... you have probably seen before, in other words too little too late as usual.
Oumuamua is probably not an alien spaceship, but there are many weird and mysterious objects in the universe.
I think AlphaFold is so far the most interesting achievement of 'deep learning' and I assume that computational (bio)chemistry will make big steps in coming years.
The paper of Kelly and Trugenberger examines 'combinatorial quantum gravity' on random graphs. I find it very interesting, because they claim to get a 2nd order phase transition, i.e. a continuum limit, not seen in lattice gravity models so far.
A book review and some thoughts about the value of french fries that I found interesting.
Last but not least, a webpage with lots of good news.
1995
When did everything become so stupid?
Recently I was wondering when it happened, perhaps with the idea that it might help identify the cause. I think I found the answer.
It would be easy to set this date at 2016, but I think it would also be wrong; just think about all that happened before.
Of course, stupidity is nothing new, idiotic politicians are nothing new and mass hysteria and conspiracy theories have always been part of history.
But something changed for the worse in the last one or two decades and it all began in 1995 imho.
It was the year of the OJ trial, when news turned into a weird soap opera for the first time and a strange chain of cause and effect gave us the Kardashians.
Around the same time non-linear video editing became available, which initially made reality tv cheap to produce and finally made it possible for everybody to make video clips.
The drudgereport was also launched in 1995, paving the way for breitbart and infowars.
But most importantly, it was the year of win95, which finally made the internet available to everybody with a pc (*).
The avalanche of stupidity that we experience now was an inevitable consequence of that year ...
(*) The Eternal September began already in 1993 and I admit that there is some uncertainty in the exact timing of the onset of the stupidity avalanche.
added later: One other data point to consider is the reversal of the Flynn effect: It suggests that IQ declined for post-1975 cohorts; this decline would have begun to show up in adults around 1995.
Recently I was wondering when it happened, perhaps with the idea that it might help identify the cause. I think I found the answer.
It would be easy to set this date at 2016, but I think it would also be wrong; just think about all that happened before.
Of course, stupidity is nothing new, idiotic politicians are nothing new and mass hysteria and conspiracy theories have always been part of history.
But something changed for the worse in the last one or two decades and it all began in 1995 imho.
It was the year of the OJ trial, when news turned into a weird soap opera for the first time and a strange chain of cause and effect gave us the Kardashians.
Around the same time non-linear video editing became available, which initially made reality tv cheap to produce and finally made it possible for everybody to make video clips.
The drudgereport was also launched in 1995, paving the way for breitbart and infowars.
But most importantly, it was the year of win95, which finally made the internet available to everybody with a pc (*).
The avalanche of stupidity that we experience now was an inevitable consequence of that year ...
(*) The Eternal September began already in 1993 and I admit that there is some uncertainty in the exact timing of the onset of the stupidity avalanche.
added later: One other data point to consider is the reversal of the Flynn effect: It suggests that IQ declined for post-1975 cohorts; this decline would have begun to show up in adults around 1995.
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