Stephan: I published, and commented on this paper several years ago, and wrote about it in my Awakening novel. I thought in 2019 it was probable, and in 2022 think it even more likely to happen. It will continue the cultural transition begun with social media.
Imagine a future technology that would provide instant access to the world’s knowledge and artificial intelligence, simply by thinking about a specific topic or question. Communications, education, work, and the world as we know it would be transformed.
Writing in Frontiers in Neuroscience, an international collaboration led by researchers at UC Berkeley and the US Institute for Molecular Manufacturing predicts that exponential progress in nanotechnology, nanomedicine, AI, and computation will lead this century to the development of a “Human Brain/Cloud Interface” (B/CI), that connects neurons and synapses in the brain to vast cloud-computing networks in real time.
Nanobots on the brain
The B/CI concept was initially proposed by futurist-author-inventor Ray Kurzweil, who suggested that neural nanorobots — brainchild of Robert Freitas, Jr., senior author of the research — could be used to connect the neocortex of the human brain to a “synthetic neocortex” in the cloud. Our wrinkled neocortex is the newest, smartest, ‘conscious’ part of the brain.
Freitas’ proposed neural nanorobots would provide direct, real-time monitoring and control of signals to and from brain cells.
Stephan: I think this is an accurate assessment of what Putin is doing. It is typical fascist behavior. Power is more important than the wellbeing of the peasants. The Russian, oil and gas industry in 2021 provided 39% of the federal budget revenue and made up 60% of Russian exports. Know anyone outside of Russia with a Russian refrigerator? Smartphone? Car? Russia is incredibly vulnerable to economic isolation, and the quality of life in Russia is poor. But for Putin and the rich oligarchs, it's the expected play, in my opinion.
MOSCOW — War jitters are rattling the Russian economy. The stock market is at risk of tumbling, dragging the ruble down with it.
And that’s on top of spiking prices and wages that won’t budge.
None of it has stopped Russian President Vladimir Putin, though. Moscow has been preparing for this.
If anything, the Kremlin’s rhetoric suggests it is willing to sacrifice the economy at the altar of Putin’s ambition to redraw the security infrastructure that has been in place since the end of the Cold War, massing troops on Ukraine’s border and risking war along the way.
There are reasons that calculus might be sound — at least for the moment. Despite years of sanctions and a pandemic, Russia’s economy is better equipped than many to survive a crisis — even if it is a self-manufactured one. Meanwhile, there is little Putin has to fear at home. Political opposition has been cowered and forced into near silence, even as average Russians bemoan their vanishing paychecks.
“Foreign policy is more important to Putin than economic consequences,” Sergei Guriev, a former chief […]
Stephan: I have said this before but I think it bears saying again. Wealth inequality in the United States has reached a level in which the divide is so great that neither side can really comprehend the reality of the other. As a nation, which is to say most of the people in the United States, we range at the bottom of nearly every social outcome measure when compared with other developed nations. On many health measures, like infant mortality, we actually rank below a number of third world countries. But our 754 billionaires live in another world. Jeff Bezos, as this report describes, has had a new sailing yacht built that is so large they can't get it out of the yacht yard and out to sea because the masts are too large to fit under an historic bridge. So what is Bezos' solution? Dissemble an historic bridge, and let ordinary Dutch citizens in Rotterdam detour miles out of their way for months, so his yacht can be gotten out to sea one afternoon.
Jeff BezosCredit: Saul Loeb / Getty
Uber-rich Amazon founder Jeff Bezos can’t get his mega-boat out to sea, so he’s having a historic bridge moved out of his way.
Bezos wants to prove that, with enough money, you really can move mountains—or at least, in this case, cherished bridges. That’s according to local reports cited by Dutch News and Boat International which claim the city of Rotterdam will temporarily disable its historic Koningshaven bridge so a luxury superyacht rumored to have been commissioned by Bezos can make its way out to sea.
The main issue here is the boat is just too damn big. Developed by Dutch custom yacht builder Oceanco, the ship comes out to an estimated 127 meters (417 feet) in length. When completed, the colossus will become the world’s largest sailing yacht, according to Boat international. Oceanco reportedly approached Rotterdam’s municipality and requested the bridges dismantling because its 40-meter clearance isn’t tall enough to accommodate the yacht’s three gargantuan […]
Stephan: I decided to dedicate today's edition entirely on what I see as a determined attack on American democracy by the MAGAt Republicans, Dark Money fascists, White supremacists, men and women obsessed with male dominance, militant heterosexuals, anti-science people, and evangelical phony Christians. I assembled today's articles to make it clear just how nasty, vulgar and vile this movement is.
More and more I see this conspiracy as increasing, and its supporters becoming ever more militant. What scares me is that they seem to be succeeding. Right now I would say the odds are 60-40, with 60% being that the 2022 election will result in the MAGAts succeeding, taking over the House and the Senate, almost certainly trying to impeach Biden, and voting a spectrum of laws into effect all to assure that this group although a minority will stay in power and that elections are rigged to achieve that end.
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: As usual Paul Krugman gets it right, and tells the fact based truth, and the truth is crazier then generally understood, and he makes it clear just how vile the Republican Party is. I mean really vile. This is a party of cretins who really do not like democracy or science. You cannot be an ethical person and vote for Republicans, but millions of Americans will do so anyway.
Credit: Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press
In February 2021 a deep freeze caused widespread power outages in Texas, leaving about 10 million Texans without electricity, in many cases for days. Hundreds died.
The biggest proximate cause of the crisis was disrupted production of natural gas, the state’s most important power source. After a 2011 freeze, federal regulators had urged Texas to require winterization of gas and electricity facilities. But it didn’t.
And for the most part it still hasn’t: So far, no winterization requirements have been placed on the politically powerful gas sector. Instead, Gov. Greg Abbott is hoping to secure the power grid by encouraging … Bitcoin mining. This would supposedly reduce the risk of outages because Bitcoin’s huge electricity consumption would eventually expand the state’s generation capacity.
Yes, that’s as crazy as it sounds. But it fits a pattern. When confronted with problems that could easily be alleviated through cooperative action, the radical right-wingers who have taken over the […]
