September 12, 2019
Arnold Schwarzenegger Isn't Competitive.
He Just Likes to Win. Schwarzenegger may be in his 70s, but as he proves fighting costar Gabriel Luna in fall’s hot movie Terminator: Dark Fate, he’s as driven as ever. A lengthier than you might imagine profile in Arnold from Men's Health [Where else?] but I read it to the end.
The bees and the birds
Neonicotinoid pesticides have been shown to threaten bees and other pollinators, but a new study shows they can also harm seed-eating birds.
“Our Talmud book,” he said, “is kind of a story about our life.”
Debate #3: Heated hectoring at the Houston hustings
Ten candidates will appear tonight at the third Democratic primary debate in Houston as the US Presidential campaign continues. [more inside]
This is why we don’t use poop in any of our work.
Thousands of property managers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are enforcing dog poop surveillance programs to ensure tenants clean up after their dogs or face a stiff fine. This seemingly-trivial practice brings up a larger question: what else will these services be used for? (Sarah Emerson, Medium OneZero) [more inside]
Deep Learning is Neither
If Computers Are So Smart, How Come They Can’t Read? This is an accessible presentation of the inherent lack of understanding in artificial "intelligence." It's amazing how much mileage the field has gotten out of pattern matching and probabilistic models, but the authors argue that it's time for an "entirely new approach."
Gizapon my works and despair
A history of the Pyramids of Giza and the people who explored them. Jimmy Maher (The Digital Antiquarian) with an extensive history on the Pyramids at Giza and the people who explored them.
CROOOFFMEE
Wild idea for new Space Elevator we (claimed) can build now.
From MIT Tech Review, a new Space Elevator called "Spaceline". The difference is this elevator has its anchor point not on the earth but on the moon. And it just dangles "close" to earth. [more inside]
Heroes and monsters: school shootings and Ancient Greek stories
The ancient Greek story of a school massacre is a lesson we need to learn. “We labor in part with the misunderstanding of what the word hero means. And there is dangerous beneath that cornerstone of every college myth class, “the heroic pattern”, perhaps most well-known popularly in the form of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, the heroic journey. The “heroic pattern” is a crass oversimplification of narrative myth and a naive perpetuation of its limitations.” A long, critical read. [more inside]
💪🏾🎮🏋🏾♀️
Nintendo’s Ring Fit Adventure is Wii Fit meets Final Fantasy on the Switch [The Verge] “It sounds like a typical role-playing game, but Ring Fit Adventure is far from typical. You don’t explore and battle by using buttons and joysticks: instead, you exercise your way through a lush fantasy landscape. It’s like Wii Fit crossed with Final Fantasy, and it sits alongside Labo as one of Nintendo’s most unexpectedly interesting experiments. Ring Fit Adventure, which Nintendo teased last week, launches in October for the Switch. It consists of three main pieces. There’s the game itself and two accessories: a leg strap and a flexible ring that Nintendo has dubbed the Ring-Con, which is essentially a high-tech resistance band. In order to use both, you need to slot a Joy-Con controller inside of each, and then you control the game primarily through your movements.” [YouTube][Teaser][Annoucement Trailer] [more inside]
"I love footprints because they’re a moment in time"
We know what we know about Neanderthals from a sparse fossil record and a healthier lithic one, but a new discovery, published [recently] in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract only), has advanced our knowledge by baby steps—many, many baby steps. Ossified in the escarpments of Le Rozel, in Normandy, France, are hundreds of footprints of our close relatives (Anthropology.net), including those of children. [...] Formed 80,000 years ago, the prints were made by about a dozen Neanderthals, who occupied the site seasonally. Found: A Windfall of Neanderthal Footprints in France (Atlas Obscura) [more inside]
Rubber bands
Rice cakes from the moon
In Korean folklore, there is a rabbit on the moon pounding rice with mortar and pestle in order to make rice cakes. Deriving its name from this legend, 달방앗간 (dalbangatgan), or Moon Rice Mill, shows how to make traditional Korean rice cakes (떡, tteok), as well as modernized variations. [more inside]
Tie a Yellowhammer Round the Old UK
If a week is a long time in politics, the two weeks since Boris Johnson's government announced the prorogation of the UK Parliament (previously on Mefi) has been an age. Johnson has lost his majority, lost (and/or ejected) 22 Conservative MPS, and lost six out of his first six votes in Parliament. Since the dramatic scenes at the close of Parliament on Monday night, we have learned that the government's act of prorogation is unlawful (subject to an appeal to the UK Supreme Court to be heard next Tuesday), and that even the barest of outlines of Operation Yellowhammer, the government's contingency plan for a No Deal Brexit, is enough to demonstrate that Project Fear was always Project Reality. [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »