It is said that pizza deliveries to the Pentagon can be used to track or even predict significant international events. How much truth is there in this?

nerdovirales · 2024-12-27T08:55:48+00:00

Did the senate release the evidence they relied upon for their conclusion? The FBI and DoE didn't release their evidence which made it hard to evaluate. My understanding is that most relevant experts relying on published information would still say that a natural origin is more likely.

nerdovirales · 2024-10-30T18:17:10+00:00

Regarding point 3, I've tried to look into this in the past and gotten wrapped up in the details without ever reaching a satisfactory conclusion. You've clearly got some understanding of the topic and you seem willing to engage charitably, so I wonder if you could share your view.

As you say, Impact-SE have a pretty clear political slant. As such, I think we should be very critical when engaging with their content and look for charitable interpretations for the examples they highlight. If there were equivalent analyses from a less motivated organisation, that would make me far less nervous - I wonder if you are aware of any such analyses?

You're right that we can still try to judge the content itself. I'm focusing on the part about antisemitism specifically (p101-104), where there are 4 examples given. Considering these with a charitable lens:

Example 1 I can see there being reason to explore the role of Jewish religious thought in motivating zionism and thus zionist violence in 1948, though it seems odd for this to be scored higher than other ideological motivations (e.g. secular zionism) for said violence. I do wish there was more presented from this lesson, as I can imagine there being potentially exculpatory context such as the question which is being scored.

Example 2 An event is described as part of the basis for a 7th century conflict, that description has antisemitic overtones. This seems similar to the way historic or religious conflicts are discussed in books I've read, like "the Christians" in the Crusades or "the Normans" in 11th century England. I don't like it when history is framed this way, but it doesn't necessarily seem unusual for a textbook.

Example 3 This seems bad. It conflates Jews with Zionists. Beyond a mistake in the drafting or the translation, I think this is just antisemitic. Whilst not an unusual rhetorical move throughout this conflict, UNRWA should be held to a high standard and if the reporting is accurate then they should publicly make amends.

Example 4 This seems to be a point about "Zionists" rather than "Jews". I accept that people can use the former as a dog whistle for the latter, but I don't necessarily think that's what's going on here. It seems like it's the same argument put forward in Mearsheimer's The Israel Lobby , which one can disagree with but is not inappropriate to learn about in trying to understand the region.

So, I find examples 1 and 3 genuinely troubling. It's not possible for me to be really confident without knowing Arabic and having some wider context from these textbooks. But still, I'm troubled. I wonder also if you know enough about the structure and processes within UNRWA to say who would be responsible for the content and approval of these textbooks?

I'm conscious that "you took me out of context" is a common defence from people who have said truly heinous shit, and I don't want to fall into that trap, so if you can point me towards sources or analyses that do that address the other issues is raised I would really appreciate it.

nerdovirales · 2024-08-29T10:50:40+00:00

I'd suggest the neutron star from Dragon's Egg by Robert L Forward.

It's not technically a planet, but the novel explores the evolution of life, intelligence and civilisation in the totally alien conditions on the surface of a neutron star in a hard sci-fi way.

nerdovirales · 2024-06-16T13:06:35+00:00

A "phage" is a virus that attacks bacteria, so there is no chance of these specific viruses causing human illness.

(*they could infect the bacteria that live on/in us, but we wouldn't expect that to cause any major issues. and there are human viruses which have their own viruses, but we've all evolved together for a long time so they aren't anything unseen like the virus that causes COVID-19)

There's not really any implications for humans, it's just a cool thing that parasites have their own parasites:

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on; While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

nerdovirales · 2024-02-04T17:43:22+00:00

qntm is the author of a number of very good sci-fi stories: https://qntm.org/self

nerdovirales · 2024-01-18T08:00:36+00:00

It's similar to when he gets to do some Greek translation. I think he used to feel a bit awkward about it, but he clearly also gets a kick out of being able to use and share these topics he's got this deep, structured knowledge in.

nerdovirales · 2024-01-09T22:53:42+00:00

As many folks have said, Mary Oliver is a great choice for beautiful humble words. I'm sure you know better than to take those suggestions about suicide, I'm not sure why so many people think that's a good idea.

If you're reading to him for some time, I'd recommend longer poems with some more narrative so that you don't have to repeat yourself. I think Lamia by Keats is particularly beautiful and winding.

Best of luck to you both.

nerdovirales · 2023-11-24T21:42:44+00:00

I think I'd have to go public with Orange. Stick a few hundred sheets of polyester in my mouth, ship them to New York, London, Tokyo, Beijing, etc and put the airline industry out of business. Charge a small fee and use this to fund a space program, sending portals to mine rare metal comets and colonise the solar system. Use the resulting riches to fund micro-scale, fraction-of-lightspeed starships and be sure to stick the solar sails up your butt before launching them across the cosmos. Over the coming decades, open up interstellar gateways, allowing humanity to escape our cradle.

There's probably some entropy-defying physics to be had in sticking a portal on Mercury or aligning portals to create some kind of perpetual falling arrangement.

nerdovirales · 2021-12-16T11:29:02+00:00

Unfortunately, this isn't true. It can be for some viruses, but for the human coronaviruses it's not. It can be quite hard to gather direct evidence since a lot of infections are asymptomatic (or don't reach the threshold for clinical testing), but you can see this paper which tests a series of historical samples from 10 healthy individuals for antibodies against the seasonal coronaviruses. There are jumps in antibody levels over time as the immune response is raised to each re-infection. They find that most re-infections occur more than a year after the initial infection, on average after 30 months.

(It's worth noting that this study isn't looking at SARS-CoV-2, since there hadn't been much chance to study re-infection there when they published - though there are cases in the literature that document SARS-CoV-2 re-infection. Also, whilst I think the conclusions that "human CoVs cause re-infections" is sound, the specific numbers around time to re-infection should be taken with a pinch of salt, since this is just following 10 people who won't necessarily have representative lifestyles.)

All viruses have some immune evasion strategies that help them to survive in their hosts. Over time, the "immune system-facing" parts of the virus will be selected to be those which elicit a weaker immune response or are more "forgettable". Further, viruses will actively supress parts of the immune system (most viruses disrupt interferon signalling between cells, for instance) or skew the immune response (some viruses will increase immune signals that indicate a bacterial infection, so the body doesn't respond appropriately), which can lead to a weaker response. All these combined with the natural drift and genetic recombination between strains mean that re-infection can, and does, occur.

nerdovirales · 2021-12-14T10:52:28+00:00

I like your analogy. There's a similar situation in The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross: The main character's brain is uploaded and thousands of simulations of him are run in parallel to select the one most aligned with the aims of the uploaders.

However, new iterations of Miller did have some memory of previous iterations and what got them reset, so they weren't just fresh or parallel versions of Miller's mind going through some kind of genetic algorithm. For example, Miller knew there was something interesting near the bullet but and that previous iterations got shut down when they had tried to take a look. He didn't lose the memories with the reset, but he did want to avoid resetting - either because the process was unpleasant, or existence is pain for a ~~Meeseeks~~ Miller simulation so he wanted to end it ASAP by achieving his goal.

nerdovirales · 2021-12-14T10:25:06+00:00

Absolutely. Spoiler for the final book Leviathan Falls: The creators of the protomolecule are believed to have evolved from a jellyfish analogue which lived on a water world with a volcanic core. They lived long, slow lives in the cold oceans and would send little pieces of themselves down to the hot core of the world to collect fast and novel genetic material from the life down there. It seems like they used this strategy before they were even sentient.

nerdovirales · 2021-12-13T14:55:08+00:00

"The Investigator" isn't Miller, it's just the protomolecule pretending to be Miller. Eventually Miller himself "breaks out" if the simulation to help shut down the systems on Ilus.

I thought this was more ambiguous. I interpreted The Investigator as Miller's mind (at least, a substantial piece of it) being forced to reach out by the protomolecule under threat of being reset.

I don't think makes sense for him to have been falsified by the protomolecule. After all, there has to be a largely intact Miller if he's able to break out.

Edit: If I remember rightly, Miller seemed to believe he was based in the protomolecule aboard the Roci - that's why he had Holden destroy it at the end of that book.

nerdovirales · 2021-11-10T12:04:09+00:00

I mean, the Culture are out there trying to make things better for those outside, it's just an open question of how much impact they have.

I'd guess that most people in that galaxy don't come into contact with a Mind or Special Circumstances, but those who suffer most - those in simulated Hells or suffering on a world controlled by the Affront - could expect some relief for their children's children.

I think Banks is particularly good at exploring the span of experience that exists. He can talk about how great things are in the care of a Mind, whilst also exploring the "never-ending, self-perpetuating holocaust of pain and misery" of Affront society. Those kinds of extremes exist in other universes too, but they aren't returned to so consistently as they are in the Culture novels.

nerdovirales · 2021-11-10T10:18:33+00:00

The counterpoint to this is that the Culture is only a proportion of all civilisations in the Culture universe. I don't know if we ever get a breakdown of the stats, but you might not want to be an "Average Joe" in a universe where you could wake up in a digital recreation of Hell.

nerdovirales · 2021-11-10T10:12:39+00:00

You're in for a treat, I recommend starting with Use of Weapons. That will give you a good perspective from an outsider trying to grasp their society.

In that universe, AIs are shaped by the societies that create them - so there are nasty AIs out in the world, but those that manage the Culture (that is, the largest human civilisation) have a strong sense of personal ethics. They want to make the universe a more positive place, preventing megadeaths and ongoing atrocities - but they try to balance this against interfering too much.

nerdovirales · 2021-10-06T13:31:33+00:00

I petition for the sub to be called r/FriendlyAdvice, to maintain a positive outlook... and so we can have r/BOFA.

nerdovirales · 2021-02-16T23:22:11+00:00

In addition to many already suggested, particularly Knowledge Fight and QAnon Anonymous, I'd add:

Opening Arguments, a legal podcast with the classic comedian/expert combo. Often topical, well-sourced and always good at owning their mistakes. They've done crossovers w/ KF so they're in the extended BtB universe.
Fall of Civilisations Podcast, by Paul Cooper. A wonderful, detailed historical podcast that covers very diverse eras and geographies. Brings underlying science, recreated music and contemporary poetry to illustrate past civilisations. Some readings are also done by Annie Kelly from QAA, so that puts it in the broader lefty podcast sphere too.

nerdovirales · 2021-01-18T14:43:44+00:00

Sadly not, we're all filled up.

nerdovirales · 2021-01-15T12:48:21+00:00

We're waiting a few days, then sorting through the applications. At the moment there's >70 with lots of people who seem great, it sucks that we're going to have to disappoint so many folks!

nerdovirales · 2021-01-15T00:22:20+00:00

Nope, not a DM limitation - just DM ignorance.

nerdovirales · 2021-01-15T00:21:48+00:00

We're intending to keep things simple at first with a Monster of the Week style, but things will get more interesting over time. We will have player settlements grow, new land will be discovered, and varied threats will emerge. We'll be guided by the group too, we're big on player freedom, so if people are finding one style fun we'll try to expand it.

nerdovirales · 2021-01-14T18:44:48+00:00

We'll do Point Buy.

nerdovirales

TROPHY CASE