What I’d give to have been a fly on the office wall of whoever chose the photo to accompany this editorial on Covid as the pangolins’ revenge. https://t.co/9u34TBAbbv
In 1665, Cambridge University closed b/c of the plague. Issac Newton quarantined himself at his childhood home. It was the most productive time of his life. He discovered the calculus & laws of motion. Stuck a bodkin in his eye to study optics. How will you spend the next year?
dirt-cheap hardware, abundant solar energy, censorship-resistant domains and p2p storage solutions will soon combine, ensuring every new website launched today will remain online forever, browsable eternally in the next 200 years of vapor-ized solarpunk futurenow
A public who can imagine a better future, or understand the present in the context of history, is bad for the kleptocrats. Which is one motive for the current drive to promote STEM subjects in higher ed, and the shutdown of humanities faculties (except as a luxury for the rich.) https://t.co/6XCHEkiwxQ
as someone studying linguistics i can tell you all words are fake and language is arbitrary and prescriptivist grammars are tools of class and race supremacy <3 https://t.co/sORj9FAyFr
Remember when it was hard to accept that non-humans, like microbes, could be full fledged actors -actants rather- able to build up associations in addition to those more classically “social”? Now it’s common sense: here is Chinese pollution with or without virus. (Huffingtonpost) pic.twitter.com/5cxpcbeA1C
“Hyper-accumulating” plants draw metal from the ground, producing rich, multi-colored saps that can be more concentrated than ore bodies at traditional mines. Landscape metallurgy. The garden as mine. Extractive forestry. [Photo by Antony van der Ent] https://t.co/0pbUW9NLLOpic.twitter.com/h5qSGyeyHm
- wash your hands regularly
- stock up on essentials
- self isolate if you feel ill
- don’t make unnecessary journeys
- don’t take risks on treacherous roads
- don’t swim in the sea
There are two types of people: those who like their nuclear waste site warnings as giant collections of menacing concrete spikes, and those who prefer their nuclear waste site warnings to be genetically manipulated cats who change color as foretold by ancient songs and fairytales
The health and safety of our customers and crew is a priority for Singapore Airlines and SilkAir. In view of the Covid–19 outbreak, we would like to share with you the enhanced cleaning and precautionary measures that we have instituted on board our aircraft.
All SIA and SilkAir aircraft already undergo a thorough cleaning process when on the ground. In addition, all flights arriving from Mainland China undergo disinfectant fogging. Common surfaces such as tray tables, handsets, and inflight entertainment screens are cleaned with disinfectant wipes. We also remove all headsets, headrest covers, pillow covers, bedsheets, and blankets after every flight sector.
The air filtration systems in our aircraft are equipped with High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, which have a similar performance to those used in hospital operation rooms. Constant airflow also ensures that the cabin air is refreshed every two to three minutes.
During this period, you may also notice that there have been changes to our in-flight services. These include the replacement of the hot towel service with pre-set wet towelettes, cessation of the after take-off drink service, removal of reading materials from seat-back pockets, and suspension of in-flight sales.
Pre-flight temperature screening for all cabin crew and pilots operating out of Singapore has been in place since 29 January 2020. Our crew also know that they should see a doctor immediately if they feel unwell and should not report for work.
Thank you for your support. We wish you good health and look forward to welcoming you on board soon.
Things that happen in Econ that would be odd in other sciences:
“The Kavli Institute, a privately funded physics think tank dedicated to the idea that dark matter doesn’t exist, came out with a meta-analysis of astrophysical data that claims dark matter doesn’t exist.”
A graviton near or at its ground state would be super spread out, right? It’s cold in space, mostly. I believe the universe is a graviton, frequency unknown, amplitude universe, shimmering near or at its ground state. What do I know I’m just a humanist clown
Think I’m making shit up? One of the most popular apps in S. Korea right now is one that alerts you if you’re close to one of Shincheonji’s ‘churches’ or other affiliated establishments. Of which there are over 730 across S. Korea alone, btw.https://t.co/dN0lz5dLGP
The Coronavirus Chronicles keep getting weirder and weirder.
You’ve probably heard about the sudden outbreak of the virus in South Korea. Well, did you also know that this is, in large part, to thank to an actual death cult? It’s called #Shincheonji, and it’s super scary.
If good software is easy to change, and bad software is hard to change, the limit of any software with sufficient development resources is bad. This may mean that the only thing that keeps some software good is a lack of resources, or attention, or both.
So following my retweet of the saguaros being cut down, it occurs to me that the extraordinary nature of the saguaro may not be common knowledge. Therefore, let us talk about this marvelous vegetative creature.
(1) GR is nonrenormalizable AND its short distance (high energy) structure is plagued with diseases that prevent us from using quantum (field) theory to study it
(2) QM and GR treat spacetime differently in many ways, e.g., background (in)dependence
My own initial reaction to gpt2 helps me understand why pre-modern tribes reacted to being filmed and shown the footage like the camera was stealing their souls. Except, I *like* the idea instead of being horrified by it. Unfortunately as untrue for AIs as for film cameras.
I’m glad @quinnnorton finally put this out: https://t.co/LJE078osbA. I was and am one of those friends, and it was horrifying to watch this happen — it still haunts me. I have no great lessons here, other than that we still don’t understand how to live in the networked age.
A Hindu god now has a permanent reserved seat on an Indian Railways train (which will only serve vegetarian food and play devotional music on train’s speakers) https://t.co/vzru444Rp9 via @qzindia
How can we stop pandemics? Pandemic Math explains: Turn rapid exponential growth to rapid exponential decline. Change the contact network by (1) targeted individual isolation (2) early symptom identification (3) reduce social connectivity (4) travel and group boundaries. pic.twitter.com/8BkEFizHEv
cool project - permanently encase the air of Amazon fulfilment centers by exploiting the fact that they inflate those padded air cushions during the packaging process. https://t.co/rGGZn6engn
“That’s what the world is. The world is not an unsolved problem for scientists or sociologists. The world is a living mystery: our birth, our death, our being in the moment – these are mysteries. They are doorways opening on to unimaginable vistas of self-exploration, empowerment and hope for the human enterprise.”
“we have too much of truth and that we are looking for the exact opposite, something unspeakable, essentially irreducible to the all-encircling semiotic of capital – a way out, a cloud of unknowing. Speaking in signs is all we can do; so we adorn ourselves with arcane sigils, weave myths of fallen gods, raise deconstructed chants to the beats of synthetic drums – anything to break free, but somehow we keep coming back, orbiting the same unbreakable truth, again and again, running in never-ending circles.”
Believing things takes a lot of energy. You can measure the fragility of a system by the energy it takes to believe in it. Or alternately, how believable it is at non-striving slacker energy levels. Good systems are 80% believable at 2o% peak energy level.
Have you ever seen a clearer rebuttal to late capitalism’s insistence on private individuals changing their behavior to solve systemic ailments? https://t.co/O2Cex2mswW
Hauntology was not an ‘end of history’ concept, but a diagnosis of an economic, political dismantling of the ability for the future to be culturally produced. There is therefore a role for strategists to create new models of infrastructure to allow now possibilities
sorry but jordan peterson writing a book prescribing “rules for life” then almost dying in a russian hospital from benzo withdrawals and an insane all-beef diet not even two years later is one of the funniest things to ever happen
People love to criticize approaches to climate change, an unprecedented global issue, but rarely want to implement approaches themselves—because they expose themselves to criticism. If you’re going to do this work, you have to have an earnest desire to co-learn—& lots of humility
This is a wireless antenna in California. Network coverage was disrupted by an Acorn woodpecker, a 3 ounce bird stashing an estimated 35-50 gallons/300lbs of acorns. pic.twitter.com/QYdp6ShxXZ
Imagine instead of a winner take all political competition we decided on what each person can best contribute—their superpower—and made their role to do it.
“No matter how the official narrative of this turns out, […] these are the places we should be looking, not in newspapers or television but at the margins, graffiti, uncontrolled utterances, bad dreamers who sleep in public and scream in their sleep” (Pynchon, BE 322).
No sniffers, no trackers, no GDPR, no ads, no cookies, no data collection, no marketing, no mailing list, no donation box, no scraping, no terms & conditions, no permission, no money. Who you are and what you do are no business of ours. #ubuweb
love the absolute eldritch wierdness of the Nike air zoom viperfly, enhanced by the fact its already banned for use in Tokyo 2020 despite coming out this week, so v few will ever see retail. Lovecraftian form factor in order to get the vaporfly plate into a running spike shoe pic.twitter.com/Cz9mnrc10B
It’s true: We’ve written a book! How to Future is a practical guide to applied futuring for non-specialists, coming from Kogan Page this July. Sense, map, model and communicate new futures. Pre-order now, RT and stay tuned for more here, @howtofuture or https://t.co/Qk8PEPil3epic.twitter.com/kcqGrHhG5z
Best ever basil grown through this apocalyptic summer. So in the 2050s I imagine it will be all caprese salad but with jellyfish instead of mozzarella 😘 #climatechange#canberrapic.twitter.com/sIoSPYg5Fr
the bishop of orlando is also the bishop of the moon, due to a canon law that says “any newly discovered territory would fall under the bishopric from whence the discovering expedition departed”. his is therefore the largest catholic diocese, at over 14,000,000 square miles
99 smartphones are transported in a handcart to generate virtual traffic jam in Google Maps. Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route! #googlemapshackshttps://t.co/3gixMxopE6pic.twitter.com/6KcMm1XgAF
Douglas Rushkoff: “"I was deeply resentful of Wired for repackaging the Mondo universe as this kind of NASDAQ business story. And it was just obvious to me what they were doing. And the extent to which they either explicitly or implicitly discredited the real cyber movement…”
I’m gonna talk with world religion leaders with the Vatican real soon, and my wish is we make a document that radically alters what “apocalypse” means. Basically,
APOCALYPSE NO!
i asked some trees how they’d manage the massive and rapid transition away from fossil fuels in a just and equitable way and they just stood there https://t.co/N2Zm6g8OCg
Speculative Design: the present is boring and predictable. The past is complex and a burden. Fiction is comfortable and cool, a temporary place to seek shelter. Over and over again.
Note: You probably don’t know enough about telecommunications infrastructure, investment regulation, internet security, cyber-intelligence, and the 5 Eyes intelligence sharing network to hold as strong an opinion as you’re currently considering putting forth.
This is an amazing realization: all online multiplayer first person shooters are “just conferences calls with occasional shooting” and now I see WebEx completely differently https://t.co/Hr66KKxBT0
If you believe Australians will change their attitude because of the catastrophe, read first Ian Kirshaw “The End” on the last year of the war 1945: everyone knows the Reich is doomed, yet they stick to the regime until the 1st US tanks enter their town. Except this time, no US!
Large-scale physics experiments, or “sites that are incredibly evocative, religious in their belief that an unseen world is capable of revelation, but scientific in their insistence that this unveiling will be achieved through technological means.” https://t.co/xWOvzb8Lv9pic.twitter.com/14soyNTpXD
2094: Scientists discover that Trout Mask Replica, Neutral Milk Hotel, Tokyo Anal Dynamite are deeply embedded What3Words coordinates to portals through which the Pilgrims will ascend to the hell planes. It begins.
People thought they were building Star Trek’s computer but didn’t realize they were building Douglas Adams’ Sirius Cybernetics computers, because he accurately observed that the Marketing Department exists
“We don’t play music in order to get somewhere. I mean, if the objective of music were to arrive at a point, say the last bar, the final great crashing pause of the symphony, well than all we’d do we’d be just hurry up it’s playing, play it as fast as possible so as to get to the culmination as soon as possible. Or, just cut out the whole symphony and play only the last bars.”
“There is no longer a spectacle to contemplate from the security provided by the interior of a (magical) circle; now, the natural and the supernatural come together in a no - place, an environment, an atmosphere in which the characters immerse themselves, a sinister ether of unknown dimensions. The centre of the circle is already everywhere, and its circumference is nowhere.”
