tingilinde

the disaster in college sports

Mostly football ..  and tax deductible..

 

 

a paper on incels

Much talked about over the past half dozen years.. an interesting paper

And a summary

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Lindner uses an evolutionary psychology framework to understand the behavior of these men amid the accelerating social and economic shifts in gender roles and the ways the internet makes possible an “ecology where incel beliefs can thrive and make violence attractive.”

Essentially, Lindner finds these behaviors are rooted in those that proved to be most evolutionarily advantageous and so more likely to be passed along to a next generation. Our ancestors have, according to scholars, passed down a set of inherited tendencies involving male aggression and female selectivity of mates.

“An evolved male psychology makes them, on average, more likely to respond negatively to sexual aggression, and is inclined to coerce women, sexually,” Lindner said. “If we assume that that male psychology exists, we can see how the environment can amplify or dampen that.”

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mary trump's version of the gop house

As well as many of the voters who love the tribal red meat they serve..  she's reasonably accurate.

 

 

 

personal motion analysis

Inexpensive  video motion analysis using multiple smartphones.  It could be very useful for people with movement difficulties - perhaps a part of physical therapy.

The paper in Computational Biology

 

OpenCap: Human movement dynamics from smartphone videos

Scott D. Uhlrich , Antoine Falisse , Łukasz Kidziński , Julie Muccini, Michael Ko, Akshay S. Chaudhari, Jennifer L. Hicks, Scott L. Delp

 

Abstract

Measures of human movement dynamics can predict outcomes like injury risk or musculoskeletal disease progression. However, these measures are rarely quantified in large-scale research studies or clinical practice due to the prohibitive cost, time, and expertise required. Here we present and validate OpenCap, an open-source platform for computing both the kinematics (i.e., motion) and dynamics (i.e., forces) of human movement using videos captured from two or more smartphones. OpenCap leverages pose estimation algorithms to identify body landmarks from videos; deep learning and biomechanical models to estimate three-dimensional kinematics; and physics-based simulations to estimate muscle activations and musculoskeletal dynamics. OpenCap’s web application enables users to collect synchronous videos and visualize movement data that is automatically processed in the cloud, thereby eliminating the need for specialized hardware, software, and expertise. We show that OpenCap accurately predicts dynamic measures, like muscle activations, joint loads, and joint moments, which can be used to screen for disease risk, evaluate intervention efficacy, assess between-group movement differences, and inform rehabilitation decisions. Additionally, we demonstrate OpenCap’s practical utility through a 100-subject field study, where a clinician using OpenCap estimated musculoskeletal dynamics 25 times faster than a laboratory-based approach at less than 1% of the cost. By democratizing access to human movement analysis, OpenCap can accelerate the incorporation of biomechanical metrics into large-scale research studies, clinical trials, and clinical practice.

 

a lack of courage

The modern GOP.

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Lewis’s definition presents us with the sobering realization that we don’t truly know if we possess a virtue unless and until it is tested. We can believe we’re honest, but we won’t know we’re truly honest unless we have the courage to tell the truth when the truth will cost us something we value. We can believe we’re brave, but we don’t know if we are until we show it when we face a genuine physical risk.

When I meet a virtuous person, I also know that I’m meeting a person of real courage. A lifetime of virtue is impossible absent courage. Conversely, when I see a person consumed with vice, I also know that I’m likely in the presence of a coward, a person whose commitments to virtue could not survive the tests of life.

Now contrast the Lewis vision of courage with the courage or toughness lionized on the MAGA right. From the beginning of the Trump era, the entire concept of courage was divorced from virtue and completely fused with two terrible vices: groveling subservience and overt aggression.

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on ripping off writers

"AI" and likely theft..  

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Scott Galloway, a New York University marketing professor, best-selling author and podcast aficionado, thinks writers of all stripes should be focusing their ire on the likes of Microsoft, Google and Meta, not Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global, as they did in the recently concluded Hollywood writers strike. He said recently on the Pivot podcast that 70 percent of Nasdaq’s gains in the first half of 2023 came from seven technology companies, most of which had AI product offerings. “So the question is, if AI is literally sucking the oxygen outta the room and all the market cap, it’s like, well what is driving that value?”

The answer, obviously, is the hundreds of thousands of content creators who are taking the time — often over many months and years — to report and to write and to think up the content that Meta, Google and Microsoft are scraping up into the LLMs without asking permission or paying proper compensation. Writers need to band together into a powerful lobbying force — perhaps led by billionaire Barry Diller, who has publicly taken up a cudgel — against ChaptGPT, Google, Microsoft and Meta, and their ilk, and fight for proper compensation for their work and a share of the hundreds of billions in value that has been created by the very mention of AI. The AI companies should pay authors a fair price to option their books for the right to consume their contents, just as Hollywood does when embarking on a film, documentary or television series. (Apple reportedly paid Michael Lewis $5 million for the movie rights to his new book about Sam Bankman-Fried.) And then also agree to pay authors royalties, if there are any to be had.

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photosynthesis is very inefficient

So why not convert the land used to produce corn ethanol for vehicles into much more efficient solar farms to generate electricity for electric cars and - well - everything else electric?

It won't happen for a variety of reasons - mostly political.

 

on the myth of rural america

A Daniel Immerwahr essay in The New Yorker.

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All that was generations ago, yet the obsession with rural authenticity sounds all too familiar. In 2008, the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin insisted that small towns were the “real America,” where hardworking, patriotic people lived. That sentiment has only gained political potency since. Underlying the country’s red state–blue state polarization is a more profound, and widening, rural-urban split. Donald Trump’s election was, Politico declared, the “revenge of the rural voter.”

Scholars who have spoken with those voters, such as Katherine Cramer, in “The Politics of Resentment” (2016), and Robert Wuthnow, in “The Left Behind” (2018), report a sense of deep alienation. Rural people feel—in terms much like those Grant Wood laid out in 1935—that their authentic, independent way of life is under threat from an out-of-touch urban élite.

But is that picture accurate? A piercing, unsentimental new book, “The Lies of the Land” (Chicago), by the historian Steven Conn, takes the long view. Wistful talk of “real America” aside, Conn, who teaches at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, argues that the rural United States is, in fact, highly artificial. Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts. But we rarely acknowledge this, Conn writes, because many of us—urban and rural, on the left and the right—“don’t quite want it to be true.”

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on the need for long covid research

The potential benefits to well-being and the economy are enormous.  An outline of what could be done. 

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Research on long COVID continues to be uncoordinated, with many researchers and clinicians communicating only with other experts from their own field, be they pulmonologists, neurologists or cardiologists, for example. Few clinical trials are testing interventions that address the root causes of the condition. And the lack of infrastructure for the rapid implementation of long COVID trials, as well as the absence of long-term resourcing for the field, means that many scientists and companies with potential therapeutics are hesitating to engage. Meanwhile, the world is desperate to move on from COVID-19 — even as there is another global uptick in the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

We call for a moonshot for long COVID, a commitment — from the US government — to invest at least US$1 billion annually over the next ten years to address the problem. Such an investment would inspire governments around the globe to respond in kind to this health challenge, which exists on every continent.

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a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

christian nationalism and the gop

And where Jim Jordan fits into it.

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Jesus is an odd figure to invoke when talking about Jim Jordan, who looks at all times like he's ready to give someone a wedgie. But it makes a dark sense within the topsy-turvy world of MAGA politics, and not just because of the hope they can revive Jordan's speakership from the dead. As former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois keeps patiently explaining to the press, Jordan is a full-blown "Christian nationalist' who imagines "he is truly fighting the dark forces."

Jordan lost on the second ballot on Wednesday, but tellingly, the vast majority of Republicans backed him, even though there were significant signs going in that this is a lost cause. Jordan continues to think, with not insubstantial reasons, he can strongarm the holdouts into backing him.

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Part of the issue is Christianity is a loose cluster of beliefs.  While Jesus is usually portrayed as the uber-wise prince of peace - a loving and kind sort of character. there are also interpretations of someone full of hate and vengefulness.  That version is entirely consistent with many white fundamentalist sects.