Links in midOctober
19 October 2024

Things that want looking into or other disposition: links emailed to myself for eventual processing and integration into the great whatever it is...

Professor tackles graph mining challenges with new algorithm ScienceDaily

Muggle Wikipedia

'muggle' in Jargon File

Where does the term 'muggle' come from? Quora

10 implications for the future of the new AI paradigm, the new scaling laws, and the new OpenAI series Alberto Romero

OED Trial 1995 (from when I was inventing the web at W&L)

What is gaslighting? The 1944 film Gaslight is the best explainer Hobbledehoy


A New Chart of History - Joseph Priestley - Wikipedia

Plankton balloon to six times their size in newly discovered mode of oceanic travel ScienceDaily

lexical drift

How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero Quanta

Lewis Lapham on Monk

Painting and the art of looking

Too, there was Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes and the political cartoons of Mike Luckovich. And though this type of illustration would likely never make its way into the realm of “high” art, surely, contained in them were the expressive marks, those that are found in the face, in the eyes, the mouth, that could not be underestimated. As a child, there is little concern for what is highbrow or low. The cartoons were expressive, humorous, and exciting. After all, this is what cartoons are meant to be.

Now, comics are not necessarily life-like in the academic sense, but they are just as true. Clearly, in the face of a simple caricature, the truth is often revealed. As we have seen with the modern-day emoji, accuracy of emotion is devastatingly simple. And even though the lines of these cartoons were basic, they perfectly captured the essence, the spirit, of whatever precise emotion, whether subtle or explosive, that the characters were feeling.

Climate Change and the Missing War on Poverty Liz Theoharis at Informed Consent

Meanwhile, on Twitter Bruce Sterling

What does it mean to "look at a black hole? New Scientist

Montana novelist David James Duncan talks about Sun House

David James Duncan's Sun House Commonweal Magazine

On ForgettingMechas at Small Things Considered

how can we make sense of so much information with our limited time? To address this in some measure, tools now incorporate AI to systematize and facilitate information processing and aid in tasks like summarizing meetings and articles. You have probably seen the AI assistants that now pop up during virtual meetings and those that provide summaries and highlights of journal articles. Even more powerful is the idea of embracing AI tools to assist in the peer review process, which is time-consuming and increasingly difficult due to the growing volume of research and large and complex datasets and analyses generated by interdisciplinary teams. The significance of AI in the sciences is underscored by this year's Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry, awarded for groundbreaking methods in machine learning and for advancements in predicting protein structures, respectively.

Forklift History Conger Industries

How to see one’s own world : Ursula K. Le Guin on writing style

Tom the Dancing Bug: Q-NUTS — 'It's Election Day!'

The 'Molecular Devils' That Cause the Most Fatal Diseases Ever Known

Carnage Stephen Downes

Ontario Colleges. Think of these institutions as ground zero for the disaster to come (though of course, some of them are also responsible for said disaster). Roughly 50 percent of their income comes from international student tuition fees. The January changes will start to bite over the current school year (remember, they are still getting tuition fees from students who enrolled last year before the January changes were implemented), but by 2025-26 the expected recruitment losses will mean an average drop of about 35-40% in total income, system-wide (higher in some places lower in others).

...We're talking about hundreds of program closures and all those high-cost programs in health and trades are 100% on the table, because the provincial government simply does not fund these programs at an adequate level. They've been cross-subsidized for years by international students. And as I said back here, it's going to be a program apocalypse, one provincial governments are completely unprepared to handle because international student fees have allowed them to stay in denial about the extent of their own underfunding over the past decade.

The Met's "Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350," Reviewed The New Yorker

Olive oil megafarms

Super farms use tractor-like harvesters 4 metres high, which suck the trees into a tunnel of spinning parts that guzzle the olives. ... production costs for a typical traditional farmer are €3.80 per kg of olive oil, whereas costs at a typical super farm are half that. ..."With five machines I can do the whole estate in five days," he said. To harvest the same expanse of mountain olives, it could take a team of 10 people 70 to 100 days. Speed brings another advantage. The fruit for extra virgin oil has to come from the first harvest of the year, but if it stays on the tree too long it deteriorates. On a mega farm "you can select the exact moment to harvest" ... Smallholder co-operatives and boards that certify regional denominations of oil are fighting back with initiatives such as backing university studies on oil quality and focusing more clearly on health in marketing. ...They are pinning their hopes on the olive's complex relationship with water. Being too hydrated is not good for the fruit. A top-end olive needs to suffer because thirst makes it generate natural preservatives called polyphenols, which mountain olives have in abundance. The polyphenols give extra virgin olive oil the spice and bitterness prized in the Mediterranean. They also provide, along with oleic acid, the antioxidants and anti-inflammatory benefits that a number of scientific studies have shown. ... For some new markets, however, that is not necessarily a problem. Deoleo found that US consumers, for example, do not like the light burning sensation that a southern European would expect from a top-quality extra virgin oil.

Noether's Theorem: A Complete Guide With Examples Profound Physics

Noether's Theorem in a Nutshell John Baez

Mathematician to know: Emmy Noether symmetry magazine

Symmetry Magazine

Lensman series Wikipedia

The Anatomy of Neo-fascism - Part 2 Chad C. Mulligan

The Holographic Universe - Part 1 - Fractals & Holography Cosmic Core

Are we living in a fractal holographic universe? Quora

You Are a Hologram>/a> Garrett Sims at Medium

Ogden Nash Poetry Foundation

The Case of Identity Ogden Nash

Passed Victor Mair at Language Log

Achieving Perspective: Trailblazing Astronomer Maria Mitchell and the Poetry of the Cosmic Perspective (David Byrne Reads Pattiann Rogers) The Marginalian