Newsletter 29
Machines, hololens and disasters
Hi everyone,
Welcome to the 30 odd new subscribers, I hope you like the weekly missive! I decided to wait until Monday given a headache yesterday and a long weekend.
I’ve adapted the format slightly again. From now on there will be a permanent section on climate change since it comes up every week. COVID19 will also remain a semi-permanent section until the pandemic subsides (and the virus is now in serious trouble). I may decide to add topics that occur again and again to new sections - but all will remain around generally one theme - where are we going and what’s likely to happen?
As ever, the newsletter remains the same for paid and unpaid subscribers alike for now - though this may change. Readers are welcome to support it via a monthly or yearly subscription:
or if you choose not to, I’d just ask you share the newsletter with people by tweeting or otherwise telling other people about it! Much thanks!
Enjoy the reads!
Gavin
Reading list - the best stuff to read
🌏 Climate change
Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. This is a key part of the Biden infrastructure plan. Will it make a difference? (1,000 words/3 mins by Elizabeth Kolbert)
To help fund its plan, the Administration is proposing to eliminate fossil-fuel subsidies. Depending on who’s doing the accounting, these run anywhere from ten to more than fifty billion dollars a year. The President’s plan also includes an “Energy Efficiency and Clean Electricity Standard,” which would require utilities to produce a portion of their electricity from carbon-free sources.
Massachusetts passed a law to get to net zero by 2050.
The law sets emissions limits of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and 75 percent cuts by 2040 with interim limits every five years. To achieve those goals, the Bay State will add gigawatts of offshore wind power, spur cities and towns to adopt a net-zero building code, and set targets for electric vehicles, charging stations, and energy storage.
Read the press release on the Act. Read the Act here.
Calling certain disasters “natural” is silly when many are now man-made. This piece from February is great. Climate change is here now, and it is wreaking havoc. (1,200 words/4 mins by Elizabeth Kolbert)
Twenty years ago, crises like the Doe fire and Hurricane Laura could have been described as “natural disasters.” Thanks to climate change, this is no longer the case. Right around the time of Newsom’s press conference, the mercury in Death Valley hit 130°F, the highest temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth.
Nature has a good editorial on carbon reduction pledges.
🏛 Society - social platforms, media and conspiracy
A good read on the role Facebook plays in communities that often lack local media. (3,500 words/13 mins by Brandy Zadrozny)
Like other police departments throughout the country, Chippewa Township Police embraced Facebook for its ability to reach the community and aid in investigations, especially retail thefts. But Hermick never anticipated the headaches that might arise. The fake murderer-on-the-loose story was just the latest issue in what Hermick said was a larger "social media problem."
🇺🇸 United States - democracy
This is a great read on how electoral reform is impacting US politics - and how the Republicans are perplexed on what to do - including the last remaining Koch brother. (Listen to the audio). (2,000 words/8 mins by Jane Meyer)
Nick Surgey, the executive director of Documented, a progressive watchdog group that investigates corporate money in politics, told me it made sense that McConnell’s staffer was on the call, because the proposed legislation “poses a very real threat to McConnell’s source of power within the Republican Party, which has always been fund-raising.” Nonetheless, he said that the close coördination on messaging and tactics between the Republican leadership and technically nonpartisan outside-advocacy groups was “surprising to see.”
🏛 Society - anti-science
The trend towards anti-science is not a good one and Peter Hotez argues this needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. (1,000 words/3 mins by Peter Hotez)
The full antiscience agenda of the Republican Party has now gone beyond our national borders. In the summer of 2020, the language of the antiscience political right in America was front and center at antimask and antivaccine rallies in Berlin, London and Paris.
🤖 AI - Building the machines
Is the threat of AI really all it’s cracked up to be? (3,200 words/12 mins by Ted Chiang)
We’re a long way off from being able to create a single human-equivalent A.I., let alone billions of them. For the foreseeable future, the ongoing technological explosion will be driven by humans using previously invented tools to invent new ones; there won’t be a “last invention that man need ever make.”
Error-riddled data in AI. Interesting study. (500 words/2 mins by Karen Hao)
…the simpler models seemed to fare better on the corrected data than the more complicated models that are used by tech giants like Google for image recognition and assumed to be the best in the field. In other words, we may have an inflated sense of how great these complicated models are because of flawed testing data.
Filters are changing how young girls see themselves. (4,000 words/14 mins by Tate Ryan Mosley).
Researchers don’t yet understand the impact that sustained use of augmented reality may have, but they do know there are real risks—and with face filters, young girls are the ones taking that risk. They are subjects in an experiment that will show how the technology changes the way we form our identities, represent ourselves, and relate to others. And it’s all happening without much oversight.
💻 Technology - Hololens
What will these 120,000 headsets be used for? Training, apparently.
On Wednesday, the US Army formally moved forward with the largest ever government-related deal for headsets in the virtual and augmented reality sector: a 10-year agreement with Microsoft to provide 120,000 headsets "based" on the HoloLens line.
Reports by CNBC and Bloomberg point to a $21.9 billion value for this week's updated arrangement, following its initial announcement in November 2018.
From the US army:
The IVAS aggregates multiple technologies into an architecture that allows the Soldier to Fight, Rehearse, and Train using a single platform. The suite of capabilities leverages existing high-resolution night, thermal, and Soldier-borne sensors integrated into a unified Heads Up Display to provide the improved situational awareness, target engagement, and informed decision-making necessary to achieve overmatch against current and future adversaries. The system also leverages augmented reality and machine learning to enable a life-like mixed reality training environment so the CCF can rehearse before engaging any adversaries.
🦠 COVID-19
Vaccines are working. mRNA vaccines work particularly well it seems as was somewhat expected, real world.
The vaccine effectiveness following two doses was 90% — roughly in line with the 95% and 94% that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines showed, respectively, in the clinical trials that supported their emergency use authorizations
What does the future hold living with COVID-19 in the months and years ahead? I missed this excellent overview over the past few newsletters. (2,500 words/9 mins by Andrew Joseph and Helen Branswell)
Veteran coronavirus researcher Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa raised the idea that viral evolution could perhaps even play to our advantage. It’s possible, he said, that SARS-2 mutates in ways that actually weaken how sick it makes people, pushing it toward becoming a virus that causes colds for the vast majority.
“But right now,” Perlman cautioned, “that’s just a hope.”
The United States is entering a new phase of the pandemic. Although we’ve previously described the most devastating periods as “waves” and “surges,” the more proper metaphor now is a tornado: Some communities won’t see the storm, others will be well fortified against disaster, and the most at-risk places will be crushed. The virus has never hit all places equally, but the remarkable protection of the vaccines, combined with the new attributes of the variants, has created a situation where the pandemic will disappear, but only in some places. The pandemic is or will soon be over for a lot of people in well-resourced, heavily vaccinated communities. In places where vaccination rates are low and risk remains high, more people will join the 550,000 who have already died.
The fourth stage of the pandemic, Zeynep argues, will be different.
So it’s perfectly possible for a country as a whole to have herd immunity against a pathogen, but for outbreaks to happen among communities that have a lot of unvaccinated people among them. That’s happened in California, Michigan, and New York for measles among vaccine-resistant communities. In addition, this coronavirus is highly overdispersed. Infections occur in clumps. A single event can result in dozens or even hundreds of people being infected all at once in a super-spreader event.
Vaccinated and unvaccinated people are getting more lax.
…we still have to consider our collective risk, not just our risk as individuals. Carter stressed the importance of acknowledging how far we’ve come—not just how far we have left to go. “My message right now is ‘I’m so proud of all the sacrifices you’ve made already,’” he told me. “‘Just hold on a little longer.’”
See also:
Greek Tragedy Corner (a journey through Greek tragedy every week)
Next up is Orestes, in our journey through Euripides. This is worth watching as it explores the perennial theme of war.
Here’s a college production:
Documentary
Following on from John Oliver last week we are in search of a new documentary series. We had a look at the excellent three part series on Vienna by Simon Sebag Montefiore, along with his other three part series on Rome. Let us turn next to Istanbul, the city of the world’s desire. (59 mins)
Podcast(s)
Earlier we looked at an article in The New Yorker by Ted Chiang. He was also interviewed by Ezra Klein this week in a fascinating discussion of ethics and AI. (51 mins) It’s a wide ranging discussion and I encourage you to listen to all of it. I particularly liked the discussion on moral agency and contrasting animal rights with AI rights - and suffering.
I listened to several other podcasts but I’m only recommending the above this week.
Still in my tabs
Size of raindrops can help identify potentially habitable planets outside our solar system
When Did Life First Emerge in the Universe?
The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs Created the Amazon Rain Forest
Research confirms ingredient in household cleaner could improve fusion reactions