Links for 2021-10-18
In what ways has the world gone mad? “Let me count the ways.” Bari Weiss schools her CNN interlocutor Brian Stelter youtu.be/m0Pb5ISohvk
56% of young people believe humanity is doomed because of climate change, and 45% say that their climate anxiety affects their daily life. But while climate change is indeed real, much of this anxiety is based on popular myths. https://fee.org/articles/3-environmental-doomsday-myths-debunked/
Chimps can find an object hidden in their enclosure after seeing a toy version of the object hidden in a scale model of the enclosure. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9280.00410
Observing Many Researchers using the Same Data and Hypothesis Reveals a Hidden Universe of Data Analysis: 162 researchers (73 teams); data: six questions from the International Social Survey Programme; hypothesis: whether immigration reduces public support for social policies; results: massive variation, not predicted by researcher skills or beliefs https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/cd5j9/
Identical twins have a unique 'epigenetic' signature in their genomes. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25583-7
These ‘focused research organizations’ are taking on gaps in scientific discovery: “Schmidt Futures—founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy—is spinning out small organizations to make advances in synthetic biology and brain mapping that the current research process isn’t structured to work on.” https://www.fastcompany.com/90684882/these-focused-research-organizations-are-taking-on-gaps-in-scientific-discovery
Utility of polygenic embryo screening for disease depends on the selection strategy https://elifesciences.org/articles/64716
The World’s Loudest Sound: “The sound made by the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883 was so loud it ruptured eardrums of people 40 miles away, travelled around the world four times, and was clearly heard 3,000 miles away.” https://kottke.org/14/10/the-worlds-loudest-sound
“The most worrisome aspect of all these recent developments - hundreds of new silos, fractional orbital bombardment systems mated with HGVs - is that China is clearly committing to a shoot-first based deterrent rather than second-strike survivability.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1449510220347150336.html