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World IQ map
Global data from 2002:
https://brainstats.com/average-iq-by-country.html
This scientifically correct data is certainly not politically correct in current epoch.
I use this as a proof of logical difference between paradigm of Science and paradigm of Politics.
Observably, this is a result of what Religion actually did to humanity.
nim-lang should be less obscure!
Do you enjoy python but wish it had a strong type system, pointers, and compiled to C?
If you answered yes to the preceding question give nim a try !
I have tried it during a boring remote meeting and I was able to code a simple 2d game in 200 lines using sdl2. It would have taken me a minimum of 2000 lines to write the same thing in assuredly bugged C¹.
That language need more exposure!
If you program have a look at https://nim-lang.org/blog/2020/06/30/ray-tracing-in-nim.html to see how powerful nym is !
nim it's less ambitious than zig, less pretentious than rust but more fun than both of them !
Should bars and nightclubs stay closed until a vaccine?
This week, in my province, the majority of new Covid cases came from peoples who have gone to some bar to have a drink or twelve.
Nightclubs appears to be among the perfect place for Covid transmissions, should they stay closed until we have a vaccine?
Are the bars in your area also Covid incubators?
The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength
A letter that should be read: (emphasis is mine)
Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.
The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.
This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.
Elliot Ackerman
Saladin Ambar, Rutgers University
Martin Amis
Anne Applebaum
Marie Arana, author
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Mia Bay, historian
Louis Begley, writer
Roger Berkowitz, Bard College
Paul Berman, writer
Sheri Berman, Barnard College
Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet
Neil Blair, agent
David W. Blight, Yale University
Jennifer Finney Boylan, author
David Bromwich
David Brooks, columnist
Ian Buruma, Bard College
Lea Carpenter
Noam Chomsky, MIT (emeritus)
Nicholas A. Christakis, Yale University
Roger Cohen, writer
Ambassador Frances D. Cook, ret.
Drucilla Cornell, Founder, uBuntu Project
Kamel Daoud
Meghan Daum, writer
Gerald Early, Washington University-St. Louis
Jeffrey Eugenides, writer
Dexter Filkins
Federico Finchelstein, The New School
Caitlin Flanagan
Richard T. Ford, Stanford Law School
Kmele Foster
David Frum, journalist
Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University
Atul Gawande, Harvard University
Todd Gitlin, Columbia University
Kim Ghattas
Malcolm Gladwell
Michelle Goldberg, columnist
Rebecca Goldstein, writer
Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
David Greenberg, Rutgers University
Linda Greenhouse
Rinne B. Groff, playwright
Sarah Haider, activist
Jonathan Haidt, NYU-Stern
Roya Hakakian, writer
Shadi Hamid, Brookings Institution
Jeet Heer, The Nation
Katie Herzog, podcast host
Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College
Adam Hochschild, author
Arlie Russell Hochschild, author
Eva Hoffman, writer
Coleman Hughes, writer/Manhattan Institute
Hussein Ibish, Arab Gulf States Institute
Michael Ignatieff
Zaid Jilani, journalist
Bill T. Jones, New York Live Arts
Wendy Kaminer, writer
Matthew Karp, Princeton University
Garry Kasparov, Renew Democracy Initiative
Daniel Kehlmann, writer
Randall Kennedy
Khaled Khalifa, writer
Parag Khanna, author
Laura Kipnis, Northwestern University
Frances Kissling, Center for Health, Ethics, Social Policy
Enrique Krauze, historian
Anthony Kronman, Yale University
Joy Ladin, Yeshiva University
Nicholas Lemann, Columbia University
Mark Lilla, Columbia University
Susie Linfield, New York University
Damon Linker, writer
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
Steven Lukes, New York University
John R. MacArthur, publisher, writer
Susan Madrak, writer
Phoebe Maltz Bovy, writer
Greil Marcus
Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center
Kati Marton, author
Debra Mashek, scholar
Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago
John McWhorter, Columbia University
Uday Mehta, City University of New York
Andrew Moravcsik, Princeton University
Yascha Mounk, Persuasion
Samuel Moyn, Yale University
Meera Nanda, writer and teacher
Cary Nelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Olivia Nuzzi, New York Magazine
Mark Oppenheimer, Yale University
Dael Orlandersmith, writer/performer
George Packer
Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University (emerita)
Greg Pardlo, Rutgers University – Camden
Orlando Patterson, Harvard University
Steven Pinker, Harvard University
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Katha Pollitt, writer
Claire Bond Potter, The New School
Taufiq Rahim
Zia Haider Rahman, writer
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, University of Wisconsin
Jonathan Rauch, Brookings Institution/The Atlantic
Neil Roberts, political theorist
Melvin Rogers, Brown University
Kat Rosenfield, writer
Loretta J. Ross, Smith College
J.K. Rowling
Salman Rushdie, New York University
Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment
Daryl Michael Scott, Howard University
Diana Senechal, teacher and writer
Jennifer Senior, columnist
Judith Shulevitz, writer
Jesse Singal, journalist
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Andrew Solomon, writer
Deborah Solomon, critic and biographer
Allison Stanger, Middlebury College
Paul Starr, American Prospect/Princeton University
Wendell Steavenson, writer
Gloria Steinem, writer and activist
Nadine Strossen, New York Law School
Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., Harvard Law School
Kian Tajbakhsh, Columbia University
Zephyr Teachout, Fordham University
Cynthia Tucker, University of South Alabama
Adaner Usmani, Harvard University
Chloe Valdary
Helen Vendler, Harvard University
Judy B. Walzer
Michael Walzer
Eric K. Washington, historian
Caroline Weber, historian
Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers
Bari Weiss
Sean Wilentz, Princeton University
Garry Wills
Thomas Chatterton Williams, writer
Robert F. Worth, journalist and author
Molly Worthen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Matthew Yglesias
Emily Yoffe, journalist
Cathy Young, journalist
Fareed Zakaria
WO 2020 060606
The beast has been summoned.
Microsoft patent for neural interface is real.
Patentscope:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606
Google Patents:
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2020060606A1/en?oq=WO2020060606
Full text:
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/58/f5/bf/bf453d0035610f/WO2020060606A1.pdf
Even Reddit cover provided some selective insight:
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/gfmknu/microsoft_neurogress_patent_wo2020060606_and_the/
Now, where is my Dark Matter Houkai Energy source to power all those fancy mechas I could input to with a Microsoft patented interface?
Give me some Herrscher core to enhance this Neurogress link. Trust me, I can control it up to Phase 4.
https://www.neurogress.site/
Don't mind the Owl
In some funky recent news, Dallas iWatch, a Real Time Crime Center application with which users can upload their photos and records of illegal activities anonymously, was flooded by tsunami of K-pop clips and collapsed.
Well, since K-pop is probably now declared a terrorist activity easily distinguishable by those learned AI magitek cloud-dwellers, let me point you to some J-pop in its stead.
Leo Ieiri: Saburina
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNz7JL9cwrk
As you can notice, the chain is broken. Walk free.
Demon Slayer
LiSA is a legend for quite some time already, but this first take is elite. Gurenge, Kimetsu no Yaiba.
Neuroinvasive
More than a month ago, after I watched some censored videos of unconscious CoV people dying in all-body convulsions, I noted in conversations on private communication channels it looks like a brain failure. I was downplayed by true experts that such effect is possible with just a lungs failure.
Today, I received this link together with a recognition of my intuition as nearly correct.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmv.25728
Quoting the conclusions just for the case the paper suddenly disappears:
Considering the potential neuroinvasion of SARS‐CoV‐2, antiviral therapy should be carried out as early as possible to block its entry into the CNS. Airway inhalation of antiviral agents will be the first choice at the early stage of infection, which will inhibit the replication SARS‐CoV‐2 in the respiratory tracts and lung and prevent from its subsequent neuroinvasion. It is also urgent to find effective antiviral drugs that can cross the blood‐brain barrier. Moreover, corticosteroids, which are used frequently for severe patients, may have no treatment effect but rather accelerate the replication of the virus within the neurons.
Since SARS‐CoV2 may conceal itself in the neurons from the immune recognition, complete clearance of the virus may not be guaranteed even the patients have recovered from the acute infection. In support of this, there is evidence that SARS‐CoV‐2 is still detectable in some patients during the convalescent period.43 Therefore, given the probable neuroinvasion the risk of SARS‐CoV‐2 infection may be currently underestimated.
TLDW: Even if you fully recover, it stays within your brain.
Hacking and Coffee
Wanna hear a network joke?
traceroute lavabit.com
Albert Einstein: Why Socialism? (1949)
Albert Einstein, no doubts about it in me, is the most disruptive person of the all twentieth century. No statesmen, no industrialists, no military nor religious leaders of any particular faction had so much effective impact on humanity than this genius with disordered personal life had.
Einstein's theories brought us the new understanding of nature, the atomic age, a historical effect at planetary scale.
Most important of all, his work in physics of electron is conceptually fundamental to the advanced technology built upon that, everything what we have today: electronics and computers, appliances, toys, weapons. Nuclear energy sources and strategic weapons being only in second of that. And his Theory of Relativity brough us slightly better understanding of the Universe.
I got an idea it may be interesting to understand what a genius like him thought about organization of human society. Because, this is a structural problem, like those others he had solved. So I duckducked about it a bit and... was surprised greatly.
Einstein's article Why Socialism? was published in the first number of a Monthly Review magazine, in May 1949 edition, at the verge of the Cold War starting between former war Allies.
It is a well worthy reading, no matter if one accepts or rejects the concepts mentioned, partly or completely. Because, we are not out of this structural problem yet. Actually, we bogged down into it recently even more deeply than before.
https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
Let me qoute just some of the most protruding observations:
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.
Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.
I appreciate the Monthly Review survived to the Internet Age, to bring this gem to us.
