Artificial intelligence system learns concepts shared across video, audio, and text. A machine-learning model can identify the action in a video clip and label it, without the help of humans. https://news.mit.edu/2022/ai-video-audio-text-connections-0504
The economic value of targeting aging: "We show that a slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by 1 year is worth US$38 trillion, and by 10 years, US$367 trillion." https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-021-00080-0
“Using new analyses, scientists have just found the last two of the five informational units of DNA and RNA that had yet to be discovered in samples from meteorites.” https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/life-blueprint-in-asteroids
U.S.-Soviet Showdown over the Egyptian Third Army, 1973 https://theworld.org/stories/2012-10-26/little-known-us-soviet-confrontation-during-yom-kippur-war
The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History https://youtu.be/IV3dnLzthDA
What is holding back utility-scale wind, solar, and geothermal energy projects? Permitting and local vetocracy. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522001471
UK firm develops nuclear-powered desalination ship concept https://splash247.com/shipping-shown-new-business-line-drinking-water/
Plant scientists are turning to genome-editing techniques to precisely tailor the productivity and consumer appeal of important crops. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01117-z
Amazon deletes top-rated review of Angela Saini's 'Superior' https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/amazon-deletes-top-rated-review-of?s=r
The cost of drones will fall while their capabilities will increase, exponentially. Humans might completely disappear from the battlefield very soon. The outcomes of wars will be decided by how advanced a nation's machine learning research is and its ability to quickly manufacture millions of drones. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1520561969153073153.html
Ukrainians have shown they can out-think, out-influence and out-fight Russia. So what happens if Putin loses? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-03/war-ukraine-russia-donbas-nuclear-china-diplomacy-west-strategy/101030510
Suppose humanity is doomed. Everyone is going to die. But you can choose the cause of human extinction. Which one of the following extinction scenarios would you prefer?
1. After someone discovers evidence that this universe is a simulation it is shut down.
2. A war fought with cobalt bombs.
3. DALL·E N is prompted with "A visualization of Graham's number" and turns Earth into computronium.
4. ʻOumuamua turns out to be an early warning system of an alien civilization. It returns to sterilize Earth.
5. A doomsday cult unleashes an engineered bioweapon designed to destroy the ecosystem.
6. A physics experiment accidentally creates a black hole that swallows the Earth.
7. A geoengineering experiment using genetically engineered plankton causes a snowball Earth.
8. A deep exploration of Earth's mantle causes a core degasification event releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases from the Earth’s crust and mantle leading to a runaway greenhouse effect that results in a surface temperature of 150 °C.
9. A series of supervolcanic eruptions plunges Earth into a long-lasting global winter.
10. An interstellar rogue planet collides with Earth.
11. A fertility collapse combined with dysgenic effects causes humanity to slowly fizzle out. A hundred thousand years will have passed when the last remaining humans with an average IQ of 50 are finally pushed over the brink into extinction by cascading climatic and ecological changes.
The anxiety in me wants 1 or 6 which seem the quickest and least painful. The curious in me wants 4 because aliens. The drama whore definitely wants 10 because that would probably be the most spectacular. The others seem either somewhat boring or undesirable from a personal suffering pov.