Parrots removed from UK wildlife park after they started swearing at customers
419 naïve students saw a performer making contact with a confederate’s deceased kin. 65% of participants reported having witnessed a genuine paranormal event.
The widely disseminated convergence in physical appearance hypothesis posits that long-term partners’ facial appearance converges with time due to their shared environment, emotional mimicry, and synchronized activities. Although plausible, this hypothesis is incompatible with empirical findings pertaining to a wide range of other traits—such as personality, intelligence, attitudes, values, and well-being—in which partners show initial similarity but do not converge over time. We solve this conundrum by reexamining this hypothesis using the facial images of 517 couples taken at the beginning of their marriages and 20 to 69 years later. Using two independent methods of estimating their facial similarity (human judgment and a facial recognition algorithm), we show that while spouses’ faces tend to be similar at the beginning of marriage, they do not converge over time, bringing facial appearance in line with other personal characteristics. [Nature]
Faces provide not only cues to an individual’s identity, age, gender, and ethnicity but also insight into their mental states. The aim was to investigate the temporal aspects of processing of facial expressions of complex mental states for very short presentation times ranging from 12.5 to 100 ms. [...] Results show that participants are able to recognise very subtle differences between facial expressions; performance is better than chance, even for the shortest presentation time. Importantly, we show for the first time that observers can recognise these expressions based on information contained in the eye region only. [i-Perception]
Most people, when shown some statistics, sigh and get boggled. But Herman Chernoff realized that almost everyone is good at reading faces. So he devised recipes to convert any set of statistics into an equivalent bunch of smiley-face drawings. [Chernoff Faces | PDF]
Say you travelled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus. However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected, that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place. This is a paradox, an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe. [...] In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would. No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you. Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency. [Popular Mechanics | More: Classical and Quantum Gravity]
11-year-old charged in Louisiana after allegedly stealing school bus, engaging in police chase
Researchers have devised a way of using 3D printed plastic to create objects that communicate with smartphone or other Wi-Fi devices without the need for batteries or electronics.
Researchers gave thousands of dollars to homeless people.
To test the “sex sells” assumption, we examined how Italian men and women react to sexualized advertising. [...] Women reacted negatively to both female and male sexualized ads by expressing higher negative emotions, which in turn disinclined them to purchase these products. On the other hand, men did not show any significant increment either on product attractiveness or purchase intentions toward female sexualized compared to neutral ads, and they also reacted negatively to male sexualization in ads. [...] Another important finding of the present study is that exposure to sexualized ads significantly impacts women’s emotions. [...] men with higher hostile sexism showed more purchase intentions after viewing sexualized than neutral ads. [...] The present study was conducted in Italy and all models were White and reflected the sexualized thin ideal for women and the muscular ideal for men. Therefore, we suggest more diversity in future studies. [Sex Roles]
Resuming sexual activity soon after heart attack linked with improved survival
Gruesome Descriptions Can Make Crimes Seem Worse — But Judges And Lawyers Are Immune To This Bias
Results revealed that most breakup sex appears to be motivated by three factors: relationship maintenance, hedonism, and ambivalence. Men tended to support hedonistic and ambivalent reasons for having breakup sex more often than women.
Scientists have created a new "super enzyme" that can break down plastic up to six times faster than their previous enzyme. The super enzyme could have major implications for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is the most common thermoplastic used in single-use drinks bottles, carpets, and clothing. Around 3,000-4,000 mealworms can break down one Styrofoam coffee cup in about a week thanks to the bacteria living in their gut.
Penniman is the co-founder and project manager of Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, an organic farm that incorporates indigenous African growing techniques, including worm composting, raised beds, cover cropping and no-till fields. It’s also a teaching farm that’s training a new generation of people of color to become activist-farmers. -- How Black Farmers Lost 14 Million Acres of Farmland — And How They're Taking It Back
The economics of vending machines
Thread of fruit and vegetable prices in the Arctic
foreskin facial treatment -- which is supposed to reduce wrinkles by using skin cells from a baby’s foreskin
The Infinite Pattern That Never Repeats [Thanks Tim]
Please do not use this visualization for interstellar navigation
What if a pill can change your politics or religious reliefs? [...] Psychotherapy assisted by psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in “magic mushrooms,” seems to be remarkably effective in treating a wide range of psychopathologies, but also causes a raft of unusual nonclinical changes not seen elsewhere in medicine. [...] Although its precise therapeutic mechanisms remain unclear, clinically relevant doses of psilocybin can induce powerful mystical experiences more commonly associated with extended periods of fasting, prayer or meditation. Arguably, then, it is unsurprising that it can generate long-lasting changes in patients: studies report increased prosociality and aesthetic appreciation, plus robust shifts in personality, values and attitudes to life, even leading some atheists to find God. What’s more, these experiences appear to be a feature, rather than a bug, of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, with the intensity of the mystical experience correlating with the extent of clinical benefit. [Scientific American]
More Humans Are Growing an Extra Artery in Our Arms, Showing We're Still Evolving
We showcase an optical phenomenon that we call Third-Eye Rivalry. The effect is most easily induced by viewing one's own reflection in a mirror. Using the pupil of the opposing eye as a fixation target, people can easily cross their eyes in free fusion to experience vivid rivalry. The resulting percept is of a prominent central "third" eye and two peripheral faces rivaling for perceptual dominance. [i-Perception]
A Marketplace investigation into Amazon Canada has found that perfectly good items are being liquidated by the truckload — and even destroyed or sent to landfill.
Amazon's latest effort to speed up shopping trips lets you pay with the palm of your hand. The company introduced Amazon One, which connects your palm print to a stored credit card so you can place your hand above a sensor to enter and buy items at checkout-free Amazon (AMZN) Go stores.
Google and Facebook’s ad business might not survive Amazon
Facebook isn't free: zero-price companies overcharge consumers with data
how YouTube's algorithm distorts truth [2018]
Tesla dissolves its PR department
European regulators are cracking down on Facebook's ability to transfer data across the Atlantic. Now the tech giant is threatening to pull its services from more than 400 million European users. Related: The Social Dilemma [a documentary about how technology giants have manipulated human psychology to influence how we behave]
if a brand like National Geographic uploaded its photos to Facebook’s Rights Manager, it could then monitor where they show up, like on other brands’ Instagram pages. From there, the company could choose to let the images stay up, issue a takedown, or use a territorial block [...] paparazzi have sued celebrities for uploading their photos to their own accounts
Data analytics company Palantir Technologies and workplace software maker Asana Inc are set to debut on the U.S. stock market on Wednesday bypassing an initial public offering (IPO). [...] [S]ome investors and corporate executives have been pushing to shed investment banks as their middlemen. For years, they have criticized IPOs as chummy deals that allowed bankers to allocate the most shares to their top clients. [...] “If Palantir and Asana are successful, which they should be, more and more companies will return to looking seriously at direct listings,” Narasin added. [...] In 2020, the price of a newly listed company’s shares has risen by an average of 38% on the first day of trading, according to IPOScoop data and Reuters calculations. This has fueled renewed criticism among investors snubbed by the investment banks underwriting the IPOs, as well as suspicion among some companies that bankers are leaving money on the table in their IPO to help create a first-day trading “pop”. [...] In a direct listing, no shares are sold in advance, as is the case with IPOs. The company’s share price in its market debut is determined by orders coming into the stock exchange. The downside is that the companies involved cannot raise money, though both NYSE and Nasdaq have requested U.S. regulators allow them to change their rules to allow companies to sell new stock in a direct listing. [Reuters]
People who manage investment funds have greatly increased in number and pay. Once their management fees are taken into account, they tend to give lower returns than simple index funds. Investors seem willing to accept such lower expected returns in trade for a chance to brag about their association should returns happen to be high. They enjoy associating with prestigious fund managers, and tend to insist that such managers take their phone calls, which credibly shows a closer than arms-length relation. [OvercomingBias]
Huang's Law Is the New Moore's Law. I call it Huang's Law, after Nvidia Corp. chief executive and co-founder Jensen Huang. It describes how the silicon chips that power artificial intelligence more than double in performance every two years.
Ring’s latest security camera is a drone that flies around inside your house
Google Earth is “cloud-free,” since the clouds and their shadows are edited out. [...] the selection of millions of “best” images on these terms creates an overall distorted representation of Earth.
This week, PJ looks into a theory circling the internet about who might be behind QAnon. The investigation takes him back to the beginning of the QAnon scam, and to the message board trolls who started it.
Jason Gelinas lived a normal suburban life with a plum Wall Street gig. He also ran the conspiracy theory’s biggest news hub. QAnon High Priest Was Just Trolling Away as a Citigroup Tech Executive
Authorities seized 13 tons of human hair entering the US
Tanker searched for drugs since August, nothing found, but search will go on
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is issuing this announcement to encourage Americans to exercise caution when using hotel wireless networks (Wi-Fi) for telework. FBI has observed a trend where individuals who were previously teleworking from home are beginning to telework from hotels. US hotels, predominantly in major cities, have begun to advertise daytime room reservations for guests seeking a quiet, distraction-free work environment. While this option may be appealing, accessing sensitive information from hotel Wi-Fi poses an increased security risk over home Wi-Fi networks. Malicious actors can exploit inconsistent or lax hotel Wi-Fi security and guests’ security complacency to compromise the work and personal data of hotel guests. Following good cyber security practices can minimize some of the risks associated with using hotel Wi-Fi for telework. Attackers target hotels to obtain records of guest names, personal information, and credit card numbers. The hotel environment involves many unaffiliated guests, operating in a confined area, and all using the same wireless network. Guests are largely unable to control, verify, or monitor network security. Cyber criminals can take advantage of this environment to monitor a victim’s internet browsing or redirect victims to false login pages. Criminals can also conduct an “evil twin attack” by creating their own malicious network with a similar name to the hotel’s network. Guests may then mistakenly connect to the criminal’s network instead of the hotel’s, giving the criminal direct access to the guest’s computer. [...] Once the malicious actor gains access to the business network, they can steal proprietary data and upload malware, including ransomware. Cybercriminals or nation-state actors can use stolen intellectual property to facilitate their own schemes or produce counterfeit versions of proprietary products. Cybercriminals can use information gathered from access to company data to trick business executives into transferring company funds to the criminal. { iC3]
Data analytics company Palantir Technologies and workplace software maker Asana Inc are set to debut on the U.S. stock market on Wednesday bypassing an initial public offering (IPO). [...] [S]ome investors and corporate executives have been pushing to shed investment banks as their middlemen. For years, they have criticized IPOs as chummy deals that allowed bankers to allocate the most shares to their top clients. [...] “If Palantir and Asana are successful, which they should be, more and more companies will return to looking seriously at direct listings,” Narasin added. [...] In 2020, the price of a newly listed company’s shares has risen by an average of 38% on the first day of trading, according to IPOScoop data and Reuters calculations. This has fueled renewed criticism among investors snubbed by the investment banks underwriting the IPOs, as well as suspicion among some companies that bankers are leaving money on the table in their IPO to help create a first-day trading “pop”. [...] In a direct listing, no shares are sold in advance, as is the case with IPOs. The company’s share price in its market debut is determined by orders coming into the stock exchange. The downside is that the companies involved cannot raise money, though both NYSE and Nasdaq have requested U.S. regulators allow them to change their rules to allow companies to sell new stock in a direct listing. [Reuters]
European regulators are cracking down on Facebook's ability to transfer data across the Atlantic. Now the tech giant is threatening to pull its services from more than 400 million European users. Related: The Social Dilemma [a documentary about how technology giants have manipulated human psychology to influence how we behave]
if a brand like National Geographic uploaded its photos to Facebook’s Rights Manager, it could then monitor where they show up, like on other brands’ Instagram pages. From there, the company could choose to let the images stay up, issue a takedown, or use a territorial block [...] paparazzi have sued celebrities for uploading their photos to their own accounts
People who manage investment funds have greatly increased in number and pay. Once their management fees are taken into account, they tend to give lower returns than simple index funds. Investors seem willing to accept such lower expected returns in trade for a chance to brag about their association should returns happen to be high. They enjoy associating with prestigious fund managers, and tend to insist that such managers take their phone calls, which credibly shows a closer than arms-length relation. [OvercomingBias]
Huang's Law Is the New Moore's Law. I call it Huang's Law, after Nvidia Corp. chief executive and co-founder Jensen Huang. It describes how the silicon chips that power artificial intelligence more than double in performance every two years.
Ring’s latest security camera is a drone that flies around inside your house
How the oil industry made us doubt climate change
The Italian Mafia Is on TikTok And it's an insight into the changing world of organised crime.
Later bedtimes predict President Trump’s performance
Why We Don't Like Our Underground House
Bryson DeChambeau might be the most innovative athlete in the world right now. He just won his first major championship and is changing how golf is played at the highest levels.
Volodymyr Zelensky is the sixth and current president of Ukraine. Before entering politics, he was a comedian, actor, screenwriter, film producer, and director. Prior to his political career, he created a production company, Kvartal 95, which produces [...] TV comedy shows, including Servant of the People, in which Zelensky played the role of President of Ukraine. The series aired from 2015 to 2019. A namesake political party bearing the same name as the television show was created in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95. Zelensky announced his candidacy for the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election on the evening of 31 December 2018 [and] won the election with 73.22% of the vote in the second round. [...] After Zelensky's inauguration most leading figures of Kvartal 95 joined Zelensky's administration as Deputy Heads of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine and one was appointed Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Secret Service. [Wikipedia | Continue reading | Kvartal 95 Studio]
How do you pick the best sake? Drink something with the word "Ginjo" on the bottle and you will always be in the safe zone. If the word ginjo is embedded in there, it is super premium sake, in the top 7% of all produced.
Images generated from captions by AI models
An earlier universe existed before the Big Bang and can still be observed today, Sir Roger Penrose has said, as he received the Nobel Prize for Physics. [...] “The Big Bang was not the beginning. There was something before the Big Bang and that something is what we will have in our future. “We have a universe that expands and expands, and all mass decays away, and in this crazy theory of mine, that remote future becomes the Big Bang of another aeon. “So our Big Bang began with something which was the remote future of a previous aeon and there would have been similar black holes evaporating away, via Hawking evaporation, and they would produce these points in the sky, that I call Hawking Points. “We are seeing them. These points are about eight times the diameter of the Moon and are slightly warmed up regions. There is pretty good evidence for at least six of these points.” [The Telegraph]
Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the centre of the earth. We show that the existence of life on the earth may be a reason that this black hole like object is a black brane that has been formed from biological materials like DNA. Size of this DNA black brane is 109 times longer than the size of the earth's core and compacted interior it. By compacting this long object, a curved space-time emerges, and some properties of black holes emerge. This structure is the main cause of the emergence of the large temperature of the core, magnetic field around the earth and gravitational field for moving around the sun. Also, this structure produces some waves which act like topoisomerase in biology and read the information on DNAs. [...] These dark DNAs not only exchange information with DNAs but also are connected with some of the molecules of water and helps them to store information and have memory. Thus, the earth is the biggest system of telecommunication which connects DNAs, dark DNAs and molecules of water. [Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences]
"In a mere 30 seconds of sunlight on your butthole, you will receive more energy from this electric node than you would in an entire day being outside with your clothes on" [...] "this practice is meant to be done in the time of 30 seconds to 5 minutes MAX in the sun" | Perineum Sunning -- Here's Why Doctors Definitely Don't Want You to Try It
In the book “#nyc,” photographer Jeff Mermelstei presents a series of iPhone photographs that he took over the course of two and a half years, capturing the quotidian dramas taking place on the phone screens of unsuspecting strangers. | New Yorker | full story
Parrots removed from UK wildlife park after they started swearing at customers
419 naïve students saw a performer making contact with a confederate’s deceased kin. 65% of participants reported having witnessed a genuine paranormal event.
The widely disseminated convergence in physical appearance hypothesis posits that long-term partners’ facial appearance converges with time due to their shared environment, emotional mimicry, and synchronized activities. Although plausible, this hypothesis is incompatible with empirical findings pertaining to a wide range of other traits—such as personality, intelligence, attitudes, values, and well-being—in which partners show initial similarity but do not converge over time. We solve this conundrum by reexamining this hypothesis using the facial images of 517 couples taken at the beginning of their marriages and 20 to 69 years later. Using two independent methods of estimating their facial similarity (human judgment and a facial recognition algorithm), we show that while spouses’ faces tend to be similar at the beginning of marriage, they do not converge over time, bringing facial appearance in line with other personal characteristics. [Nature]
Faces provide not only cues to an individual’s identity, age, gender, and ethnicity but also insight into their mental states. The aim was to investigate the temporal aspects of processing of facial expressions of complex mental states for very short presentation times ranging from 12.5 to 100 ms. [...] Results show that participants are able to recognise very subtle differences between facial expressions; performance is better than chance, even for the shortest presentation time. Importantly, we show for the first time that observers can recognise these expressions based on information contained in the eye region only. [i-Perception]
Most people, when shown some statistics, sigh and get boggled. But Herman Chernoff realized that almost everyone is good at reading faces. So he devised recipes to convert any set of statistics into an equivalent bunch of smiley-face drawings. [Chernoff Faces | PDF]
Say you travelled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus. However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected, that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place. This is a paradox, an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe. [...] In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would. No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you. Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency. [Popular Mechanics | More: Classical and Quantum Gravity]
11-year-old charged in Louisiana after allegedly stealing school bus, engaging in police chase
Researchers have devised a way of using 3D printed plastic to create objects that communicate with smartphone or other Wi-Fi devices without the need for batteries or electronics.
Researchers gave thousands of dollars to homeless people.
To test the “sex sells” assumption, we examined how Italian men and women react to sexualized advertising. [...] Women reacted negatively to both female and male sexualized ads by expressing higher negative emotions, which in turn disinclined them to purchase these products. On the other hand, men did not show any significant increment either on product attractiveness or purchase intentions toward female sexualized compared to neutral ads, and they also reacted negatively to male sexualization in ads. [...] Another important finding of the present study is that exposure to sexualized ads significantly impacts women’s emotions. [...] men with higher hostile sexism showed more purchase intentions after viewing sexualized than neutral ads. [...] The present study was conducted in Italy and all models were White and reflected the sexualized thin ideal for women and the muscular ideal for men. Therefore, we suggest more diversity in future studies. [Sex Roles]
Resuming sexual activity soon after heart attack linked with improved survival
Gruesome Descriptions Can Make Crimes Seem Worse — But Judges And Lawyers Are Immune To This Bias
Results revealed that most breakup sex appears to be motivated by three factors: relationship maintenance, hedonism, and ambivalence. Men tended to support hedonistic and ambivalent reasons for having breakup sex more often than women.
Scientists have created a new "super enzyme" that can break down plastic up to six times faster than their previous enzyme. The super enzyme could have major implications for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is the most common thermoplastic used in single-use drinks bottles, carpets, and clothing. Around 3,000-4,000 mealworms can break down one Styrofoam coffee cup in about a week thanks to the bacteria living in their gut.
Penniman is the co-founder and project manager of Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, an organic farm that incorporates indigenous African growing techniques, including worm composting, raised beds, cover cropping and no-till fields. It’s also a teaching farm that’s training a new generation of people of color to become activist-farmers. -- How Black Farmers Lost 14 Million Acres of Farmland — And How They're Taking It Back
The economics of vending machines
Thread of fruit and vegetable prices in the Arctic
foreskin facial treatment -- which is supposed to reduce wrinkles by using skin cells from a baby’s foreskin
The Infinite Pattern That Never Repeats [Thanks Tim]
Please do not use this visualization for interstellar navigation
What if a pill can change your politics or religious reliefs? [...] Psychotherapy assisted by psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in “magic mushrooms,” seems to be remarkably effective in treating a wide range of psychopathologies, but also causes a raft of unusual nonclinical changes not seen elsewhere in medicine. [...] Although its precise therapeutic mechanisms remain unclear, clinically relevant doses of psilocybin can induce powerful mystical experiences more commonly associated with extended periods of fasting, prayer or meditation. Arguably, then, it is unsurprising that it can generate long-lasting changes in patients: studies report increased prosociality and aesthetic appreciation, plus robust shifts in personality, values and attitudes to life, even leading some atheists to find God. What’s more, these experiences appear to be a feature, rather than a bug, of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, with the intensity of the mystical experience correlating with the extent of clinical benefit. [Scientific American]
More Humans Are Growing an Extra Artery in Our Arms, Showing We're Still Evolving
We showcase an optical phenomenon that we call Third-Eye Rivalry. The effect is most easily induced by viewing one's own reflection in a mirror. Using the pupil of the opposing eye as a fixation target, people can easily cross their eyes in free fusion to experience vivid rivalry. The resulting percept is of a prominent central "third" eye and two peripheral faces rivaling for perceptual dominance. [i-Perception]
A Marketplace investigation into Amazon Canada has found that perfectly good items are being liquidated by the truckload — and even destroyed or sent to landfill.
Amazon's latest effort to speed up shopping trips lets you pay with the palm of your hand. The company introduced Amazon One, which connects your palm print to a stored credit card so you can place your hand above a sensor to enter and buy items at checkout-free Amazon (AMZN) Go stores.
Google and Facebook’s ad business might not survive Amazon
Facebook isn't free: zero-price companies overcharge consumers with data
how YouTube's algorithm distorts truth [2018]
Tesla dissolves its PR department
Google Earth is “cloud-free,” since the clouds and their shadows are edited out. [...] the selection of millions of “best” images on these terms creates an overall distorted representation of Earth.
This week, PJ looks into a theory circling the internet about who might be behind QAnon. The investigation takes him back to the beginning of the QAnon scam, and to the message board trolls who started it.
Jason Gelinas lived a normal suburban life with a plum Wall Street gig. He also ran the conspiracy theory’s biggest news hub. QAnon High Priest Was Just Trolling Away as a Citigroup Tech Executive
Authorities seized 13 tons of human hair entering the US
Tanker searched for drugs since August, nothing found, but search will go on
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is issuing this announcement to encourage Americans to exercise caution when using hotel wireless networks (Wi-Fi) for telework. FBI has observed a trend where individuals who were previously teleworking from home are beginning to telework from hotels. US hotels, predominantly in major cities, have begun to advertise daytime room reservations for guests seeking a quiet, distraction-free work environment. While this option may be appealing, accessing sensitive information from hotel Wi-Fi poses an increased security risk over home Wi-Fi networks. Malicious actors can exploit inconsistent or lax hotel Wi-Fi security and guests’ security complacency to compromise the work and personal data of hotel guests. Following good cyber security practices can minimize some of the risks associated with using hotel Wi-Fi for telework. Attackers target hotels to obtain records of guest names, personal information, and credit card numbers. The hotel environment involves many unaffiliated guests, operating in a confined area, and all using the same wireless network. Guests are largely unable to control, verify, or monitor network security. Cyber criminals can take advantage of this environment to monitor a victim’s internet browsing or redirect victims to false login pages. Criminals can also conduct an “evil twin attack” by creating their own malicious network with a similar name to the hotel’s network. Guests may then mistakenly connect to the criminal’s network instead of the hotel’s, giving the criminal direct access to the guest’s computer. [...] Once the malicious actor gains access to the business network, they can steal proprietary data and upload malware, including ransomware. Cybercriminals or nation-state actors can use stolen intellectual property to facilitate their own schemes or produce counterfeit versions of proprietary products. Cybercriminals can use information gathered from access to company data to trick business executives into transferring company funds to the criminal. { iC3]
How the oil industry made us doubt climate change
The Italian Mafia Is on TikTok And it's an insight into the changing world of organised crime.
Later bedtimes predict President Trump’s performance
Why We Don't Like Our Underground House
Bryson DeChambeau might be the most innovative athlete in the world right now. He just won his first major championship and is changing how golf is played at the highest levels.
Volodymyr Zelensky is the sixth and current president of Ukraine. Before entering politics, he was a comedian, actor, screenwriter, film producer, and director. Prior to his political career, he created a production company, Kvartal 95, which produces [...] TV comedy shows, including Servant of the People, in which Zelensky played the role of President of Ukraine. The series aired from 2015 to 2019. A namesake political party bearing the same name as the television show was created in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95. Zelensky announced his candidacy for the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election on the evening of 31 December 2018 [and] won the election with 73.22% of the vote in the second round. [...] After Zelensky's inauguration most leading figures of Kvartal 95 joined Zelensky's administration as Deputy Heads of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine and one was appointed Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Secret Service. [Wikipedia | Continue reading | Kvartal 95 Studio]
How do you pick the best sake? Drink something with the word "Ginjo" on the bottle and you will always be in the safe zone. If the word ginjo is embedded in there, it is super premium sake, in the top 7% of all produced.
Images generated from captions by AI models
An earlier universe existed before the Big Bang and can still be observed today, Sir Roger Penrose has said, as he received the Nobel Prize for Physics. [...] “The Big Bang was not the beginning. There was something before the Big Bang and that something is what we will have in our future. “We have a universe that expands and expands, and all mass decays away, and in this crazy theory of mine, that remote future becomes the Big Bang of another aeon. “So our Big Bang began with something which was the remote future of a previous aeon and there would have been similar black holes evaporating away, via Hawking evaporation, and they would produce these points in the sky, that I call Hawking Points. “We are seeing them. These points are about eight times the diameter of the Moon and are slightly warmed up regions. There is pretty good evidence for at least six of these points.” [The Telegraph]
Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the centre of the earth. We show that the existence of life on the earth may be a reason that this black hole like object is a black brane that has been formed from biological materials like DNA. Size of this DNA black brane is 109 times longer than the size of the earth's core and compacted interior it. By compacting this long object, a curved space-time emerges, and some properties of black holes emerge. This structure is the main cause of the emergence of the large temperature of the core, magnetic field around the earth and gravitational field for moving around the sun. Also, this structure produces some waves which act like topoisomerase in biology and read the information on DNAs. [...] These dark DNAs not only exchange information with DNAs but also are connected with some of the molecules of water and helps them to store information and have memory. Thus, the earth is the biggest system of telecommunication which connects DNAs, dark DNAs and molecules of water. [Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences]
"In a mere 30 seconds of sunlight on your butthole, you will receive more energy from this electric node than you would in an entire day being outside with your clothes on" -- Perineum Sunning -- Here's Why Doctors Definitely Don't Want You to Try It [w/ videos]
Do I get COVID in airline cabins? With only 44 identified potential cases of flight-related transmission among 1.2 billion travelers, that’s one case for every 27 million travelers.
Survival rates of SARS-CoV-2 were determined at different temperatures. We obtained half lives of between 1.7 and 2.7 days at 20 °C, reducing to a few hours when temperature was elevated to 40 °C. + Low risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission by fomites in real-life conditions [fomite: inanimate object that is likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture]
recovering the sense of smell in mild to moderate patients after COVID-19 -- within a month time window and two months after symptoms’ onset, in our cohort of patients we observed a substantial improvement in the olfactory abilities
Trump’s antibody treatment was tested using cells originally derived from an abortion
Frederick Trump [...] paternal grandfather of Donald J. Trump, [...] made his fortune by operating a restaurant and a brothel in Canada [...] He died from the Spanish flu in 1918.
Coronavirus can spread on airline flights, two studies show
Genetic or immune defects may impair ability to fight Covid-19
Hidden immune weakness found in 14% of gravely ill COVID-19 patients - in a significant minority of patients with serious COVID-19, the interferon response has been crippled by genetic flaws or by rogue antibodies that attack interferon itself. [Science]
We report the isolation and characterization of two ultrapotent SARS-CoV-2 human neutralizing antibodies (S2E12 and S2M11) that protect hamsters against SARS-CoV-2 challenge. Cryo-electron microscopy structures show that S2E12 and S2M11 competitively block ACE2 attachment and that S2M11 also locks the spike in a closed conformation by recognition of a quaternary epitope spanning two adjacent receptor-binding domains. Cocktails including S2M11, S2E12 or the previously identified S309 antibody broadly neutralize a panel of circulating SARS-CoV-2 isolates and activate effector functions. Our results pave the way to implement antibody cocktails for prophylaxis or therapy, circumventing or limiting the emergence of viral escape mutants. [Science]
Our pilot study demonstrated that administration of a high dose of Calcifediol or 25-hydroxyvitamin D, a main metabolite of vitamin D endocrine system, significantly reduced the need for ICU treatment of patients requiring hospitalization due to proven COVID-19. Calcifediol seems to be able to reduce severity of the disease. [Analysis of the Findings]
company that sells software used in hundreds of clinical trials, including the crash effort to develop tests, treatments and a vaccine for the coronavirus, was hit by a ransomware attack [NY Times]
The researchers found that 71% of infected individuals did not infect any of their contacts, while a mere 8% of infected individuals accounted for 60% of new infections. [...] The researchers found that children and young adults — who made up one-third of COVID cases — were especially key to transmitting the virus in the studied populations.
Common thinking argues that the nation needs to achieve at least 60% herd immunity to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. Heterogeneity in contact structure and individual variation in infectivity, susceptibility, and resistance are key factors that reduce the disease-induced herd immunity levels to 34.2-47.5% in our models.
Conspiracy theories as barriers to controlling the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S