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Credible Catastrophe Caution

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I Find MIT a Credible Source Especially About Science ...and you?  The foundations of America’s prosperity are being dismantled Ever since World War II, the US has been the global leader in science and technology—and benefited immensely from it. Research fuels American innovation and the economy in turn. Scientists around the world want to study in the US and collaborate with American scientists to produce more of that research.  These international collaborations play a critical role in American soft power and diplomacy. The pr...
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Uh Oh

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  All Three Agree I keep three of the free AI chatbots on my desktop. If I have an important question I ask all three, using the same prompt. This time I indulged my low level anxiety about what's going on in Trumpville. I prompted: "What is the best historical situation in which a country goes through the kind of political conditions the U.S. is currently experiencing?" Lo and behold... CoPilot:    The Weimar Republic period in Germany (1918-1933) is a significant historical example that shares similarities with the current political conditions in the U.S. Gemini:   Several historical situations share similarities with the current political climate in the U.S., but one particularly apt example is the Weimar Republic in Germany (1918-1933) . Claude.ai:   The Weimar Republic period in Germany (1918-1933) offers several relevant parallels. Each one elaborated, gave other cases and asked me if I wanted more.  Ask them yourself for the expanded versions, but ...
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Do AIs Snore?

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...Depends On Who They Hang Out With  AI is moving so fast almost no one except the pros can really keep up. Many people, if the small but diverse sample in my personal sphere is at all representative, see a 'person' of sorts in the chatbot they use. I think a kid with a chatbot personal tutor most certainly will. You can have a conversation with a chatbot at a higher level than you can with most folks. And the bots are getting better by the day. They seem alive to a lot of us human beans. Billions of bucks are crashing around. Progress curves are steepening. International competition is amping up. [Just as I'm posting this, it is becoming clear that Chinese LLMs are competitive and more energy-efficient.] The ballistic move to Artificial General Intelligence is underway. Which just lights up my sci-fi heart. SUPERINTELLIGENCE IS INEVITABLE ONCE AGI HAPPENS People seem to forget the seminal Nick Bostrom prediction that the first SI to get its act together would take over th...
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Just Getting Started, A Giant Health Story

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 7264 New Human Proteins*     A New Category of Proteins, "Micro-proteins," thousands of them.  Call me impressionable, but I think this is a HUGE** story. The implications are mega.  Micro-Protein Regular Old Protein 1. We don't know what most of them do YET. 2. Finding what they do is a perfect job for machine learning. We'll be learning fast. 3. Understanding what they all do will be a whole new info layer about us human beans. 4. It's very likely many new pharmaceutical "targets" will be found, especially for highly personalized medicine. New opportunities will emerge for such as MS, Alzeimer's, and all the chronic diseases. 5. Health optimization targets likewise will be found. Longer healthspans and such. 6. Presumably Alpha Fold can describe thousands more micro-proteins as another jump in knowledge. 7. My personal belief (that complex combinations of micro-proteins are what makes the placebo effect work) will be confirmed. Exciting, no? Call ...
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Here Come da Bombs

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Ka-BOOM! 1) The weather weirdness is just getting started. Sure, the jet stream is starting to wiggle like a wounded snake, but wait until it starts oscillating in altitude.* Unprecedented (in recent millennia) storms will ride the upsweeps and stratospheric cold will swoop on the downsweeps.   I predict there will be all kinds of new "bombs" in the forecasts, perhaps a "chaos bomb" to excuse bad forecasts of unprecedented patterns and unexpected events. Bomb on!   * IT ALREADY DOES, More gradually... Gemini (Google) sayeth:    The jet stream's core can vary in altitude, typically ranging from about 9 to 14 kilometers (30,000 to 45,000 feet) above sea level.   The rate at which the jet stream's core changes altitude can vary significantly. It can shift several kilometers in a matter of days, especially during periods of intense weather systems or atmospheric disturbances. However, these changes are usually gradual and occur over longer time scales.  JU...
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How Do You Know If You Are Being Propagandized?...

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..Into Believing Something You Seriously Doubted? (Most Americans Don't Recognize Propaganda Technique  Even When They Are Soaking It Up.) Sign Interpretations Below* Don't kid yourself; propaganda works. You are not immune, no matter how smart you think you are. Propaganda changes minds, creates and strengthens beliefs. Nobody's immune, but you can keep a good guard up. First you must recognize when you are being targeted. How to KNOW when it's propaganda Basics of Propaganda A Big Lie Work Best.  (And somebody REALLY wants you to believe it.) Repetition Makes Lies Believable.  (Almost hypnotic with enough repetition.) So How Do You Spot It Every Time? It's as Simple as "Rate and Count"  RATE the misinformation for "bigness." Is it:          1. A white lie          2. Mixed lie/truth          3. Major exaggeration          4.  "Big lie" Whopper Roughly COUNT the...
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If You Haven't Done It Yet...

  VOTE!
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Hey News Media, Time to Raise the Roof!

  Fake News, Fake Political Ads -- Headline Material . A Simple Proposal EVERY DAY, EVERY EDITION, FRONT PAGE LISTING AND DESCRIPTION OF ALL THE ELECTION INTERFERENCE BY OTHER COUNTRIES Every fake ad, every "viral" post,  every fake comment on a story... list 'em all,  Clearly identify the bastards by copy points, visual references, talent descriptions. Define this subject as a beat. Put your smartest people on identifying these propaganda  poison  darts. Leave the stories up, put them on every Net presence you have. Show compounding lists. Identify the originating countries. Call out every lie. Describe how the lie works -- partial truth, heavy repetition, etc. Give this story "above the fold" and lots of graphics and pictures treatment. BE THE ANTIDOTE TO INTERNATIONAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE! I'm askin'. I'm beggin'. Newsguard Reality Check: overview
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Harden the Cell Towers! Love the Hams!

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 The Almost Total Loss of Communications  Was a Major Complication in the Response  to Helene in Western North Carolina LOOK OUT,  HERE COMES MILTON! - 60% to 80% of the Helene outages were caused by direct damage to the cell towers. - We know how to make them hurricane-proof. (Tougher structurally, backup power, backup network connections) - Right now the hardened towers are only in the areas threatened by hurricanes in "normal" times.  - Since America has become hugely dependent on cell phones for primary communications, we must invest in protecting cell service even in the most catastrophic situations. Especially in those times. - Catastrophes that can wipe out cell service go far beyond hurricanes.  Wildfires are a biggie. Earthquakes, or a major solar storm could do it. A nuclear explosion, even one in space, would zap the electronics. - Hardening against all these threats will seriously bump up our survivability score. Only government mandates will m...
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Consumer Economy, Albuquerque. Endgame

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52" TV; Temperpedic (partial); "New" Stuff & So much more The East Mountain transfer station, one of three dropoffs in Bernalillo County Bernalillo Co. landfill, one of two All that stuff was once new. Shiney silver, red and blue. A meditation on mortality. For you who still deny reality.
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Well Now!

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Even a Blind Squirrel... It seemed obvious to me, So I posted: Scooter Duff's Theory of Cosmology This is the third update, and it's looking good! From NewScientist And from the journal Physical Review Letters GRANTED I missed a couple quantum chromodynamics points...Duh... but for a layguy, I'd say I bulls-eyed this sucker.  Check it out, cosmology fans, complete with updates. Just bragging.
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Faster Than a Speeding Drought

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FLASH DROUGHTS Droughts Are Usually Slowly Developing Catastrophes Sort of Slo-Mo Trainwrecks So slow, they are hard to "see" if you are in the middle of a developing one. At least that's the case in a typical drought. "Typical" is getting harder to come by in these times of Climate Change (CC) with all the "thousand year" events happening anually and "hundred year" events happening monthly. Still, it's surprising how fast a destructive drought can develop these days. Meteorologists call them "Flash Droughts" (FD) That's a scary addition to the list of bad weather events. Here's how they work. Heat Domes (HD) are large areas of high pressure (HP) that capture and compress hot air and park over some part of the country and just sit there getting hotter and hotter and.  Usually HP areas move along from west to east in our hemisphere, but CC has made the jet stream (JS) weird. CC is causing instability in the JS so that it ...
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