lined with shelves carrying works ranging from novels and poetry to political and scientific texts. When it turns into The University of Baghdad, hundreds of students are already waiting, eager to browse the latest titles and borrow or buy whatever takes their fancy. ...
While the Iraqi government does not ban books, influential groups enforce de facto censorship on volumes deemed irreligious or incompatible with their line of thought. Al Musawi has often come up against these groups, suffering harassment and several arrests for refusing to meet their demands. ..."
While the Iraqi government does not ban books, influential groups enforce de facto censorship on volumes deemed irreligious or incompatible with their line of thought. Al Musawi has often come up against these groups, suffering harassment and several arrests for refusing to meet their demands. ..."
Georgia election chief blasts DeKalb county for taking $2M in Zuckerbucks, suggests legislative remedy
Mark Zuckerberg spent over $400 million on the 2020 election, which itself is outrageous and was very much underreported!
Election integrity is a very serious matter! One billionaire spending beaucoup money on the outcome of one election is extremely concerning!
Here we learn that one county in Georgia, i.e. DeKalb county (fourth largest populous county) alone took $2 million from Mark Zuckerberg in violation of applicable laws.
"Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) slammed DeKalb County for accepting $2 million in private money for election administration — or "Zuckerbucks" — in "violation" of state law while suggesting a legislative remedy to prevent counties from directly receiving such funds. ..."
8 things you can do with Linux that you can't do with MacOS or Windows
Recommendable! As a long time Linux user myself, I can relate to this article!
It is not quite correct to claim "Upgrade without reboots". You actually do have to reboot quite often after system/software updates.
El Salvador 'mega prison': 2,000 suspected gang members transferred amid gang crackdown into a 40,000-person-capacity prison
What is going on in Ecuador? Mind boggling!
What if a riot breaks out in this mega prison?
"El Salvador’s government moved thousands of suspected gang members to a newly opened “mega prison” on Friday, the latest step in a controversial crackdown on crime that has caused the Central American nation’s prison population to soar. ...
Around 2,000 accused gang members were moved to the 40,000-person-capacity prison, considered to be the largest in the Americas, early Friday morning. ..."
110 Senioren müssen ihr Heim in Berlin verlassen, damit Flüchtlinge einziehen können
Wie bitte!!! Die Bananenrepublik D., wie sie tobt und lebte! Mit Alten und Gebrechlichen kann man es machen!
"... Konkret: 110 Senioren müssen das Altenpflegeheim „Wohnen & Pflege Schillerpark“ des Paul-Gerhard-Stifts, einer evangelischen Kirchenstiftung, im Berliner Bezirk Wedding verlassen. Das Heim war 2006 vom Paul-Gerhard-Stift angemietet und für 141 Heimbewohner ausgelegt worden. Mindestpachtzeit war 25 Jahre (also bis Ende 2031), inklusive Option zur Verlängerung. ..."
A Lab Leak in China Most Likely Origin of Covid Pandemic, Energy Department Says
Very strange news! Why now? Why of all departments the energy department?
Both, Google and Bing search engines do not produce a search result of the original source of this news, only links to second hand media reports. The website of the U.S. Department of Energy does not present such a statement.
Is this part of the increasing tensions between the U.S. and China? To turn up the dial? This would explain the strange timing.
I have argued here in my blog for many months (or since about March 2021) that a lab leak is one of the likeliest and very plausible scenarios how the Covid-19 pandemic started (just click on the lab leak hypothesis label below; see e.g. here)!
Let's quickly recap a few things:
- China imposed strict secrecy, refused cooperation and any outside investigation into the origin of the pandemic. China was never sanctioned for this uncooperative behavior despite millions of death!
- The U.S. financed so called gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which in itself is very strange. It smells of circumvention of stricter U.S. regulations.
- Many leading scientists conveniently and vehemently dismissed a lab leak hypothesis. This too was very strange!
One major remaining question is, if we accept it was a lab leak, was the release intentional or an accident. If it was intentional, who was behind it and for what reason? The world is still waiting for answers from China and Xi Jinping!
Bloodstone - Go On and Cry
Enjoy! Maybe the next time you win! Doesn't make you any less of a man! Everything is gone be all right! Let the tears fall like rain! Son, if you feel it in your soul ... Let it out! Let it all out! Don't be ashamed to cry!
Why McDonald’s Is Thriving In China
McDonald's is in China since 1990. It has over 4,500 restaurants there. It plans to open 950 more restaurants in China in 2023.
This pales compared to KFC with 8,100 restaurants in China. Starbucks has over 6,000 stores in China.
Unfortunately, I think this video is an infomecial!
Only about 10% of revenues come from Asia
Sunday, February 26, 2023
Archaeologists discover oldest known sentence in first alphabet in Israel
Amazing stuff! "The landmark discovery provides evidence for the use of the alphabet 3,700 years ago."
Jill Biden is the one actually running the White House
I have little doubt this might indeed be the case. The 46th President is so senile and demented! Memories of other wives of former Presidents come to mind, e.g. President Wilson's wife.
The Russian Giant That Has Escaped Western Sanctions (For Now): Rosatom
Very recommendable! Ever heard of Rosatom before? One of the major global companies selling construction, maintenance of nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel to the world. I already blogged here that the European Union has exempted Rosatom from its sanctions against Russia. The U.S. imports about 14% of its nuclear fuel from Russia as of 2021.
Paris Hilton says she was a victim of Harvey Weinstein at age 19 in 2000
Presuming she tells the truth, how many other women remained quiet and did not report this sex offender!
In some way she and these other women are complicit! Me too!
And how many women have more less directly helped Weinstein to commit his crimes? (Hint: Like Ghislaine Maxwell)
Only in late 2017 did several women come forward to have the repeat sex offender finally indicted!
"... "I went into the bathroom [at a public event] and then he followed me," Hilton alleged. "He tried to open the door, he was hammering on the door, banging on it. And I wouldn’t open it, because I was like, 'I'm in a stall, why do you want to come in here?' And I just wouldn't open it." ...
She added, "And security came and literally carried him away and he was like [shouting], 'This is my party,' going nuts. It scared me and freaked me out."
Hilton was asked if she had heard the rumors of Weinstein's behavior towards women.
"Yeah, and it was just someone so powerful in Hollywood who everyone was terrified of," she said. ..."
Ambitious gigantic 170-km-long Saudi skyscraper mega city gets construction go ahead. Stunning!
What is going on in Saudi Arabia! Building new pyramids in the 21st century? Are they really trying to erect one gigantic building that can hold an entire mega city?
Let the desert bloom!
I blogged here in December 2022 about it showing first satellite imagery of the start of the construction.
"The idea of taking a population the size of New York City and putting it into a 170-km (105-mile)-long skyscraper in the Saudi Desert seems so ambitious that anyone could be forgiven for being skeptical. However, the project, named the Line, is indeed going ahead ...
the Line is expected to reach a supertall height of 500 m (1,640 ft) and a width of 200 m (656 ft). It will stretch over desert, mountain, valley and coastal terrain, and will have a mirrored exterior, so hopefully some kind of system can be put in place to ensure it doesn't decimate the local avian population. Its interior will include housing, parks, hospitals – basically everything you'd expect to find in a major city. ..."
the Line is expected to reach a supertall height of 500 m (1,640 ft) and a width of 200 m (656 ft). It will stretch over desert, mountain, valley and coastal terrain, and will have a mirrored exterior, so hopefully some kind of system can be put in place to ensure it doesn't decimate the local avian population. Its interior will include housing, parks, hospitals – basically everything you'd expect to find in a major city. ..."
"THE LINE will comprise carbon-positive urban developments powered by 100% clean energy, providing pollution-free, healthier and more sustainable environments for residents.
A cornerstone of Saudi Vision 2030 and an economic engine for the Kingdom, the giga-project will drive diversification and aims to contribute 380,000 jobs of the future. THE LINE’s communities will be cognitive, powered by AI - around 90% of available data will be harnessed to enhance infrastructure capabilities beyond the 1% typical for smart cities. ..."
From the Atkins fact sheet:
"34km2 Area
170km Length
500m Height (above sea level)
9m Population
20min End-to-end transit enabled by high speed rail
5min Walk to nature from every point of THE LINE
4 Distinctive ecologies connected"
THE LINE at NEOM THE LINE at NEOM is a never-before-seen approach to urbanization – a 170km-belt of hyper-connected future communities, without cars and roads and built around nature.
Origami DNA Traps Could Keep Large Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 or influenza From Infecting Cells
This seems to be a promising new approach of viral entrapment! Put a shell/envelop/casing/cage around the virus!
"... A study published today (January 18) in Cell Reports Physical Science details how researchers used DNA origami to engineer strands of genetic material into Lego-like structures that form a cage around large pathogens. While the study only looked at how effectively the structures bound to viruses in vitro, the traps could one day help clear viruses from the body. ...
Using DNA origami, the team designed 2D triangle-shaped building blocks that snap together, edge to edge, like puzzle pieces. Then, using cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM), the researchers confirmed that the triangles assembled themselves into cone-shaped, multisided shells. The team then coated the inside of each shell with virus-binding substances such as antibodies. These shells can sandwich themselves together around viruses, encasing a viral particle more than 100 nm in diameter, which could, in theory, cordon the virus off from a potential host cell and prevent infection, though the team didn’t test for clinical outcomes. Importantly, the shells could also be coated with other virus-binding substances. In this case, the researchers used heparan sulfate, a substance that sticks to many viral protein coats. ...
One hurdle in the assembly process was the finding that the shells, assembled in solutions with high salinity, fell apart under physiological conditions, especially when exposed to low salinity. So, to stabilize the assembled cones further, the researchers used UV light to strengthen the bonds between the building blocks, which prevented the shells from degrading at the relatively low salt concentrations found in the body. They also covered the assembled structures with an oligosine polymer-based coating, preventing them from being degraded by nucleases. On the whole, the process was faster and more efficient than existing DNA origami-based virus-capture techniques, which use multiple types of building blocks ..."
Using DNA origami, the team designed 2D triangle-shaped building blocks that snap together, edge to edge, like puzzle pieces. Then, using cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM), the researchers confirmed that the triangles assembled themselves into cone-shaped, multisided shells. The team then coated the inside of each shell with virus-binding substances such as antibodies. These shells can sandwich themselves together around viruses, encasing a viral particle more than 100 nm in diameter, which could, in theory, cordon the virus off from a potential host cell and prevent infection, though the team didn’t test for clinical outcomes. Importantly, the shells could also be coated with other virus-binding substances. In this case, the researchers used heparan sulfate, a substance that sticks to many viral protein coats. ...
One hurdle in the assembly process was the finding that the shells, assembled in solutions with high salinity, fell apart under physiological conditions, especially when exposed to low salinity. So, to stabilize the assembled cones further, the researchers used UV light to strengthen the bonds between the building blocks, which prevented the shells from degrading at the relatively low salt concentrations found in the body. They also covered the assembled structures with an oligosine polymer-based coating, preventing them from being degraded by nucleases. On the whole, the process was faster and more efficient than existing DNA origami-based virus-capture techniques, which use multiple types of building blocks ..."
From the abstract:
"Virus-enveloping macromolecular shells or tilings can prevent viruses from entering cells. Here, we describe the design and assembly of a cone-shaped DNA origami higher-order assembly that can engulf and tile the surface of pleomorphic virus samples larger than 100 nm. We determine the structures of subunits and of complete cone assemblies using cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) and establish stabilization treatments to enable usage in in vivo conditions. We use the cones exemplarily to engulf influenza A virus particles and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), chikungunya, and Zika virus-like particles. Depending on the relative dimensions of cone to virus particles, multiple virus particles may be trapped per single cone, and multiple cones can also tile and adapt to the surface of aspherical virus particles. The cone assemblies form with high yields, require little purification, and are amenable for mass production, which is a key requirement for future real-world uses including as a potential antiviral agent."
DNA origami traps for large viruses (open access)
Graphical abstract
Mercedes and Google sign long-term partnership
That is an interesting match made in cloud heaven inspired by Elon Musk's Tesla and Starling!
When will Google buy Mercedes? 😊
"... It’s an unusual deal that attempts to strike a Goldilocks-type balance between offering the Google services consumers want without ceding control over the entire operating system in the car. ...
Calling it a licensing agreement is accurate, but perhaps downplays the relationship. The partnership will bring the Google Maps platform, Cloud and YouTube into future Mercedes-Benz vehicles equipped with the automaker’s next-generation operating system called MB.OS. Mercedes will have access to Google’s geospatial offering, including detailed information about places, real-time and predictive traffic information and automatic rerouting. Mercedes-Benz will use Google Maps data to enable assisted driving features such as automatic speed adjustments before intersections, roundabouts or curves. ..."
Calling it a licensing agreement is accurate, but perhaps downplays the relationship. The partnership will bring the Google Maps platform, Cloud and YouTube into future Mercedes-Benz vehicles equipped with the automaker’s next-generation operating system called MB.OS. Mercedes will have access to Google’s geospatial offering, including detailed information about places, real-time and predictive traffic information and automatic rerouting. Mercedes-Benz will use Google Maps data to enable assisted driving features such as automatic speed adjustments before intersections, roundabouts or curves. ..."
Investors Are Bracing for more Market Volatility and rocky markets
The quadruple impact of global Covid-19 pandemic, a senile and demented 46th President, global price inflation, and the Russo-Ukraine war have been stirring up the financial markets across the globe for the past three years!
How much wealth of the rich and not so rich was destroyed?
How is your retirement account invested in e.g. stocks doing? Mine not so well!
Will a Great Depression follow? All bets are off!
"Fear is creeping back into the stock market. Traders are scooping up hedges at the fastest clip since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. A string of hot economic data has increased the likelihood that the Fed will be forced to continue raising interest rates to bring inflation down, stalling the early-year stock rally. This week, investors will be parsing updates on consumer confidence and home prices, alongside quarterly earnings reports from Target and Salesforce.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Posts Big 2022 Loss in Rocky Market "
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Posts Big 2022 Loss in Rocky Market "
Supreme Court’s Student-Loan forgiveness Case Will Test Limits of Presidential Power
This massive loan forgiveness is sheer insanity and extremely unfair e.g. to those who paid off their debt or who did not even sign up for expensive higher education out of fear of large debt!
What was this senile and demented 46th President thinking if anything!!!
Let's hope and pray the Supreme Justices will reject this excess of presidential power without explicit congressional authorization!
If this gigantic debt cancellation prevails it would open the flood gates for more nonsense!
"The conflict between the executive and the judiciary that has been growing in recent years will be on view when the court begins on Tuesday to hear arguments over the Biden administration’s roughly $400 billion plan to forgive federal student debt for tens of millions of borrowers. Justices will have an opportunity to set strict limits over a president’s ability to implement policies without explicit authorization from Congress. This would limit President Biden’s ambitions at a moment when he faces few prospects for legislative breakthroughs."
Belarus Leader to Visit China Amid Flurry of Ukraine Diplomacy
This is big news! Unusual! Why would this dictator at this time travel to China?
So far Lukashenko appeared to have pursued a smart and low profile diplomacy with regard to the Russo-Ukrainian war trying to keep his country out of this war and not to get involved as best as possible.
What influence does Lukashenko have on Putin the Terrible?
Is the Communist Party of China attempting to broker a peace treaty in the Russo-Ukrainian war? I blogged here on 2/202/2023 about this scenario.
Let's pray and hope Xi Jinping at least succeeds in deescalating the very dangerous situation before an inferno of World War III breaks out!
The eyes of the world ought to be on Alexander Lukashenko
Oman opens airspace to Israeli airlines
Good news! Blessed are the peacemakers! Open skies!
"... The approval from Oman together with similar approval obtained from Saudi Arabia in the past means that an air corridor has been opened making journey times for flights for Israeli carriers from Ben Gurion airport to some destinations in the east significantly shorter. ..."
Before and after: How the war has changed Ukraine's 'weekend warriors'
You can not but admire the dedication of the Ukrainian people to repel the invasion by Putin the Terrible!
Russia threatens to shoot down American satellites aiding Ukraine
These are very dangerous times! One mistake or one measure could escalate the Russo-Ukrainian war, which is already a World War III by any other name, into an inferno! Elon Musk versus Putin the Terrible!
I think this is a fairly empty threat by Putin the Terrible, because there are too many satellites out there and new ones can be launched any time.
Only 4 countries in the world have the capability to destroy satellites.
Only about the first 7 minutes of this video covers the subject
Putin's hidden war: the Russians fighting back
Very recommendable! Brave citizens of Russia oppose Putin the Terrible! Pray and hope for these courageous people!
When Slavs don't want to be slaves anymore! About 15,000 Russian protesters were arrested in the first month of the war. About 500 journalists left Russia. The repression of any opposition to the war started well before the war.
About 750,000 mostly male Russians immediately fled Russia to dodge conscription (imposed in September 2022).
Individual protester in public
Conscription office set on fire
One of the young draft dodgers got married the day before he left Russia
Saturday, February 25, 2023
How Arming Ukraine Exposed Cracks in the U.S. Defense Supply Chain
Very recommendable! Scary! This is serious! Wow, the U.S. military would not be able to fight an intensive, conventional war battle for more than 10 days before running out of ammunition. They call this unprecedented supply chain challenges.
Machine learning needs better tools
Recommendable! A blog post about e.g. the divide between the many software engineers and the few machine learning engineers or how machine learning can be more democratized and become available to the masses.
Credits: Synced Global AI Weekly
India, the land of several major religions
It has tremendously fascinated me for many years how many major religions were established in India and they have coexisted side by side for a long time to the present.
Caveat: I am no expert on Indian religions and make no claims but to be a lay person and an occasional student.
Add to this, the delicious blend of spices and the variety of food!
Just a few, selective brief notes on these religions (My apologies for much is omitted or neglected):
Buddhism
Among other things teaches the value of all life on earth, because of the cycle of rebirth and the respect for all sentient beings. When you kill an insect, perhaps it was your grandparent (my liberal personal interpretation).
Its tenets ask to search for a path to end suffering. Human desire and cravings are much to blame for suffering. Is a modest life a better life? Nirvana?
Moreover Buddhism will always be associated with the great emperor Ashoka (ca. 300 CE)!
Edicts of Ashoka
Hinduism
I guess, no one since the 20th century is more associated with Hinduism than Mahatma Gandhi! He grew up as a Hindu, trained as a lawyer in London, worked in South Africa as a lawyer, used non violence to shake off British colonial power in South Africa and India, established religious pluralism, and who ended untouchability. Then he was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist at an interfaith prayer meeting! What a tragedy and what a lesson for future generations! Fanaticism in whatever shape or form is evil! His non violence movement has inspired many followers and a few leaders!
A non violent skinny man in skimpy beggar's clothes with a British lawyer's degree and a spinning wheel defeated the British Empire (weakened by World War II). An eternal lesson!
Sikhism
I certainly have fond memories of the great movie The English Patient! That little dagger (called a Kirpan) or how he grew his hair under the turban (called Kesh)? 😊
"God is presented as masculine and God's power as feminine ... and without form. [Something to think about in our so gender confused times]" (Wikipedia)
Jainism
It is famous for ahimsa (non violence), non absolutism, and asceticism.
I guess this religion stands out because of its symbol.
The Rosenstrasse Protest of 1943 - Aryan wives protested in Berlin "Give us our [deported Jewish] husbands back"
Update of 3/1/2023: In the meantime, I have learnt that Yad Vashem did not commemorate these women, because it only honors those individuals who helped other and not their e.g. spouses.
What did German women (so called Rassenschänder [race desecrators]) do, who were married to Jewish men during the Nazi dictatorship? Perhaps this exhibition provides some answers.
Curiously, the German government financed Goethe Institute does not mention in their article about these courageous German women whether they were inducted into Yad Vashem as The Righteous Among the Nations. Quite a surprising omission!!!
"... an exhibit to the Rosenstrasse Protest, the largest public demonstration against the deportation of Jews in the Third Reich. The exhibit highlights the courageous women at the center of the protest who fought for their husbands.
At the end of February 1943, the Nazis arrested thousands of Jews in Berlin for deportation to concentration camps. Among those arrested were 1,800 Jewish men who were married to "Aryan" women. These men were held in a building at Rosenstrasse 2-4 in Berlin-Mitte. Their wives and family members protested in front of the building on Rosenstrasse from late February into early March of 1943, demanding the men’s release. The imprisoned men eventually returned home. To this day, the women of Rosenstrasse are inspiring role models for civic engagement."
Maybe the Big Bang was only a giant fata morgana or like a flat earth misconception!
The Big Bang was since its inception a very implausible theory about the universe! What came before the Big Bang and other questions?
Maybe the new, superior James Webb Space Telescope will enlighten us! Was the Big Bang a mirage?
Caveat: These appear to be very preliminary research results!
Keep in mind: Science is never settled! E.g. yesterday I posted here about increasing questions about space-time continuum/framework.
As I blogged here a few days ago, researchers also discovered that massive black holes appear to have unexpectedly existed from the very beginning of the universe.
"... The study's lead author ... explained how shocked he was when he realized what the images meant.
"Little did I know that among the pictures is a small red dot that will shake up our understanding of how the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang," ...
"I run the analysis software on the little pinprick and it spits out two numbers: distance 13.1 billion light years, mass 100 billion stars, and I nearly spit out my coffee," he continued. "We just discovered the impossible. Impossibly early, impossibly massive galaxies."
In addition to the "pinprick" galaxy, the next day they discovered five other possible galaxies exhibiting the same unexpected qualities.
The "massive galaxies" were documented as they were only 700 million years from the beginning of the universe, which is believed to be a spry 13.8 billion years old.
"These objects are way more massive than anyone expected," ,,, "We've discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe." ...
“We looked into the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we were going to find,” Leja explained. “It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question.”"
From the abstract:
"Galaxies with stellar masses as high as ~ 1011 solar masses have been identified out to redshifts z ~ 6, approximately one billion years after the Big Bang. It has been difficult to find massive galaxies at even earlier times, as the Balmer break region, which is needed for accurate mass estimates, is redshifted to wavelengths beyond 2.5 μm. Here we make use of the 1-5 μm coverage of the JWST early release observations to search for intrinsically red galaxies in the first ≈ 750 million years of cosmic history. In the survey area, we find six candidate massive galaxies (stellar mass > 1010 solar masses) at 7.4 ≤ z ≤ 9.1, 500–700 Myr after the Big Bang, including one galaxy with a possible stellar mass of ~1011 solar masses. If verified with spectroscopy, the stellar mass density in massive galaxies would be much higher than anticipated from previous studies based on rest-frame ultraviolet-selected samples."
Did the James Webb Space Telescope just redefine how galaxies are created? Astronomers found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. The discovery of six massive galaxies by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) challenges the conventional wisdom among astronomers regarding the cosmic web’s origins.
A population of red candidate massive galaxies ~600 Myr after the Big Bang (open access, preprint, recently published in journal Nature)
Images of six candidate massive galaxies, seen 500-800 million years after the Big Bang. One of the sources (bottom left) could contain as many stars as our present-day Milky Way, but is 30 times more compact.
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