G.M.’s Cruise Moved Fast in the Driverless Race. It Got Ugly.
“Half of Cruise’s 400 cars were in San Francisco when the driverless operations were stopped. Those vehicles were supported by a vast operations staff, with 1.5 workers per vehicle. The workers intervened to assist the company’s vehicles every 2.5 to five miles, according to two people familiar with is operations. In other words, they frequently had to do something to remotely control a car after receiving a cellular signal that it was having problems.”

Giant Pyramid Buried in Indonesia Could Be The Oldest in The World, Researchers Say
Gunung Padang

The genetic heritage of the Denisovans may have left its mark on our mental health. The study reveals that the genetic variant observed, which affects zinc regulation, could have signified an evolutionary advantage in our ancestors’ adaptation to the cold., link

https://www.watermarkremover.io/

Recent Trades – U.S. Congress. Reported within 45 days of trade.

NYT CTE in kids story

Zeppelins from Another World

Interview with GlobalFoundries CEO Dr. Thomas Caulfield by Dr. Ian Cutress
“There are only five foundries on the planet of any scale, > two billion dollars revenue. In 2022, GlobalFoundries was 8 billion dollars. In Taiwan it’s TSMC and UMC, then there’s GlobalFoundries with our global footprint, then Samsung Foundry and SMIC in China.”

SSD-Tester — SSD, M.2, thumb drive benchmarks

Warped Front Pages: Researchers examine the self-serving fiction of ‘objective’ political news

Kellogg, Kraft Win Antitrust Suit Against Egg Companies

Book rec: John McPhee’s Annals of the Former World books, first is Basin and Range

Sator Square. The Rotas-Sator Square is a two-dimensional acrostic class of word square containing a five-word Latin palindrome.
R O T A S S A T O R
O P E R A A R E P O
T E N E T T E N E T
A R E P O O P E R A
S A T O R R O T A S

Lessons From a Renters’ Utopia by Francesca Mari

Toroidal propellers: A noise-killing game changer in air and water. Quiet and reduce fuel consumption by somewhere around 20%.

Insulin pump tear down: Omnipod teardown, video of Omnipod tear down

Unity game design platform, overview

The 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct

Electric Vehicles Could Match Gasoline Cars on Price This Year. Includes subsidies for electric vehicles. I’ve also seen reports that electrics are thin on dealer lots. Definitely a year where the new car market is changing

Non-Disparagement Clauses Are Retroactively Voided, NLRB’s Top Cop Clarifies

Base editing: Revolutionary therapy clears girl’s incurable cancer. CAR-T therapy for leukemia

More Women Are Holding Political Office — But Not Everywhere by Ella Koeze, Meredith Conroy and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
Women in State Legislatures 2023 from Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP)

Domino Train Blocks Set Building And Stacking Toy, $58.99

The 19 best bookstores in Chicago by Lindsay Eanet

Yes, masks reduce the risk of spreading COVID, despite a review saying they don’t

Book: “The Enceladus Mission” (2018) by Brandon Q. Morris

Columbia Journalism Review’s Big Fail: It Published 24,000 Words on Russiagate and Missed the Point. The magazine’s attempted takedown of the media’s coverage bolsters Trump’s phony narrative. by David Corn

The Case Against Dictatorship by Adam Gurri

Journalists (And Others) Should Leave Twitter. Here’s How They Can Get Started by Dan Gillmor

The Kavanaugh Cover-up by Jay Kuo. US Supreme Court Judge.

Intel: Just You Wait. Again. Intel trying to stage a comeback.

How the Banshees of Inisherin Sweaters were Knit

How did solar power get cheap part II by Brian Potter
Levelized Cost of Energy

Summary Report on EVs at Scale and the U.S. Electric Power System.November 2019
“12 GW of dispatchable generating capacity is equivalent to the aggregate demand of nearly 6 million new EVs”
“Assuming each EV travels 12,000 miles annually, consuming approximately 300 Wh/mi of AC energy [1], and assuming 4.9 % system losses [14] for transmission and distribution, then each EV will require 3.8 MWh/year of energy generation. For the 2030 low, medium, and high EV sales scenarios, this translates into 1, 8, and 26 TWh of incremental energy generation, respectively. These increases in energy generation are relatively small compared to the 100 TWh range shown in Figure 3. As the figure confirms, historically, there have been periods of time when the grid added in excess of 25 million vehicles-worth of generation per year, the equivalent of roughly 150% of annual new light-duty vehicles sales in the U.S. today [15]. “

When President Ulysses S. Grant Was Arrested for Speeding in a Horse-Drawn Carriage. The sitting commander in chief insisted the Black police officer who cited him not face punishment for doing his duty.

Mehdi Hasan Dismantles The Entire Foundation Of The Twitter Files As Matt Taibbi Stumbles To Defend Itby Mike Masnick
Matt Taibbi is a hack and a bullshitter, with receipts.

Meet Kevin Moeller, scientific glassblower

Why I am not an effective altruist Morality is not a market by Erik Hoel
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend

Tabula Muris Senis. This project is a comprehensive analysis of the aging dynamics across the mouse lifespan.

Tabula Muris Senis. This project is a comprehensive analysis of the aging dynamics across the mouse lifespan.

Chemically_strengthened_glass. Replace Na+ with K+ by immersion in hot salt bath. Rubidium can also be used, doesn’t appear to be especially different.
“Heliolite” glass, praseodymium and neodymium in a 1:1 ratio. It has color-changing properties between amber, reddish, and green depending on the light source.
“Alexandrite” glass. “Neodymium glass (also known as Alexandrite glass), changes colour according to different lighting conditions. The glass appears lilac (or sometimes pink) in natural sunlight or yellow artificial light, and smoky blue in fluorescent/white light. This is due to the presence of Neodymium oxide (Nd²O³) in the glass.”, link

How Russian intelligence hacked the encrypted emails of former MI6 boss Richard Dearlove. Hack by Russian-linked ColdRiver group exposed former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove’s contacts and email communications with government, military, intelligence and political official

“But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.— I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids & today I hate them worse than everything so farewell & in a sweet frame of mind, I am | Ever yours” C. Darwin

Talin blog, software engineer / game designer

I’m studying all the utopian novels this year And how modern thinkers are taking utopian ideals into the future. by Elle Griffin

Distribution of 19 Types of Berries Native to North America

“data from women ages 20 to 24 who were first to receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine showed a 65% reduction in cervical cancer incidence rates from 2012 through 2019“

A Report on Scientific Branch-Creation: How the Rockefeller Foundation helped bootstrap the field of molecular biology

GPT-3 Is the Best Journal I’ve Ever Used by Dan Shipper

“blogging my way through John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government: Of Civil Government” by Miles Kimball, link.

Fused glass collections
Copper-wheel engraving of glass, Alison Kinnaird

Is Human Intelligence Simple? Part 1: Evolution and Archaeology How did we get so smart? by Sarah Constantin, part2

Men, Machines, and Modern Times, 50th Anniversary Edition by Elting E. Morison
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs Illustrated Edition by Camilla Townsend

The Last Real American Dictionary: Scrabble’s new edition is full of delightful new words. But are there enough of them? by Stefan Fatsis

Living Astronomers Who Write Science Fiction

Outstanding Hard Science Fiction of 2021

Can Aging Be Reversed? Scientists Are On The Verge Of Turning It Into A Reality by Urja Kalyan

The Kids Are Not OK: A Reading List on Clean Air: For parents, teachers, principals, and politicians. by Jessica Wildfire

A Tale of Two Telescopes: WFIRST and Hubble

How much economic growth is necessary to reduce global poverty substantially? by Max Roser
“Adjusted for the purchasing power in each country, 85% of the world population live on less than $30 per day.

Why Does It Take So Long to Count Mail Ballots in Key States? Blame Legislatures: The slow count of mail ballots has been used to cast doubt on election results, but these delays are a deliberate choice by lawmakers in battleground states.

‘You Can’t Sail Around the World By Yourself’: Susie Goodall wanted to circumnavigate the globe in her sailboat without stopping. She didn’t bargain for what everyone else wanted.

China overtakes the US in scientific research output: Between 2018 and 2020 China published 23.4% of the world’s scientific papers, eclipsing the US.
“The Japanese NISTP report also found that Chinese research comprised 27.2% of the world’s top 1% most frequently cited papers.”

U.S. aims to hobble China’s chip industry with sweeping new export rules.

A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism by Suisheng Zhao

Memo to Democrats: Inflation Only Beats You If You Don’t Talk About It by Mike Lux

Ukraine war expert links:
Kamil Galeev
2022 Ukraine Crisis: Reporters, diplomats, heads of state and analysts tweeting on the Ukraine crisis

Texas Woman Nearly Loses Her Life After Doctors Can’t Legally Perform an Abortion: ‘Their Hands Were Tied’

Running doesn’t wreck your knees. It strengthens them. Contrary to popular opinion, distance running rarely causes knee problems in runners, and often leaves joints sturdier and less damaged, link, link2

OneZoom tree of life explorer

Why I’m Not Writing About This Year’s Nobel by Chad Orzel
“the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was announced as going to John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger, “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.””

Pluralistic: 20 Oct 2022 It was all downhill after the Cuecat by Cory Doctorow

The Highest-Rated Beer in Every State (2022)
Too many high ABV stouts!