Links for 2022-04-28
The Commercial Lunar Payload Services program will develop the private sector’s ability to land on and deliver cargo to the moon. At 3% of the cost of NASA’s flagship Artemis program. And years earlier. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/nasas-other-moon-program-is-about-to-take-center-stage/
Harvard researchers help 3D printing take its next step by eliminating the need for 2D layering https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/04/harvard-researchers-help-3d-printing-take-its-next-step/
An article about somatic evolution, a new field with exciting implications https://www.ruxandratesloianu.com/blog/somatic-evolution
New “Electric Eye” Neuromorphic Artificial Vision Device Developed Using Nanotechnology https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.1c09875
A Safe Governance Space for Humanity: Necessary Conditions for the Governance of Global Catastrophic Risks https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1758-5899.13030
Google Docs will start nudging some users to write less dumbly https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/1/23005972/google-docs-assisting-writing-active-voice-concise-inclusive-language-inappropriate-words
Probing Uranus Is Top Priority This Decade, U.S. Science Advisors Say https://gizmodo.com/uranus-probe-top-science-priority-nasa-decadal-survey-1848808113
The Federal Aviation Administration has been holding back the development of commercial drone delivery. https://fullstackeconomics.com/walmart-wing-amazon-drone-delivery/
Batteries are the new oil https://www.axios.com/the-race-to-dominate-the-new-battery-economy-119e0479-46a7-47ec-885f-f00079c4adb5.html
“Phil Tetlock's research team is running a tournament that will team up superforecasters with subject-matter experts to produce accurate forecasts and informative rationales on existential risk topics.” https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Dm5eNgyvEwF9ibvzj/participate-in-the-hybrid-forecasting-persuasion-tournament
To escape sexual cannibalism, some animals play dead – but male orb-weaving spiders have developed another approach: after copulation, they rapidly catapult to safety: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00485-7
The environment needs more people, not fewer https://www.thecgo.org/benchmark/the-environment-needs-more-people-not-fewer/
Marx’s idea that societies were naturally egalitarian and communal before farming is widely influential and quite wrong https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-primitive-communism-is-as-seductive-as-it-is-wrong
Dozens of Bucha civilians were killed by metal darts from Russian artillery https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/24/dozens-bucha-civilians-killed-flechettes-metal-darts-russian-artillery
“Ukrainian school children fleeing their country and joining classrooms in Italy and France are dazzling their new teachers with their maths skills, prompting debate about the slipping standards in western European classrooms…they have shown, in general, that they are a year ahead of their peers in the same age group in maths.” [The Times] https://archive.ph/rnFp3
Musk has the money and human capital to build an infrastructure that can circumvent any attempt by cartels and even polities such as the EU to ban his social network.
Yet despite Musk's wealth, technical, and human capital, they can still destroy him if he becomes an existential threat. It might have been smarter to play the long game. That is, create a viable asteroid mining company and space-based industrial centers. At that point, he would be unassailable. He could destroy any enemy by means of orbital bombardment and survive all sanctions.