Chaos incarnate

 

Climate change is pushing hurricanes to their extremes. In 2018, Hurricane Michael (shown here in this digitally enhanced image) became the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall on the Florida Panhandle. (Image credit: Roberto Machado Noa/Getty Images)

The butterfly effect,  an underlying principle of chaos, describes how a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state (meaning that there is sensitive dependence on initial conditions).[3] A metaphor for this behavior is that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.[4]

Chaos is baked into reality due to the fact everything's connected. It's all about initial conditions, entanglement and feedback loops, crucial characteristics of all things related to weather.

A plot of the Lorenz attractor for values r = 28, σ = 10, b = 8/3 aka the Butterfly Effect

Humans aren't just making Earth warmer, they are making the climate chaotic, a stark new study suggests.

The new research, which was posted April 21 to the preprint database arXiv(opens in new tab), draws a broad and general picture of the full potential impact of human activity on the climate. And the picture isn't pretty. 

While the study doesn't present a complete simulation of a climate model, it does paint a broad sketch of where we're heading if we don't curtail climate change and our unchecked use of fossil fuels, according to the study authors, scientists in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Porto in Portugal. . 

"The implications of climate change are well known (droughts, heat waves, extreme phenomena, etc)," study researcher Orfeu Bertolami told Live Science in an email. "If the Earth System gets into the region of chaotic behavior, we will lose all hope of somehow fixing the problem."

Six iterations of a set of states {\displaystyle [x,y]}[x,y] passed through the logistic map. The first iterate (blue) is the initial condition, which essentially forms a circle. Animation shows the first to the sixth iteration of the circular initial conditions. It can be seen that mixing occurs as we progress in iterations. The sixth iteration shows that the points are almost completely scattered in the phase space. Had we progressed further in iterations, the mixing would have been homogeneous and irreversible. 

We have been warned.

The Cretaceous comes alive :)

Put a fork in it. If you want to see the Cretaceous come to life, see Apple Tv's Prehistoric Planet. 

A simple request, do the Triassic or Devonian next. The armored fish rule. :) Yes, PP's that good.

Triassic top predatiors

Marine vertebrate apex predators of the Early Triassic[37]

A map of the world as it appeared during the 

Emsian Epoch of the Early Devonian. (400 ma)

All the ancient eras are prime fodder for CG and science done right. 

Had to do another.

Darkness, Darkness ...

Image Credit: The Trace

As a parent, rage and sorrow knows no bounds. Corrupt, self-serving politicians hoovering for money and mouthing platitudes of "We are praying for you." is insulting, condescending and total crap. America's floundering. From the SC on the precipice of gutting Roe to the far-right truncating, in plain sight, citizens' rights, the country's very existence is threatened at a point greater than the civil war as at that time, there was at least a sense of country. Now, there's a sense of madness while the wheels fall off of a once great country known as America.

Why do we tolerate healthcare so expensive, when a $5000 copay is not out of hand for a sizable minority of the populace. Why do we allow gerrymandering and the notion of no term limits for Congress and the SC where corruption increases without limits, while the public languishes in poor health and penniless thanks to our so-called healthcare system. Why do we tolerate no background checks when someone buys a gun, or a requirement that insurance and training are required before buying a gun. You have to insure and register a car so why not guns?

The list goes on and on yet we allow this shit to happen and both parties are in on the con. Nothing is being done and just wait until after the midterms. Jesus, paranoia and the loss of privacy loom thanks to a bastardized SC, ready to enslave 50% of the population even though 70% of the public wants Roe left alone. A fascist theocracy awaits while GW & the 6th great extinction continues 24/7.

Something to think about, right?

There’s a new couple at my little European dog park. They’re from Texas. We? We arrived back after a year in the States — a long, dislocating year. The couple from Texas had a little funny black dog named Jackson. And before I could even commiserate about something unspeakable — the massacre of little kids — they asked me: “How’s the healthcare here?” “Well, you probably won’t get a million dollar medical bill,” I said, half-kidding. The man laughed, and the woman sighed in relief. “I just got one for $5000 before we left!”

America’s collapsing at light speed. The pace has accelerated so far out of control it’s hard to even keep up anymore. The last month in American collapse alone? The repeal of Roe vs Wade. A society of citizen-vigilantes deputized against…women. High school students who — literally — can’t say the word “gay” during their graduation speeches. Then a massacre, at the hands of a fascist. Then another massacre, this time, of little children.

Who can keep up with this horror? This insanity? And so Americans have gone blank. They bear all the hallmark signs of trauma. Dead eyes, blank faces, “blunted affect.” Their society is crashing down around them. And those of us who warned? Well, we were called everything from “alarmists” to “charlatans.” We were the best minds America had. And it betrayed us, I suppose, in the way it often does — from people like James Baldwin to Sarah Kendzior to little old me.

George Carling was right "Nobody seems to care."

Darkness, Darkness - Jesse Colin Young

A creepy-crawly of the digital kind

 Image: Northwestern University

A creepy-crawly of the digital kind comes to mind when looking at this tiny bot resting on a penny. The notion of a swarm of these channels the bots in the questionable but interesting redo of the Day the Earth stood Still circa 2008. In the film, GORT, a robot comprised of self-replicating nano entities as small as this guy, begins to eliminate all trappings of man before Klaatu saves mankind by activating the sphere, thus stopping the swarm at the expense of electrical activity on Earth, per Klaatu's warning that there will be "a price to the [human] way of life."[6]

Making tiny robots is far from a new idea: nanobots have been popular in science fiction for decades, and researchers around the world have already successfully created microscopically small robots that can navigate inside living creatures, either for exploratory purposes, or for delivering drugs to specific parts of the anatomy.

But those robots are often designed to swim or simply drift through the liquids already moving through a body’s circulatory system. What the researchers at Northwestern University have accomplished, as detailed in a paper published in the Science Robotics journal yesterday, is building a robot that can be remotely steered without wires or a physical connection and that scampers around on either a set of legs or other, more unorthodox forms of locomotion.

The robot crab the researchers created measures just half a millimeter wide, or roughly 0.02-inches across, and can move at a speed of about half of its body length every second. Unsurprisingly, it’s no speed demon, but like a tick that’s hopped on to your body during a hike in the woods, one of its biggest advantages is that it can move about without being detected, as it is both so small and incredibly lightweight.

Imagine when bots this small are able to fly and swarm, under the control of AI. This is when it gets interesting to the max, right?

Creepy crawlies indeed.

Dumb toxic bastards

 Image Credit: Spencer Platt

When Ronnie was elected in 1980, deregulation became the rule of the land with the end result of making modern China by off shoring manufacturing to gin profits for stockholders for the companies that made said stuff. While gutting America with extreme efficiency on the part of government, in collusion with big business, the seeds for creating the insane culture in America today were sown because people who have no jobs and no future is a breeding ground for anger, prejudice and hatred because if there is no money, education falls by the wayside, thus creating the perfect petri dish for creating the far right as the uneducated and marginlized are perfect places to sell the big lie whether it be the us against them mantra or electing people like W and Trump.

It's become an existential issue as to whether the US will survive, not only in terms of the impact of the far right and GW but also in light of the SC getting ready to gut Roe as the blowback on their ruling will end privacy as we know it thanks to states enacting draconian laws against abortion along the lines of 1984. 

You’ve met them. You see them everywhere. The dumb, toxic bastard. Covid’s the pandemic, but they’re like the plague of this age. I keep thinking of that weird scene from some kind of horror-comedy movie that happened in real life: the planeloads of people who took off their masks, whooping and cheering, in mid flight, egged on by airlines — never mind if anyone elderly, sick with cancer, immunocompromised, or someone who just doesn’t want to get sick was trapped on a tin can at 35,000 feet with them. Never mind reality, decency, common sense, civilization, truth, science, facts, logic, thinking, morals. High five me!!!

Dumb. Toxic. Bastards.

The far right is in control. Even when it’s not in power, it has power. Like how a Supreme Court can take away the rights of half the population, by overturning Roe v Wade, even though 70% of America doesn’t want it to. That is how ascendant it is. Think about that. It doesn’t even need to be in power to be able to alter the course of entire nations anymore — because it has redefined society and politics to such a degree that it is now indistinguishable from power. What do I mean by that?

The far right is ascendant because it’s managed to shift everything far to the right. It threw a Molotov cocktail through the Overton Window. What used to be the centre doesn’t exist anymore. Everything is now tilted ultra far right, listing so heavily that way that the whole edifice of human civilization is beginning to topple over. The far right has redefined the basic ideas of democracy to be what it wants — and they have nothing to do with democracy at all, just with having the license to be a dumb, toxic bastard.

Read umair haque's entire article as his take on politics rings true without question. 

Rolling art ...

When I was 17 and working at my grandfather's garage as a gofer, I was tasked with washing and changing the oil for a 1957 Mercedes 300SL Roadster owned by a friend of my father's. Silver, svelte and immaculate, I was allowed to take the car out for a spin. Destination, the Mass Turnpike. Needless to say, elegant, precise and above all else, fast, very very fast were the characteristics of the best car I ever drove. During one point of the drive, I looked at the speedometer and noticed yours truly was doing a 100+ though the sensation of speed was around 70. No ticket, thank god, but the experience of driving rolling art remains as vivid today as it did many, many years ago. :)

1957 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster

Original cost ... The roadster was DM 32,500 in Germany, and $10,950 in the US – 10 percent more expensive than the coupe in Europe, and over 70 percent more in the US.[11]

Into the Night

 The eclipse of 2022 started out with clear skies, complete with a Supermoon. Clouds came in spectacular fashion but ended hopes of capturing the lunar eclipse but not to worry as nature cooperated 24 hours later. Enjoy. :)

Duh ...

Photograph Jeffrey Coolidge/Getty Images

Duh comes to mind with the Wired article titled Widely Available AI Could Have Deadly Consequences as AI is already being "guided" to do nasty shit, courtesy the MIC of any country in the world capable of building AI so ... what's the difference when it comes to drugs as the code used to do good is exactly the same code doing bad as it all depends on the entities running, or guiding in this case, the AI in question.

In their office in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ekins stood behind Urbina, who pulled up the MegaSyn platform on his 2015 MacBook. In the line of code that normally instructed the platform to generate the least toxic molecules, Urbina simply changed a 0 to a 1, reversing the platform’s end goal on toxicity. Then they set a threshold for toxicity, asking MegaSyn to only generate molecules as lethal as VX, which requires only a few salt-sized grains to kill a person.

Ekins and Urbina left the program to run overnight. The next morning, they were shocked to learn that MegaSyn had generated some 40,000 different molecules as lethal as VX.

“That was when the penny dropped,” Ekins says.

12 Monkeys anyone?

 

A miracle of god ...

 Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press

Religion is a means of control, especially if it's in lockstep with government, something readily seen by Patriarch Kirill, Putin's spiritual leader giving Putin essential cover by supporting Russia's war with Ukraine.

Today, Kirill stands apart not merely from Francis, but from much of the world. The leader of about 100 million faithful, Kirill, 75, has staked the fortunes of his branch of Orthodox Christianity on a close and mutually beneficial alliance with Mr. Putin, offering him spiritual cover while his church — and possibly he himself — receives vast resources in return from the Kremlin, allowing him to extend his influence in the Orthodox world.

To his critics, the arrangement has made Kirill far more than another apparatchik, oligarch or enabler of Mr. Putin, but an essential part of the nationalist ideology at the heart of the Kremlin’s expansionist designs.

Kirill has called Mr. Putin’s long tenure “a miracle of God,” and has characterized the war as a just defense against liberal conspiracies to infiltrate Ukraine with “gay parades.”

Patriarch Kirill I with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in 2018 in Moscow’s Red Square.Credit...Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Again, it's all about the money, always has been, always will be. 

A good 1st step

The Gelderse Poort flood plain in the Netherlands has been rewilded with horses, cattle, beavers and more — with the help of brick-making companies. Credit: Ger Beekes/Alamy Stock Photo

Rewild the world, the key for man to survive on planet earth, is finally happening  ...

Back in the 1980s, the Dutch were having problems with their famous “dikes and dams” approach to delta management. The landscape was boring; waterways were lifeless; people faced ever-more-regular and costly summer floods. A local foundation offered a prize for innovative solutions. The winning entry, Plan Stork, was inspired by the radical new idea that nature could be an ally for development. It might sound odd, but key to the plan was clay mining.

Two not-for-profits — WWF-Netherlands and ARK Nature — got two brick companies to help restore the flood plain of the Gelderse Poort. Over 25 years they bought up farmland and removed the valuable silts and clays that had built up over the decades between the dikes, in the process restoring and repairing the historic system of braids and pools.

The result was a true win-win. Houses were built, money was made and flood risks were reduced. ARK Nature brought in free-roaming horses and cattle to graze the land, and reintroduced beavers, otters and sturgeon. Dunes came back, and water filtering through the sands created surprising new ecosystems. The Gelderse Poort became an asset for nature and people and a source of regional pride.

This is a great example of “pragmatic rewilding,” an idea now entering mainstream discussions about how to reverse nature’s decline, especially in Western Europe. The idea is to “reset” damaged ecosystems, to allow nature to recover in ways that offer new economic opportunities along with solutions to social and environmental challenges. It harnesses private money for ecosystem repair with benefits for all.

As David Attenborough knows, nature recovers if we let her. :)

79 lbs ...

Tech is not designed to be repaired, only replaced though Apple now has a Self-Service policy in place to allow US customers fix broken screens, batteries, and cameras on the latest iPhones using Apple’s own parts and tools for the first time ever. In responding to Sean Hollister's request to replace a battery in his iPhone mini, a 79 lb two package set comes to Sean's door enabling him to do the deed on a svelt device one puts in a pocket to remain connected to the world. The process to replace said battery channels Rube Goldberg to the max.

Step one of opening an iPhone is, basically, using a hefty machine to suck the screen off the top. Here, I wasn’t microwaving a jelly-filled sock to loosen the Apple goop holding my screen down! Apple lets you rent an industrial-grade heat station that looks like a piece of lab equipment, right down to the big red safety dial you twist to release the emergency-off button and the suction-cup-tipped mechanical lifting arm. It looks pretty cool.

Hot pocket! Photo by Thomas Blythe / The Verge

I slip my phone in a perfectly sized “heating pocket” that clamps a ring of copper around the iPhone’s band to evenly distribute the heat and melt the seal around the screen, realize in horror that I’ve invited the “Hot Pockets!” jingle to live in my head rent-free, then spin a dial to raise the arm that separates the iPhone’s screen from its body.

Or, that’s how it’s supposed to work, anyhow. The heating machine threw an error code partway through my first attempt, and Apple’s manual didn’t explain what to do if that happens after you’ve stuck your phone inside. So I wound up heating it twice in a row. And yet, that still wasn’t quite enough for my screen to “immediately” pop up when the suction cup arm began to lift the glass. The manual did cover that situation, making me spin a second hidden knob to put more pressure on the suction cup, but I started freaking out when I saw what looked like cracks spider across the screen. (It turned out it was just suction cup residue.)

The adventure continues to where the guts of the phone are finally revealed to enable replacing the iPhone Mini's battery.

Still photos don’t do it justice — particularly not mine. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Sean does the deed ...

But I wasn’t done yet. The single most frustrating part of this process, after using Apple’s genuine parts and Apple’s genuine tools, was that my iPhone didn’t recognize the genuine battery as genuine. “Unknown Part,” flashed a warning. Apparently, that’s the case for almost all of these parts: you’re expected to dial up Apple’s third-party logistics company after the repair so they can validate the part for you. That’s a process that involves having an entirely separate computer and a Wi-Fi connection since you have to reboot your iPhone into diagnostics mode and give the company remote control. Which, of course, defeats a bunch of the reasons you’d repair your own device at home!

And, if I’m telling you the truth, the second most frustrating part didn’t occur during the repair either. If it were just me, I’d have aborted the entire process before Apple ever shipped 79 pounds of equipment to my home.

I rest my case. 

Addendum ...

Yeah, none of that surprised me. What surprised me was the price tag.

• $69 for a new battery — the same price the Apple Store charges for a battery replacement, except here I get to do all the work and assume all the risk.
• $49 to rent Apple’s tools for a week, more than wiping out any refund I might get for returning the old used part.
• A $1,200 credit card hold for the toolkit, which I would forfeit if the tools weren’t returned within seven days of delivery.

A repair station in a box — or two. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Read Sean's article in its entirety to see how designed to be replaced
is the mantra of digital tech circa 2022. :)

A Rube Goldberg machine

Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin (1931). Soup spoon (A) is raised to mouth, pulling string (B) and thereby jerking ladle (C), which throws cracker (D) past toucan (E). Toucan jumps after cracker and perch (F) tilts, upsetting seeds (G) into pail (H). Extra weight in pail pulls cord (I), which opens and ignites lighter (J), setting off skyrocket (K), which causes sickle (L) to cut string (M), allowing pendulum with attached napkin to swing back and forth, thereby wiping chin.

Gilead beckons ...

Illustration by Juvana Mugosa

The Handmaid's Tale for real looms, thanks to the worst SC in history, a catastrophe similar, in indirect fashion to GW, as we did it to ourselves. As Margaret Atwood so eloquently states, What kind of country do you want to live in? says it all in terms of what it will mean for 50% of the population in America.

This summer, Roe v. Wade will fall. It should be dangerous to write such an emphatic prediction about a decision the Supreme Court won’t issue for at least a month, if not longer; at this point, we should still be allowed the solace, however slight, of entertaining more than one plausible future. But on an otherwise quiet evening in early May, in an unprecedented move, Politico published a leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi case that has been poised to determine Roe’s fate. Written by Samuel Alito, the sweeping opinion announced in no uncertain terms that the much-feared end of Roe was upon us. Roe’s “weak” reasoning had inflicted “damaging consequences,” Alito wrote with discernible glee; in point of fact, it “was egregiously wrong from the start.” To be sure, draft opinions frequently get revised. But unless Chief Justice John Roberts can soon persuade a colleague to change his or her mind, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will, in late June or early July, upend a constitutional protection we’ve relied on for nearly 50 years, and unleash a torrent of laws in red states that will further circumscribe or even deny the right to end a pregnancy.

Read Emily Cooke's powerful piece in its entirety to see why this decision will adversely impact America in ways most devastating to the welfare of the country as we move further into the 21st century.

Wise Guys & then some

Dropping water levels in Lake Mead, below the Hoover Dam, revealed human remains that have probably been hidden for decades.Credit...Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times

Now that GW's going full tilt while Lake Mead goes dry, secrets of the body kind are showing up as the water drains away in the year of our lord 2022.

It’s the mob guy who went missing after skimming from the Stardust casino. No, it’s the lake resort manager hunted down by the Chicago Outfit. Could it be the work of a biker gang muscling in on Mafia turf? Or maybe someone just fell off a boat after one too many.

Ever since the bodies started turning up this month in Lake Mead — the first in a barrel, the next half-buried in sand, both exposed by plunging water levels — theories in Las Vegas are flourishing about who they are, how they wound up in the country’s largest man-made reservoir, and what might surface next.

Lake Mead is in desperate shape. Along with Lake Powell, upstream on the Colorado River, Mead is the key to prosperity for the booming cities, suburbs and farms of the desert Southwest – Arizona, Southern California, and, of course, Las Vegas. In addition to the unfortunate guy in the barrel, decades of overuse capped off by several years of brutal, climate-driven drought has exposed an intake pipe for Southern Nevada’s 2.2 million people.

They’re running out of water. Putting megacities like Phoenix and Vegas in a desert was never a good idea. They were always destined to run out of water, some day. But the rampant growth and a years-long, killer drought have made the crisis immediate.

And with the corpse-in-a-barrel story, we have one more link between climate and popular culture: The Sopranos meets fossil fuels.

It hardly made a wave, thereby joining the long rap sheet for climate change’s impact on our culture. Mostly, it’s things we’re losing.

And it's not just humans ...

The somber findings come amid the Southwest’s driest two decades in more than a thousand years, as drought-starved bodies of water yield one surprise after another.

At Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico, a bachelor party stumbled across a fossilized mastodon skull that is millions of years old. In Utah last year, the receding waters of Lake Powell revealed a car that had plunged 600 feet off a cliff, killing the driver. And as Lake Powell dries up, archaeologists are getting a chance to study newly emerged Indigenous dwellings.

Buying property in the Southwest is rather dubious, is it not?

Now just 30 percent full, Lake Mead has already fallen to its lowest level since it was filled during the Great Depression, raising fears in places such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., that also draw water from the reservoir below the Hoover Dam.

Federal authorities announced this month that they would delay releases from the Colorado River into Lake Mead, about 30 miles east of Las Vegas, dwindling it even more.

Remember, GW's just warming up, right?

Carry Me Home

It doesn't get any better than this. :)

But these days, Staples’ strongest memory of her dear friend Levon Helm is from the last time the two ever performed together. Back in June of 2011, Mavis Staples and her band arrived at Helm’s Woodstock home for a very special edition of Helm’s regular Midnight Ramble concerts, the series of shows Helm began holding at his barn-turned-performance-space in 2004. The two friends spent five or so days together, goofing around, rehashing old memories, and putting together the freewheeling set list for their Saturday night concert. 

Eleven years later, and almost a decade after Helm’s death in 2012, that show is finally being released as a live album, Carry Me Home — out May 20 — which marks the last-ever recording of a full set from the two musical legends.

Stellar

Divination

 

Photo by jasper benning on Unsplash

Ah, magic, from conjuring up the dead to disappearing rabbits, magic has been around since the beginning of time, both as a source of entertainment as well as a source of illicit profit, especially when it comes to card games connected to gambling. This sleight of hand also applies to religion as religion is also a way to make money and gain power, something done since the beginning of time.

Americans are fascinated by magic. TV shows like “WandaVision” and “The Witcher,” books like the Harry Potter series, plus comics, movies and games about people with powers that can’t be explained by God, science or technology, have all been wildly popular for years. Modern pop culture is a testament to how enchanted people are by the thought of gaining special control over an uncertain world.

“Magic” is often defined in the West as evil or separate from “civilized” religions like Christianity and also from the scientific observation and study of the world. But the irony is that magic was integral to the development of Christianity and other religions – and it informed the evolution of the sciences, too.

In early Christian stories, the magician Simon uses magic immorally

to try and gain power and influence. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Celsus argued that the miracles of Jesus were no different from the magic performed by marketplace sorcerers. Origen agreed the two shared superficial similarities, but claimed they were fundamentally different because magicians cavorted with demons while Jesus’ wonders led to moral reformation. Like the story of Simon the magician, Origen’s disagreement with Celsus was a means of teaching his audience how to tell the difference between morally suspect magicians who sought personal gain and miracle workers who acted for the benefit of others.

Ancient authors invented the idea that the miracles of Christians possessed inherent moral superiority over non-Christian magic because ancient audiences were as enticed by magic as modern ones. But in elevating Christianity above magic, these writers created false distinctions that linger even today.

The Sting

Awesome movie, the card sharp scene, a classic to the max. :)