Times Literary Supplement (June 19, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Booking A Holiday’ – TLS critics choose their summer reading; Artistic license – The relationship between ‘loveliness and lucre’; Christopher Isherwood in full; How to be a Liberal; Story of a ghost painter and Fine-art fraud…
Before and after artificial intelligence
We will never know how many died during the Butlerian Jihad. Was it millions? Billions? Trillions, perhaps? It was a fantastic rage, a great revolt that spread like wildfire, consuming everything in its path, a chaos that engulfed generations in an orgy of destruction lasting almost a hundred years. A war with a death toll so high that it left a permanent scar on humanity’s soul. But we will never know the names of those who fought and died in it, or the immense suffering and destruction it caused, because the Butlerian Jihad, abominable and devastating as it was,…
Can AI think creatively? Can we?
“Far as the east from even, / Dim as the border star, / Life is the little creature / That carries the great cigar.” So wrote Emily Dickinson, with some unfortunate help from a computer. As I read that stanza in February 2022, I was more than six months into a scientific experiment I was conducting with my friend and colleague Morten Christiansen, a cognitive psychologist at Cornell, where he and I are professors. In 2021, two years before ChatGPT would become a household name, Christiansen had been impressed by the initial technical descriptions of GPT-3, the recently released version of the generative large language…
Models and forecasts can be seductive, but it’s time for executives to reclaim their economic judgment.
Forget disruption and incrementalism. Here’s how to develop high-growth products in slow-growth companies.
0:15 Mini-factories in space – Space Forge says its technology could revolutionize manufacturing. The satellites contain miniature manufacturing systems. They take advantage of the conditions in low-Earth orbit such as microgravity, extreme temperatures and a contaminant-free environment to forge materials that would be impossible to manufacture here on Earth.
1:53 Biodiversity credits explained – Nature is under unprecedented threat. Around 2 million plant and animal species could go extinct in the next few decades as climate change and habitat loss push ecosystems towards irreversible tipping points. To fight this crisis, experts are coming up with new ways to protect life on Earth by assigning value to the ecosystems around us. These innovations include biodiversity credits.
6:58 Nairobi switches to electric buses – Private minibuses called matatus are the main mode of public transport in Nairobi. Most matatus are old, diesel-powered and inefficient and 60% of the city’s population rely on them to get around. Electric mobility start-up BasiGo has built an all-electric alternative. The first bus rolled off its Nairobi production line in early 2024. Nairobi bus operators have already ordered 500 more. More than 90% of Kenya’s electricity is generated renewably, which means BasiGo’s buses are virtually emission-free.
8:40 How to build healthier cities – This architect designs buildings that bring communities together – Sumayya Vally grew up in post-Apartheid Pretoria, South Africa in what had been an Indian-only township and saw how division kept communities apart. Vally founded the Johannesburg-based architecture practice Counterspace to fight the built legacies of colonization and highlight the peaceful coexistence between communities.
BARRON’S MAGAZINE – June 14 , 2024: The latest issue features…
Federal data show a pattern of staffing cuts at hospitals acquired by HCA. The company disputes the analysis but declined to provide its own numbers.
Registered investment advisors have built lucrative practices that are attracting big private-equity firms.
Companies in emerging markets are important players in AI—and they are cheaper than many U.S. counterparts.
Before World War II, countries around the world including the U.S. frequently used tariffs to protect local manufacturers and farmers.
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Despite failing hardware, NASA has no plans to pursue a servicing mission to the aging, iconic instrument
New studies include health data collected from space tourists on first privately funded orbital mission
Ancient DNA shows continuity between living and ancient Maya communities
The Guardian Weekly (June 13, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Blood Lines’ – The human cost of Europe’s cocaine habit’; The Far Rights surges across EU; A doughnut theory of the universe; The muscular rise of steroids…
In a week when much of the attention in Europe was on far-right political gains in the parliamentary elections, the Guardian Weekly’s cover shines a light on another of the continent’s disturbing undercurrents.
A Guardian investigation has found that hundreds of unaccompanied child migrants across Europe are being forced to work for increasingly powerful drug cartels to meet the continent’s soaring appetite for cocaine.
In cities including Paris and Brussels, gangs are exploiting the “unlimited” supply of vulnerable African children at their disposal, using brutal means to control their victims, including torture and rape if they fail to sell enough drugs, as they seek to expand Europe’s $13bn cocaine market.
Mark Townsend reveals the plight of the illegal trade’s child foot soldiers, while Annie Kelly explains the growing problem of cocaine use in Europe. And from Ecuador, Tom Phillips reports on how death and destruction follow the drug on its complex journey across the Atlantic.
If America wants to maintain its lead, it should focus less on keeping China down
Elsewhere, political dysfunction and fiscal frailties are taking a toll
Times Literary Supplement (June 13, 2024): The latest issue features Freud’s Discontents – George Prochnik on the father of psychology; A great novel on the American Frontier; Death becomes them – The mourning rituals of the Victorians; Cover-up – An atrocity committed by US troops in the Philippines….
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Machine-learning technique uncovers nearly 900,000 microbe-fighting peptide sequences in genomes collected from soils and other sources.
The icy body Arrokoth has a sugary coating that gives the body its distinctive red appearance.Research Highlight03 Jun 2024
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