Just interesting news to me.
www.sott.net/article/499365-Worlds-first-computer-that-combines-human-brain-with-silicon-now-available The CL1 computer is the first in the world that combines human neurons with a silicon chip. It could be used in disease modeling and drug discovery before it expires after six months.
www.sott.net/article/481905-Los-Angeles-homeless-population-surpasses-75000-New-York-sets-record-and-reaches-tipping-point-with-over-100000 The Los Angeles homeless services authority (Lahsa) report suggests that there was a sharper increase in homelessness this year compared with last year, when the agency estimated a 4% rise in the population. The agency count includes people living on the street and people in shelters.While the overall population saw a 9% increase, there was a sharper increase in people considered “unsheltered”, defined as those living outside in tents, cars, RVs and other makeshift encampments. The unsheltered population increased by 14% from 2022 to 2023, with more than 50,156 people living outside, making up 70% of the overall homeless population. The number of homeless people living indoors in shelters has remained steady at roughly 20,000 people.
www.sott.net/article/481908-US-military-veterans-are-telling-family-members-not-to-enlist The Pentagon faces a shallow recruiting pool, given that more than seven in ten young Americans are made ineligible for military service by issues like obesity, drug use, and mental illness. The WSJ cited a Pentagon poll indicating that only 9% of 16- to 21-year-olds would consider joining the military, down from 13% before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ first foreign trip – to Guatemala and Mexico – has left White House officials with little to be happy about, a new report suggests.
Of general interest.
Finds of pigment pits after the deforestation of Easter Island reject the earlier presumed societal collapse.
www.sott.net/article/447012-Easter-Islands-pigment-pits-call-into-question-societal-collapse-theory
I see it more like an ‘in between’ state.
Physicists have identified a new state of matter, hidden inside the mysterious transformations that take place between liquid and solid states of glass.
www.sott.net/article/446995-Liquid-glass-Entirely-new-state-of-matter-observed-by-physicists
The use of decentralized systems, being financial or other kind is gaining popularity in the face of abuses from central systems.
The prominent darknet marketplace, White House Market, has dropped bitcoin payments and now accepts monero only. The darknet marketplace administrators detailed that there was an issue with a payment processor blocking Tor exit nodes, but the full transition to monero was always planned.
news.bitcoin.com/darknet-giant-white-house-market-drops-bitcoin-supports-monero-payments-only/
This paragraph, in this really interesting article, is expressing my own sentiment better than I would.
While some archaeologists might suggest ‘this is how science works’, it also shows that science regularly gets it wrong, often due to rigid power structures and resistance to new theories. And Hancock takes full advantage of this criticism, by covering the controversial ‘Cerutti mastodon’ discovery which would push human presence in the Americas back by roughly 100,000 years!
https://www.sott.net/article/423391-America-Before-by-Graham-Hancock-Book-review
To be comfortable with uncertainties requires a lot of training or, these days, maybe, un-training.
We are constantly pushed toward the comfort of absolutes and certainties. The majority of people, today, are even considering science as the ‘new’ absolute. That is wrong. There would be no advancement if that were the case.
Negative Capability: The Genius of Keats and Einstein
The poet John Keats famously identified a concept which allowed him to define and isolate his own unique quality of “genius.” It was a quality which he saw a great deal of in Shakespeare. Keats called this quality “Negative Capability”:
“at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason[…]”
The reader should be cautioned: Keats’ phrasing of “without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” is not the expression of some Modernist or Post-Modernist view; it does not imply that Keats was not concerned about the question of facts and reason in respect to art, as many modern literary critics imagine—quite the contrary. Keats correspondences and poetic works attest to his deep conviction about the nature of the poetic imagination’s ability to capture Truth. Keats believed that the best way to arrive at facts and reasons was to stop looking for them per se, and allow the mind to explore things on its own, to let the imagination play among phenomena and let the facts and reasons find it, perhaps in the same way we might imagine a poet being found by the muses.
I like the way this article is comparing things. Generally, we do not have the proper information.
One good way to know if you are getting the correct information is to count the number of times you get surprised. There are no surprises when you are properly informed.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A record 621 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco so far this year, a staggering number that far outpaces the 173 deaths from COVID-19 the city has seen thus far.
We better find something else to do.
This is the latest of a long string of projects that has shown how new large-format extrusion systems—either based on cartesian or multi-axis robotic architectures—are making the process of 3D printing boats a fairly standardized (or, at least, standardizable) practice.
www.3dprintingmedia.network/3d-printing-boats-is-becoming-standard-practice/
How come this very important event is not covered live by our dear mass media? Maybe they already have all the stuff they need to scare us.
The mass broke from the Antarctic peninsula’s Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017 and headed slowly for the open ocean, sliding through the water for over two years until it hit the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current circling the southernmost continent.
Yes, some famous people are asking a lot of questions about crypto currencies. This wave is stirring a lot of ideas and thinking in some people.
Tesla and Spacex CEO Elon Musk made a series of tweets about bitcoin on Sunday. One of them concerns whether it is possible to buy bitcoin in “large transactions,” particularly for Tesla to convert its U.S. dollar reserves into bitcoin. Microstrategy’s CEO told Musk that this move would be “a $100 billion favor” to Tesla’s shareholders that would grow into a “$1 trillion favor.”
news.bitcoin.com/elon-musk-tesla-billions-bitcoin-large-transactions/
The control of mythology is the key to power. Back a few hundred years, that control was more decentralized. Today, my guess is, that the main control lies in the hands of a few entities.
Here, suffice to say that Darwinian materialism’s impoverishing effect on literature is so much of a problem that my alma mater, a Christian university in Texas, published an anthology of literary works that are not nihilistic and materialistic, just to provide balance for the typical literary anthologies assigned to students in freshman and sophomore English.
It’s called Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith. It includes short stories and poems from various great authors who maintained faith in a cosmos that is more than matter — John Milton, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Flannery O’Connor, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Updike, and various others. I highly recommend the book. It’s one of many efforts not only to recognize the threat that materialism poses to our culture, but also to do something about it.
www.sott.net/article/446045-Darwinism-storytelling-and-the-futurist-ET-myth
For me, the difference between a human and an animal has more to do with some structure of thinking. Animals can think but they do not “know” that they think. We do. More than that, we also “know-2” that we “know-1”. We may look at the whole thing, as we are thinking at one dimension higher than animals.
To explain what sets human apart from their ape relatives, researchers have long hypothesized that it is not so much the DNA sequence, but rather the regulation of the genes (i.e. when, where and how strongly the gene is expressed), t * Human brains 99% similar to chimpanzees, what’s in the other 1%?
www.sott.net/article/446082-Human-brains-99-similar-to-chimpanzees-whats-in-the-other-1
Maybe that will be the future of gaming…
Still going, but it is bound to have some hiccups.
The crypto economy has gained a massive amount of value during the last few days, as the aggregate market cap of all 7,500+ digital assets is a whopping $640 billion on Thursday.
It is not ET (Extra-Terrestrial) yet but this will help to study exoplanets more closely.
By monitoring the cosmos with a radio telescope array, an international team of scientists has detected radio bursts emanating from the constellation Boötes – that could be the first radio emission collected from a planet beyond our solar system.
www.sott.net/article/445957-Radio-emissions-may-have-been-detected-from-exoplanet
Very important Vagus nerve pieces of information.
>>> “The vagal response occurs when the vagus nerve is stimulated, setting off a chain of events within the body involving the central nervous system, peripheral nervous system and the cardiovascular system. “
It seems that they did not have any choice. They were losing ground to start with. We will see how regulations will prevent them to go on.
>>> “The stock’s record-breaking performance comes after Paypal recently reported a drop in its third-quarter earnings in October. While that performance subsequently forced Paypal not to provide preliminary guidance for 2021, there is, however, a belief that the cryptocurrency trade service will result in a turnaround of the company’s fortunes.”
At one point, these big institutions will have no real loyalty toward central anything. Some of them might, but will need some deep pocket and, maybe a little bit of your pocket, in order to break even.
>>> “With bitcoin outperforming most other assets this year, the analysts explained that “if pension funds and insurance companies in the U.S., euro area, U.K. and Japan allocate 1% of assets to bitcoin, that would result in additional bitcoin demand of $600 billion,” the news outlet conveyed.”
news.bitcoin.com/jpmorgan-600-billion-demand-bitcoin-global-institutional-adoption/
What is hard to understand between the word “decentralized” and a “central” bank? Centralized systems are not good. They may fail and then everybody is worst off. It is very much like having all your eggs in the same basket.
There is a natural tendency for networks to create supernodes that are in fact centralization of relations. That tendency is also very present in human relations (see Facebook, religions, sports, etc.).
We must fight this tendency in order to protect ourselves. The same is true for going to your local butcher or independent grocery store instead of any big chain. If the big chain has a logistical or transportation problem you might not be able to feed yourself for a while. If you help the local store and they have a problem, you might not have far to go to get to another neighborhood.
>> “Every single day the conversation about the Great Reset continues to amplify. More recently, mainstream media publications have been publishing rebuttals in response to the many skeptics of this agenda who believe the reboot propaganda is meant to install a new world order. The American broadcaster Max Keiser is telling a few countries to get as much bitcoin as possible to hedge against the economic reset. Meanwhile, Dr. Joseph Mercola explains that unlike central bank digital currencies, bitcoin is the “decentralized and a rational strategy to opt-out.””
news.bitcoin.com/the-great-reset-agenda-bitcoin-is-a-decentralized-and-rational-strategy-to-opt-out/
This will just help to popularize cryptocurrencies. Peer to Peer, decentralized systems are not easy to stop. The music industry has tried for years to put a brake on music sharing and, to this day, they have failled.
>>> “Since the financial blockade by Mastercard and Visa, Pornhub’s premium services plans now must be paid with cryptocurrencies, as that is the only option available. If a user wants to purchase a plan that starts off at $9.99 a month or a yearly plan with a one-time payment of $95.88, the person has 13 cryptocurrencies to choose from.”
news.bitcoin.com/pornhubs-premium-services-crypto-payments-13-digital-assets-supported/
Here is real liberty.
>>> ” Venezuela Workers, a Venezuelan freelancing platform, had emerged to connect local freelancers with global employers who are seeking to pursue some project or performing a specific task.”
news.bitcoin.com/venezuelan-crypto-friendly-freelancing-platform-emerges-amid-economic-crisis-us-sanctions/
venezuelaworkers.com/
Watch out for these types of frauds.
>>> “Chrome Browser Extension Is Redirecting Crypto Users to a Fake Metamask Site
According to an alert published by Ciphertrace, since December 2, 2020, they have been noticing “an uptick of alerts and comments” about crypto funds stolen via a Chrome browser extension posing as the ethereum (ETH)-based wallet Metamask.”
news.bitcoin.com/fraudulent-crypto-browser-extension-redirects-to-a-fake-metamask-domain/
We are still at the early stage with decentralized cryptocurrencies. There is a long way to go. We will see big popularity in the near future. I do not take this as an investment. I take it as something to gain some security through diversification.
>>> ““So, it’s the wrong market cap, for instance, relative to gold, which is $8 or $9 trillion,” he added. “Bitcoin reminds me so much of the internet stocks of 1999 because the internet was in its infancy. No one knew how to value it because of the world of possibilities that lay ahead.” Bitcoin’s current market cap is approximately $350 billion.”
news.bitcoin.com/billionaire-hedge-fund-manager-paul-tudor-jones-bitcoins-market-cap-500-billion/
Here is another example of the increasing popularity of decentralized cryptocurrencies.
>>> “The up and coming crypto-friendly travel booking website Travala.com released its monthly earnings report for November on Tuesday showing a record month.”
news.bitcoin.com/crypto-friendly-travel-site-travala-revenue-increase-cryptocurrencies/
Oliver Stone has a big responsibility in awakening some thinking potential in most of us. I like him a lot and his creations are of the type you never get tired of appreciating. I mean, someone, like me, can watch his movies multiple times. A little bit like some good piece of music.
>>> “Who is this guy, I wondered. My curiosity was whetted further when the P.C. reviewer in the Los Angeles Herald denounced Stone’s screenplays for earlier films: “Movies like Midnight Express, Scarface, and Year of the Dragon are such grand-scale xenophobic fever-dreams that they almost demand to be remade into operas, complete with belching smoke and lurid lighting and crimson-suited devils scurrying out of the wings to pitchfork lily-white Mother America.””
www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/oliver-stone-america-firster/
I also think that decentralized crypto-currencies are very important for our future.
>>> “Its (because) governments are, through this pandemic, creating vast amounts of funny money, debasing currencies, and people are scared about what this means for their money, their investments.”
I find it a little bit strange that this article is not available anymore.
>>> “”
www.csail.mit.edu/news/mit-study-covid-19-vaccines-may-be-less-effective-racial-minorities
A lot of people are selecting Apple products because they believe that security is better with them. This seems to prove that it is not more secure. I would also add that anything that is centralized can’t be very secure.
>> “Ian Beer, a member of Google’s Project Zero hacking team, revealed on Monday that iPhones and other Apple devices could be remotely hijacked and turned into surveillance tools until May, when he said Apple patched the vulnerability. The hacker not only didn’t have to touch the device, but need not ever even see it.”
How can we trust anything that is produced today? This seems to reinforce suspicion about every product getting out to the consumer today.
>>> “The research suggests that, despite the belief that a criminal needs to be in physical contact with a dangerous substance to produce and deliver it, the malware could sneak into a bio-engineer’s computer and substitute a short sub-string in the DNA structure there so that a sequence could be unintentionally created, launching the production of a toxin.”
It is getting more and more popular every day. I have a lot of hope in decentralized crypto-currencies.
>>> “According to a proprietary survey of 380 Paypal users by Mizuho Securities, 17% of the respondents said they have already traded bitcoin (BTC) via their Paypal accounts since the firm started offering crypto services in October.”
news.bitcoin.com/65-of-traders-on-paypal-ready-to-use-bitcoin-to-pay-for-goods-and-services-survey/