tingilinde

which side of the iq curve are you on?

 

 

timothy snyder on freedom

It's not what many think it is

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But freedom is not just an absence of evil. Freedom is a presence of good. It is the value of values, the condition in which we choose and combine the good things, bringing them into the world, leaving our own unique trace. It is positive.

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And the home of the brave? It is cowardly to believe that freedom is just negative, just an absence. When we think of freedom that way, we leave all the hard questions open: Who are we? What do we care about? For what will we take a risk? What we are really saying is that someone or something else will fill the void and do the work for us. A leader will tell us what to think. Or a market or a machine will do the thinking for us. Or it will be the founders who somehow did all the thinking long ago.

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the oldest company in each country

Reading through the list is better than the map..  also some corrections are given.

 

 

rat empathy

They're hugely underrated.

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For several decades, although studies of rat physiology and behavior have abounded, research on rat emotions has been limited in scope to fear, anxiety, and pain. Converging evidence for the capacity of many species to share others’ affective states has emerged, sparking interest in the empathic capacities of rats. Recent research has demonstrated that rats are a highly cooperative species and are motivated by others’ distress to prosocial actions, such as opening a door or pulling a chain to release trapped conspecifics. Studies of rat affect, cognition, and neural function provide compelling evidence that rats have some capacity to represent others’ needs, to instrumentally act to improve their well-being, and are thus capable of forms of targeted helping. Rats’ complex abilities raise the importance of integrating new measures of rat well-being into scientific research.

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traveler's tour

A 200 year old American board game .. the first?

 

srpingfield

 

 

 

bird flu

One might think people would be doing something about it, but...

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It may already be too late to rid America’s cattle herds of the bird flu virus. If it continues to circulate, it could become stable in the population. This is what has happened with flu in pigs around the world. That could also spell disaster—not only would the virus represent a constant risk to humans and other animals that come into contact with the cows, but it could also evolve over time. We can’t predict how this evolution might take shape, but there’s a chance the result could be a form of the virus that is better at spreading in people or causing fatal infections.

So far, it is clear that the virus has mutated but hasn’t yet acquired any of these more dangerous mutations, says Michael Tisza, a bioinformatics scientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. That being said, Tisza and his colleagues have been looking for the virus in wastewater from 10 cities in Texas—and they have found H5N1 in all of them.

Tisza and his colleagues don’t know where this virus is coming from—whether it’s coming from birds, milk, or infected people, for example. But the team didn’t find any signal of the virus in wastewater during 2022 or 2023, when there were outbreaks in migratory birds and poultry. “In 2024, it’s been a different story,” says Tisza. “We’ve seen it a lot.”

Together, the evidence that the virus is evolving and spreading among mammals, and specifically cattle, has put virologists on high alert. “This virus is not causing a human pandemic right now, which is great,” says Tisza. “But it is a virus of pandemic potential.

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a tip of the hat to Roland

looking deeply into the starry night

van Gough had a good eye.

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To reveal hidden turbulence, the authors used brushstrokes in the painting like leaves swirling in a funnel of wind to examine the shape, energy, and scaling of atmospheric characteristics of the otherwise invisible atmosphere. They used the relative brightness, or luminance, of the varying paint colors as a stand-in for the kinetic energy of physical movement.

“It reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” Huang said. “Van Gogh’s precise representation of turbulence might be from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”

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the transition to electric school buses

Slowly but surely

  In addition to the global warming and lower maintenance arguments, there's a serious children's health issue.

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From a health perspective, there’s urgency to replacing the nation’s diesel buses with cleaner alternatives. Health experts have long known that children are uniquely vulnerable to air pollution because their lungs, brains, and other major organs are still developing. They breathe faster and take in a higher volume of air relative to their body weight.

Diesel exhaust is classified as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization and contains fine particles and nitrogen oxides, both of which are well-documented asthma triggers. Research shows that children in lower-income areas and communities of color are exposed to higher levels of outdoor air pollution — from major roadways, industries, and ports with diesel truck operations. They also suffer much higher rates of asthma and respiratory illness. And so it’s particularly important, say public health experts and school officials, to get polluting school buses off the streets.

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musk gives a pile to a weak nj republican

NJ-7 is a district the Democrats have a good change to flip. Sue Altman, the challenger, is a good person (it's the district we live in).  If you want to donate towards a possible flip in the House, this is one of the better opportunities.

Musk is in the business of making a lot of Republicans beholding to him.

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Billionaire Elon Musk’s America PAC has begun spending in House districts around the country to aid Republicans and slam Democrats – and one of the districts he’s targeting is New Jersey’s own 7th congressional district.

According to paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission, America PAC is spending $124,059 on “canvassing and field operations” to boost Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) and attack his Democratic opponent, Sue Altman, who is running a well-funded campaign to unseat Kean in the competitive 7th district.

The PAC’s spending, which totals more than $2.1 million across 14 congressional districts, was first reported earlier today by Business Insider.

A doorhanger put on NJ-7 voters’ doors by Elon Musk’s PAC.
Altman said that the involvement of Musk – who owns Tesla and the social media site X, and who has become a top Donald Trump backer in this year’s presidential race – shows the need for taking money out of politics.

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