… there is was a message that one is all caught up in Instagram? Can not remember that I ever saw it.
Nicht oft geraten Aspekte von ungeklärten Phänomenen in die Medien. Leider kommt unsere Kultur nicht wirklich gut mit den Grenzen unseres Wissens zurecht. Die andere Seite wird sofort mit wilden Spekulationen (Hände beidseits des Kopfes erhoben und synchrones Queenschwenken vollführend ) zugemüllt.
Mich stimmt es froh das wir nicht alles wissen. Nicht weil ich dann da irgendwie was schönes alles erklärendes hin projizieren könnte. Sondern weil es spannend ist was dabei raus kommt. Menschen wussten noch nie alles. Sie haben schon immer die Lücken mit Geschichten aufgefüllt. Die wahren mal schön, und mal schrecklich. Und oft leider auch der Grund sich gegenseitig viel Leid anzutun.
Aber jedesmal wenn wir etwas rausgefunden haben war was wir gefunden haben wirklich interessant. Besser als unsere Geschichten. Und Grund für neue Fragen. Oder Anwendungen von denen wir alle profitieren. Anwendungen die Leiden vermindern. Und das ist cool. Wenn es was gibt an dem man sich orientieren sollte, dann ist es die Verminderung des Leidens. Nicht immer so einfach wie es erscheint. Man muss sorgfältig hinschauen. Sonst hat man mal schnell einen Genozid mit dem verringern des empfundenen Leidens des eigenen Volkes organisiert …
In a world where a Senator can use a snowball as an “argument” it is hard to hope for science getting the attention it deserves.
But maybe the fact that the record from 1913 of 56.7C will tumble soon might make people realize what is happening. It has no scientific meaning. But people are not science literate. They take the benefits of science every minute of their live. But they can afford to ignore it.
The fact that the earth is hotter than ever before might be understood once the hottest temperature measured will be the one of this summer. And the next, and the one after that. It is 54.4C right now in death valley.
What John Gruber said. Facebook is a cesspit for broken thinking. There always has been broken thinking. And unbroken thinking too: Chances are you can walk up to a wall in your dwellings, turn a knob and water will start flowing. Sometimes you can control the temperature too. That is proof that there has been unbroken thinking. That kind of thing does not just appear. It gets made by people. With specific and educated actions. Things like QAnon might resonate with feelings that people have. But they do not further man kind. There is no benefit for anybody in these kind of things.
Mark Zuckerberg has responsibility here. He built something that billions of people use. What happens to these people in his system is part of his responsibility. It will be a very sad day for him when he eventually realizes what he has done. But then again lots of people never realized how they f*d mankind.
But history will not smile on Zuck. Thats for sure.
RANDOM INTERNATIONAL came up with a really great artwork for the Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children in London. The idea is good. The red sphere makes sense.
But sadly the implementation ruins the work. The thing jerks around. A second grade science project with this kind of performance would get a ‘well meaning nod’ but hardly a good grade. I would not be surprised if the work makes odd noises and causes troubles when it runs day in day out. It likely will not run for a long time without interruptions. I wonder if the makers would have thought about the fact that you need to clean the sphere once a week, otherwise it will look rather dusty.
Having to look at the un smooth motion and oddly tensioning wires makes me sad. It is a great work. It is just implemented in a way that ruins it.
Wires that are less or more part of the work as well as a freaking smooth control of the motors could have made this really nice. I would play with speeds, but usually have it manoeuvre very slowly on a 3 dimensional spline. Just to randomly go into a swift motion. Brownian motions.
There are endless possibilities: At specific times of the days it could perform a ‘ball drop’. Every July 25th it could engage in mostly helical patterns. Eventually somebody would figure out that it is the birthday of Rosalind Franklin.
But of course all that fancy stuff would only make sense if the freaking wires would run smooth. Which they clearly don’t.
To complete the reversed Tolstoj: and war. While Trumpies son in law finally managed to get the Emirates to say that they eventually will sign something (When you ask? In 3 weeks the man said. Those 3 weeks he always mentions when he actually means: “you are so stupid in 3 weeks nobody cares what I said today, because by then I stoked another outraged, and the media will jump all over it like a rioting prison population over a busload of catholic schoolgirls). So while 45 hammers on a peace pr event Greece and Turkey send ships into the same disputed area.
We all live in the world of Idiocracy. Since Mike Judge finished his movie the institution of the Presidency has moved already 20% in the direction of his work. Now it appears that his plot point of under age users from Silicon Valley finds a real life equivalent.
If you have to do a mundane task to do that leaves 90% of your brain un occupied ( like sorting receipts or something ) then maybe watch this video. If you click away after a minute then you miss 15 very interesting ones that you had not expected after the first minute.
China is testing a digital currency. In the US credit cards are big. They let you pay without physical money and they give people a line of credit. Charging them 15% interest rates. Yes, this is an actual business model. The other form a revenue is a 3% cut the card company gets from the transaction. There is a convoluted network of institutions involved in a credit card purchase. Enter ‘credit card payment flow diagram’ in image search and you will see. It is not that complicated. But it is also not that easy that you just use ‘visa’ or ‘master card’. Tandem Computers ran for a long time these transactions. So payments are being processed by computers. But they behave as if you still use Knuckle buster to initiate a paper trail.
The system kinda works. It is inherently unsafe and slow. Lots of people are involved. Their jobs are of the kind of a switch board operator in the early days of the telephone: A tech system that requires glue by people since it has not full matured. Those are always horrible jobs. Just ask an assembly line worker.
Since everybody carries a connected computer around you can replace physical money with digital one. You “just” need a system to do so securely and reliable. Technically entirely possible. And China is heading that way.
I bought a geiger counter board the other day. Arrived in less than a week in Europe. It was packaged really well. Documentation? A WeChat QR code. So I might as well get an account with them.
Alipay – not digital money but a replacement for credit cards – gets accepted in more and more places outside of China.
Much like we have Paypal accounts and credit cards we will have Digital Renminbi accounts. First to just get better service, a better price on a little trinket. But since it will work and will be easier than other things we will use it more and more. Out of the sudden the world will use 3 currencies, not 2. Right now people use their local currency, and they use US dollars. If they know or not. The US dollar is being used to buy lots of stuff. Like Oil etc. It is the currency that steps in when local currencies have flaws. Digital Renminbi will be a 3rd currency. Driven by ease of use and Security. Many people don’t like the dominance of Amazon. But they end up using them anyway since the experience is just better than those with other services. Same with Google. People don’t like China and how it ignores our beloved Democracy. But when you need a geiger counter board you get it from China. A working digital currency can be so much cheaper than other means of transactions. I pay 3% for credit cards and 1.3% for international wires. I’d rather keep that money. I would gladly use Chinese Money if my loss would be 0.5%. Technically charges as low as 0.01% are possible. The amount of data you need to transfer is really really tiny. Think oil tankers full of condensed water mist. One of these drops that are so so small that they can float is your transaction. The oil tanker is the Internet pipelines that people have to watch 4K TV. The software you only need to create once. Cost is in the backbone systems. Here we think water mist drops and Water bottles. A little bit of work, but not much.
Other countries will not be able to get a digital currency going. Facebook tried with Libra, and failed.
This might happen by 2030.
I wonder how Helen Beard and Helen Beard are dealing with the fact that they are not the only woman with their name being known for making things.