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In this issue, I’m going to challenge some of your assumptions about the good and bad sides of tech. The bad side can distort reality, destroy a country, create algorithmically divined echo chambers and division. The good side? It can create empathy and help with grieving, even if the way it does so challenges your perceptions of what is morally right or wrong, ethical, philosophical, and “okay”. In this case… how using virtual reality can help you grieve, cope, or grow.

 

The title of this week’s newsletter is one of Kranzberg’s 6 laws. That is #1.

https://www.technologystories.org/first-and-second-laws/

 

Also, When do you stop working at the edge of an apocalypse? Do you just get up and walk away from the desk?

 

 

 

And, we all knew what would happen after FDA approval with anti-vax people, right?

 

 

 

Lastly… this newsletter has a bunch of links to to other non-newsletter posts I’ve written. I do hope you enjoy!

 

So let me get this straight… they’ll take drugs for horses, fish tank cleaner, and bleach, but not a vaccine?

Now that it’s fully approved, how long before “I won’t take it because it’s political and they rushed it”??? (it literally took one hour)

@flossie_mae_#gettinmyfatbitchon? original sound – Flossie Mae

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current mood:

 

 

SPACE & EARTH (& IMAGING)

 

ooof

 

  • Uhhhh…..  … not worrying at all.

Collins Aerospace to provide life support for privately run LEO: Collins Aerospace said Aug. 23 it had been awarded a $2.6 million contract by…

…an undisclosed customer to provide life support systems for a planned “privately owned and operated low Earth orbit outpost.” 

Awkward Look Monkey Puppet meme format.

WTAF?

—> https://spacenews.com/collins-aerospace-to-provide-life-support-for-privately-run-leo-outpost/

Paging Dr. Evil.

 

 

 

  • 15 years ago this week, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet. It dropped out of planetary category when they didn’t have clear definitions of what a planet is. The International came together, figured it out, and voila! Pluto’s a planet again. Stunning one too…

 

  • STARLINK!!!!

 

First we couldn’t see our stars and planets or the comet Neowise… (pictured, yes, that’s what Starlink does to amatuer astonomers…)

 

Now: SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says By Tereza Pultarova 5 days ago Starlink satellites might soon be involved in 90% of close encounters between two spacecraft in low Earth orbit. https://www.livescience.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collisions-rise.html

Actually a group is working on a fix for photos: Russian startup tests technology that filters SpaceX Starlink passes from astronomical observations https://www.space.com/space-tech-filters-starlink-satellites-astronomical-observations

 

The gist of it is The Expanse. That’s it. This gets us closer with a new propulsion system that creates many tiny explosions, creating a huge amount of comparative thrust with far less fuel consumption, and much less weight. That means… go explore. Just don’t touch the protomolecule goo.

 

 

  • This iceberg A-74, which is 20x the size of Manhattan, just brushed by a larger part of the Brunt Ice Shelf that is only tenuously attached, and as such the force if A-74 *had* collided would have broken it off. That one is approximately 25% larger than A-74.

And A-74 has generally been behaving like a good boy since breaking off of the Brunt Ice Shelf in late February, sitting in a back eddy of ocean current. This is a terrestrial event, of course, but it wouldn’t have been seen if we weren’t hanging out above our planet. This is BONKERS. I use that word too much? I think this moment of earth time is needing more superlatives.

https://www.space.com/satellite-watches-iceberg-nearly-collide-antarctica

“Had the drifting iceberg hit the unstable ice shelf with severe force, it may have triggered the release of a new 1,700 square kilometer [656 square mile]-sized iceberg,” ESA officials wrote in the statement. For perspective, A-74 is roughly 490 square miles (1,270 square kilometers) in size.

 

ROBOTS!

  • Was rewatching Blade Runner 2049, and thinking of the “Sapiens” book that said humans basically murdered every other homo species, then built society off  of slaves and inequality post hunter gatherer, into agrarian timeline. This is what Jared Leto’s character was scripted: “Every leap of civilization was built off the back of a disposable workforce. We lost our stomach for slaves, unless engineered. But I can only make so many.”

Time for robots, I guess.

What are the morals of a self-driving car?

 

 

That robot looks pretty meat and potatoes.

An Alibaba parcel delivery robot in action delivering packages on a university campus in Wuhan, China.

 

That’s what I’m talking about! Wonder when it will stop being weird to see. I expect heavy stickering by punks. Tagging?

starship robot

 

 

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND CAN I HAVE $100,000 PLEASE?

 

“if machines continue to grow exponentially in speed and sophistication, they will one day be able to decode the staggering complexity of the living world, from its atoms and molecules all the way up to entire planetary biomes. Presumably life doesn’t have to be made of atoms and molecules, but could be assembled from any set of building blocks with the requisite complexity. If so, a civilization could then transcribe itself and its entire physical realm into new forms. Indeed, perhaps our universe is one of the new forms into which some other civilization”

 

  • Mahjabin Norooji is a cancer researcher at Stanford and she called this image as “most detailed model of a human cell to date.” The creation of this single image relied on datasets from x-ray, NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) and cryoelectron microscopy.

https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/is-that-the-cosmos-or-india-on-diwali-nasas-image-of-human-cell-leaves-twitter-divided-3086063.html

BEAUTIFUL – https://www.digizyme.com/cst_landscapes.html

 

 

 

  • It was never about Bitcoin or Doge, etc. But I didn’t take it this seriously vs a carbon polluting group of weirdos. How do you deal with Crypto’s horrible climate change issue… it essentially runs on coal?

Anyway:

Crypto assets could replace fiat currencies (hard cash money) within as little as 5 years, financial execs tell Deloitte https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/crypto-to-replace-fiat-within-10-years-financial-execs-say-deloitte-2021-8

Greenpeace to stop accepting Bitcoin donations over environmental concerns

 

So solve this: Cryptocurrency Has a Huge Negative Impact on Climate Change https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/cryptocurrency-climate-change-news.htm

Their blockchains require computers all over the planet to solve complex equations in order to verify transactions. That practice, called mining, can be lucrative, because the people who do it earn bitcoins as a reward, as The Balance explains.

The problem, critics say, is that all those calculations needed to solve the equations for mining cumulatively consume large amounts of electricity. Bitcoin already uses 149.63 terawatt hours annually, more than entire countries such as Malaysia and Sweden, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. Microsoft co-founder and global philanthropist Bill Gates recently told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin that bitcoin “uses more energy per transaction than any other method known to mankind.”

 

  • Cancerous tumors grown then killed… for Science!

From the desk of the people doing “Microengineered perfusable 3D-bioprinted glioblastoma model for in vivo mimicry of tumor microenvironment”…

“Researchers bioprint an entire active glioblastoma tumor using a 3D printer” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210818153640.htm

This basically means scientists are 3D printing cancerous tumors to better learn how to beat them.

Our 3D-bioprinted model could be the basis for potentially replacing cell cultures and animal models as a powerful platform for rapid, reproducible, and robust target discovery; personalized therapy screening; and drug development

paper here: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/34/eabi9119

 

“What happens is that these gravitational effects needed to guarantee the traversability of the wormhole happen naturally if one modifies gravity.” João Rosa

Wormhole: woahdude

 

  • Did you know Ducks have penises shaped like corkscrews to fit the female vagina, and that Tapir’s use their absolutely unbelievably large penises to scratch itches?

You know I like gifs, but I’ll leave that to your curiosity:

Ducks: Ballistic Penises and Corkscrew Vaginas: The Sexual Battles of Ducks Childhood… violated… Innocence… lost… SCIENCE! https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/ballistic-penises-and-corkscrew-vaginas-the-sexual-battles-of-ducks

& In Ducks, War of the Sexes Plays Out in the Evolution of Genitalia https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/science/01duck.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Also… Tapirs (warning, huge prehensile schlong scratching a shoulder): https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-tapir-scratches-itch/

 

 

  • UFOs? Notice this isn’t in the space heading, because I still think there’s a logical explanation, but it’s crazy how we’ve turned the corner on dealing with the complexity of unidentified aerial phenomenon. Just stop hoping for little green men. Space.com interviews one of the journalists who did the big expose that is moving the needle on discussion of UFO: https://www.space.com/ufos-are-real-leslie-kean-interview

I know you want it to be this cutie, but odds are it’s not.

 

 

 

 

Why isn’t it streaming? Where is it and why? When art becomes a concept that you can not see…

Why isn’t it streaming? Where is it and why? When art becomes a concept that you can not see…

 

 

Virtual Reality

  • Virtual Reality has shown massive psychological and emotional impacts. For example, it’s said that studies on racism have shown that a racist using VR to experience what it’s like to walk around as a black person showed SIGNIFICANT “I’m walking in your shoes” understanding about racism vs what it means to be black, and can make headways to create social justice, understanding, and peace.

Virtual reality can help make people more compassionate compared to other media, new Stanford study finds Stanford researchers found that people who underwent a virtual reality experience, called “Becoming Homeless,” were more empathetic toward the homeless and more likely to sign a petition in support of affordable housing than other study participants. https://news.stanford.edu/2018/10/17/virtual-reality-can-help-make-people-empathetic/ 

 

SO… This is a tough pill to swallow, but it can help with grieving too. The below 9min documentary is a lot of tears, to be sure. It’s also important to know this is a new technology that will challenge your notion of what is, or isn’t, perverse.

Mother Meets Recreation of Her Deceased Child in VR https://www.roadtovr.com/mother-meets-recreation-of-deceased-child-in-vr/

“The mother left a post on her blog after the filming saying that the experience was good for her because she felt like she was dreaming a dream she’s always wanted to dream, but quite couldn’t. She said whenever she saw Nayeon in her dreams, her daughter never smiled and only stared at her with a look of resentment– one that presumably stemmed from the guilt she feels towards Nayeon. I also thought this was almost cruel at first, but watching the documentary and seeing her say that, it made me change my mind and believe that she was able to get closure this way. Though… not sure if closure is the right word because I don’t think we can ever fully recover from losing a loved one… but at least return to a life of normalcy”.

 

 

Television, but literally.

 

 

  • I miss Craig Ferguson so much. He thought he would be fired for this off script monologue. “Comedy should target the powerful people, not the vulnerable one”. This is a heartfelt and honest conversation about his struggles with alcoholism, and how it informs what comedy should be about. This was 2007. Prescient and amazing empathy.

 

MUSIC

 

Why isn’t it streaming? Where is it and why? When art becomes a concept that you can not see…

 

MOVIES

Why isn’t it streaming? Where is it and why? When art becomes a concept that you can not see…

Why isn’t it streaming? Where is it and why? When art becomes a concept that you can not see…

 

Pop Culture, MAGIC!, Society, Books and Stuff!

 

  • Lennart Green, the greatest slight of hand ever. Where do the cards go? I AM SCREAMING “WHERE DID THE CARDS GO?”

 

12 more minutes, people say they’ve never seen anything like it.

“Green competed at the 1988 FISM convention in The Hague, Netherlands, and was erroneously disqualified because the judges believed he had used stooges in his act to shuffle the cards. In 1991, he performed the same act but insisted that the judges themselves shuffle the cards to prove that he used no stooges. The judges then awarded him first place.” (source Wikipedia)

 

 

A REALLY GOOD GUY, and sleight of hand master… did super slo-mo, and it’s AWESOME:

 

  • Superb! Prescient! It sounds like right now! It’s a beautiful energy this man had, Leonard Bernstein. But this particular quote feels just like it nails what’s happened.

“Everyone who was born after 1945 when that bomb went off is a completely different kind of person from those who were born before then. Because they grew up in a world where the possibility of global destruction was an everyday possibility, to the point where they didn’t even think about it that much. But it conditions the way they live… Anybody who grows up — as those of my generation did not — taking the possibility of the immediate destruction of the planet for granted is going to gravitate all the more toward instant gratification — you push the TV button, you drop the acid, you snort the coke, you do the needle… and then you pass out in the bed … and you wake up so cynical… And guilt breeds fear and anxiety, and anxiety breeds fear, and it goes around — it’s that old vicious circle where one thing reinforces the other, which drives you day and night to instant gratification. Anything of a serious nature isn’t “instant” — you can’t “do” the Sistine Chapel in one hour. And who has time to listen to a Mahler symphony, for God’s sake?”

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/10/03/dinner-with-lenny-leonard-bernstein-jonathan-cott/?mc_cid=44a4e92543&mc_eid=ef619e3582

 

  • I’m not an anti-Apple person, I’m not an Apple user, and I didn’t hold Jobs aloft as a flawless God. He was a flawed human. Hell, he went for alternative meds because he knew it would cure his cancer. Humans are a complex beast. I even laughed at the comment: “New phone doesn’t fit the old charger? This is your hero??” – Bill Burr

But his 1997 response to a deliberately rude audience member’s question is so smart, composed, and together… address the audience, not the person.

 

 

 

 

  • When Mother Nature is like the mob: “Hey, Trump…. nice fence you built there. It’s be terrible if it were to blow over or fall down”. LOL:

Trump’s Border Wall Torn Apart by Arizona Monsoon Rains Record monsoon rains have blown floodgates off their hinges as Trump’s border wall breaks down. https://gizmodo.com/trumps-border-wall-torn-apart-by-arizona-monsoon-rains-1847535174

 

VEHICLES

  • People say “don’t put politics into x or y”. Sorry you’re so delicate… politics is in everything. In this case… a car, and history:

That Mercedes 540K From Pebble Beach Is Just Like a Plantation Wedding It seems like there’s still some confusion around why people are upset over this year’s Pebble Beach winner. https://www.carbibles.com/that-mercedes-540k-from-pebble-beach-is-just-like-a-plantation-wedding/

 

  • MANUAL GEARBOX PRESERVATION SOCIETY CELEBRATE! The Nissan Z is coming back, 2023… lookin’ good, with a stick!

https://www.thedrive.com/news/42014/2023-nissan-z-the-icon-returns-with-400-hp-rwd-and-a-manual

 

 

  • This is not how you unload my car. From what it looks like, it was a manual transmission and put in neutral. PAINFUL. The truck then hits a GT-R. eek

 

corvette street race

By Uncle FishbitsCategories: Newsletter