The unimportant news thread

[Pohjolas Daughter]

How CNN broke the news from Trump's arraignment despite a courtroom ban on electronics:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/13/media/cnn-trump-arraignment-reliable-sources/index.html

Quite clever I thought.

PD

[Karl Henning]

How CNN broke the news from Trump's arraignment despite a courtroom ban on electronics:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/13/media/cnn-trump-arraignment-reliable-sources/index.html

Quite clever I thought.

PD

A much better look for CNN than a certain event in The Granite State.

[Spotted Horses]

Immanuel Kant indicated that the three dimensional space and unidimensional time is our cerebral, perceptual framework rather than real, physical entity. He suggested that when all humans- perceivers of this phenomenal world- went extinct, there won't be this world. Strictly speaking, he indicates that this world as we know based on time, space, sound, shapes, colors, etc., haven't been existent in the first place.

True to some extent, but goes way too far. Color is tied to human physiology, there seem to be three primary colors because our eyes have color receptors with three distinct absorption profiles. But you can measure wavelength of light with scientific instrument and predict what color will be perceived. Other animals have different color receptors, but we can't ask them what colors look like. We can predict what colors they would be able to distinguish, however. Sound, likewise does not manifest itself to our conscious mind without complex pre-processing. But three dimensional geometry (four dimensional if you include time) is an abstract system that was created to model physical reality. If I have vector, I can only reach points that lie along a line. If I have two vectors (North and East, say) I can get anywhere on a plane. But there are points I cannot reach. If I have a third independent vector (up) I can get to anywhere in space. I can't find a forth vector that is not a combination of the first three vectors, it doesn't open up any new space. The fact that everyone experiences this seems to lead to the conclusion that the model describes something that has an independent existence.

Of course, if there are no conscious beings to form mental models of physical reality, the physical reality will simply exist without anyone or anything being aware of it.

Not to long ago I was reading a book by Bertrand Russell (The Problems of Philosophy) in which he addresses the point of view that Kant espouses. I didn't get very far into the book because I've past the time of life where philosophical treatises seem worth reading.

[Karl Henning]

Massachusetts is the third most expensive state in the US to rent a home, new study says
You now need to earn more than $40 an hour to afford the typical two-bedroom apartment in Mass.

[Spotted Horses]

Massachusetts is the third most expensive state in the US to rent a home, new study says
You now need to earn more than $40 an hour to afford the typical two-bedroom apartment in Mass.

As I read in an article somewhere, all of the various crises facing Americans blend into an "affordability crisis" where the cost of staples of life outstrips increase in typical income. Sure, you can get a phone with computational power that would probably outstrip the combined computational power of all computers in the world in 1965 and could be claimed to be worth billions of dollars in 1965. If only you could go back in time and sell it to Lyndon Johnson and use the billions of dollars to cover your rent.

Crudely, I would attribute it to the fact that the U.S. economy has reconfigured itself to direct a higher and higher fraction of wealth to the ultra-rich at the expense of rank and file wage and salary earners. It has to do with policy (the evisceration of anti-trust enforcement and business regulation which increasely favors large companies) and technology (tech companies like UBER, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) who sucked up commerce that would have gone to medium sized and small business. Letting it happen is a choice our country has made.

[Karl Henning]

As I read in an article somewhere, all of the various crises facing Americans blend into an "affordability crisis" where the cost of staples of life outstrips increase in typical income. Sure, you can get a phone with computational power that would probably outstrip the combined computational power of all computers in the world in 1965 and could be claimed to be worth billions of dollars in 1965. If only you could go back in time and sell it to Lyndon Johnson and use the billions of dollars to cover your rent.

Crudely, I would attribute it to the fact that the U.S. economy has reconfigured itself to direct a higher and higher fraction of wealth to the ultra-rich at the expense of rank and file wage and salary earners. It has to do with policy (the evisceration of anti-trust enforcement and business regulation which increasely favors large companies) and technology (tech companies like UBER, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) who sucked up commerce that would have gone to medium sized and small business. Letting it happen is a choice our country has made.

I find this fairly persuasive.

[BWV 1080]

As I read in an article somewhere, all of the various crises facing Americans blend into an "affordability crisis" where the cost of staples of life outstrips increase in typical income. Sure, you can get a phone with computational power that would probably outstrip the combined computational power of all computers in the world in 1965 and could be claimed to be worth billions of dollars in 1965. If only you could go back in time and sell it to Lyndon Johnson and use the billions of dollars to cover your rent.

Crudely, I would attribute it to the fact that the U.S. economy has reconfigured itself to direct a higher and higher fraction of wealth to the ultra-rich at the expense of rank and file wage and salary earners. It has to do with policy (the evisceration of anti-trust enforcement and business regulation which increasely favors large companies) and technology (tech companies like UBER, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) who sucked up commerce that would have gone to medium sized and small business. Letting it happen is a choice our country has made.

How difficult is it to build new housing in MA compared to LBJ's day?  Most blue cities have severely restricted middle income housing, to the point the state government now has to force multifamily zoning

https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2022/12/04/massachusetts-ambitious-housing-law-enforcement/

[drogulus]

    

     Don't travel and already own a house.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

What Earth would look like one year after human extinction.

The Conversation is one of my favorite websites. I'd like to recommend the Scientific American as well.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/

[AnotherSpin]

True to some extent, but goes way too far. Color is tied to human physiology, there seem to be three primary colors because our eyes have color receptors with three distinct absorption profiles. But you can measure wavelength of light with scientific instrument and predict what color will be perceived. Other animals have different color receptors, but we can't ask them what colors look like. We can predict what colors they would be able to distinguish, however. Sound, likewise does not manifest itself to our conscious mind without complex pre-processing. But three dimensional geometry (four dimensional if you include time) is an abstract system that was created to model physical reality. If I have vector, I can only reach points that lie along a line. If I have two vectors (North and East, say) I can get anywhere on a plane. But there are points I cannot reach. If I have a third independent vector (up) I can get to anywhere in space. I can't find a forth vector that is not a combination of the first three vectors, it doesn't open up any new space. The fact that everyone experiences this seems to lead to the conclusion that the model describes something that has an independent existence.

Of course, if there are no conscious beings to form mental models of physical reality, the physical reality will simply exist without anyone or anything being aware of it.

Not to long ago I was reading a book by Bertrand Russell (The Problems of Philosophy) in which he addresses the point of view that Kant espouses. I didn't get very far into the book because I've past the time of life where philosophical treatises seem worth reading.

You have an idea of 'red', but you don't see exactly the same red colour in different objects. Moreover, the colour of a separate object changes infinitely with changes in external factors such as lighting or angle of view.

As long as you perceive certain objects, they are in your knowing. As soon as you stop perceiving them, the objects cease to exist for you, and you have no way to verify whether they continue to exist regardless of your perception. You may think they continue to exist, but the thought of the object and the object itself are not the same.

[Karl Henning]

I was today years old when I learnt that Saturn has 146 moons.

One of Saturn's 146 moons harbors the fundamental elements required for the development of organic life, according to new data from NASA published yesterday. The discovery was made on Enceladus, an Arizona-sized lunar body with a salty subsurface ocean.

[Karl Henning]

"Twitter sued for $250M by music publishers over alleged copyright infringement; Twitter is only major social media platform without a music licensing deal."

[Karl Henning]

Edgar Allan Poe, white courtesy telephone, please:
"Woman declared dead in Ecuador wakes up during wake."

[Mapman]

I was today years old when I learnt that Saturn has 146 moons.

I just learned that too (because of your post)! The discovery of over 60 of them was only announced last month. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/acd766 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Saturn

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I just learned that too (because of your post)! The discovery of over 60 of them was only announced last month. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/acd766 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Saturn

Every minute is lunar.   

PD

[BWV 1080]

Look, I'm not psycho. I know she's a doll.  Right, Ellie?

[SimonNZ]

A rock slide threatened to crush this Swiss village. It missed by just a few metres

[Pohjolas Daughter]

A rock slide threatened to crush this Swiss village. It missed by just a few metres

I've read several articles about the danger and the evacuation.  From what I understand, there's still more danger up above.    Think that it was a BBC article...I'll try and find it.  In any event, they are still not safe. 

PD

[Todd]

The Next Global Superpower Isn't Who You Think

What happens when the world is no longer unipolar, bipolar, or even multipolar?

But there's a third, rapidly emerging order that will soon have more influence than the others: the digital order. There, unlike every other geopolitical order past and present, the dominant actors setting rules and exerting power aren't governments but technology companies...

Tech companies even define our identities. We used to wonder whether human behavior was primarily the result of nature or nurture. No longer. Today, it's nature, nurture, and algorithm...

If the tech companies stick with global growth strategies, refusing to align with governments and preserving the existing divide between the physical and digital fields of competition, then we'll see a new globalization: a globalized digital order. Tech companies will remain sovereign in the digital space, competing largely with each other for profits—and with governments for geopolitical power, much in the same way that major state actors presently jockey for influence in the space where the economic and security orders overlap...

But if the digital space itself becomes the most important arena of great-power competition, with the power of governments continuing to erode relative to the power of tech companies, then the digital order itself will become the dominant global order. If that happens, we'll have a post-Westphalian world—a technopolar order dominated by tech companies as the central players in 21st-century geopolitics.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

A rock slide threatened to crush this Swiss village. It missed by just a few metres

From a BBC article:  "There is up to a million cubic metres of loose rock still on the mountain above."    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65926381

Drought in Spain forces flamingos to find a new home.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65938869.amp

PD