Month: November 2017

Incompetent entrapment

if you’re a clown like james o’keefe, and you’re trying to entrap the media, perhaps use a more competent person?

Alice Crites, a Post researcher who was looking into Phillips’s background, found the document that strongly reinforced the reporters’ suspicions: a GoFundMe.com under the name Jaime Phillips. “I’m moving to New York!. I’ve accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceit of the liberal MSM. I’ll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement.

Infanticide

There are reasons to believe that infanticide could make a larger comeback. Recent years have seen increasing efforts, particularly in the United States, to make abortion illegal while restricting access to birth control. Religious groups are pushing this agenda worldwide, with success in Africa, where birth control has been stigmatized as a form of genocide. The backers of these policies believe them to be pro-baby; as the group Human Life International puts it, they’re protecting ‘the traditionally life-loving African culture’. The real results, however can be seen in a country such as Senegal, where access to birth control is limited, and all forms of abortion are illegal – and where almost 20% of incarcerated women are in prison for infanticide.

Edge effects

The different shapes or letters were thus chosen for research purposes, the goal being to learn which ones produced the best “edge effects” for plants and wildlife on the ground. If the S shape allowed more efficient access to sunlight, in other words, well, then S shapes would be used in the future to help stimulate forest recovery due to their particular pattern of sunlight.

Autonomous shipping

“We’re on the verge of something great. We’re going to make autonomous ships a reality by 2020.” Autonomous shipping would be more environmentally friendly, partly by using electric propulsion and alternative fuels such as marine gas oil and methanol. The normal diesel fuel used in shipping is absolutely filthy, and we should try to stop using it.

2020-10-31: It would help with crew shortages as well

“You have large shipping companies that can’t change out their crews and 100Ks of sailors that were trapped in March on their vessels because they couldn’t get flights out or because of the overall risk of bringing a new crew on board. Executives at these companies are looking to de-risk this.” The International Maritime Organization is in the middle of a “scoping exercise” to come up with new rules for autonomous ships sailing across the sea. It has identified 4 levels of autonomy for ships.

Inadequate Equilibria

Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck is a little gem of a book: wise, funny, and best of all useful (and just made available for free on the web). Eliezer Yudkowsky and I haven’t always agreed about everything, but on the subject of bureaucracies and how they fail, his insights are gold. This book is one of the finest things he’s written. It helped me reflect on my own choices in life, and it will help you reflect on yours.

The book is a 120-page meditation on a question that’s obsessed me as much as it’s obsessed Yudkowsky. Namely: when, if ever, is it rationally justifiable to act as if you know better than our civilization’s “leading experts”? And if you go that route, then how do you answer the voices—not least, the voices in your own head—that call you arrogant, hubristic, even a potential crackpot?

The fake FB industry

how the gullible are entrapped by fake fb accounts. what works for politics works for scams too, of course.

While investigating the world of fake Facebook profiles, my colleague Marie-Eve Tremblay and I have discovered a massive network of fraudulent accounts that catfish their male victims using stolen photos of young women and adolescent girls. This is the story of the months-long investigation that allowed us to piece together the inner workings of this network of online bandits.

Solving Alzheimers?

Bill Gates believes we are at a turning point in Alzheimer’s Research and Development. Now is the right time to accelerate that progress before the major costs hit countries that can’t afford high priced therapies and where exposure to the kind of budget implications of an Alzheimer’s epidemic could bankrupt health systems. This is a frontier where we can dramatically improve human life. It’s a miracle that people are living so much longer, but longer life expectancies alone are not enough. People should be able to enjoy their later years—and we need a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s to fulfill that. I’m excited to join the fight and can’t wait to see what happens next.