Newsletter 57
'Yeeting' rockets, immune memory and human extinction
Hi, I’m Gavin. This is my experimental newsletter that explores thinking - how we might think better and learn together as we do so.
I explore several key topics through the lens of several core themes: systems thinking, scenario planning, trends, and cross-disciplinary innovation. These often relate to key issues: climate change, pandemics, astronomy, physics, health, history, philosophy, culture, rocketry, conflict, the impact of technology on society and more (lol!). With a larger question behind it all: how do we progress and how do we progress better?
I hope you like where we go. (873 - nope - 891 of us now! - welcome all new arrivals, I’d love to get to 900!)
Gavin
PS: if you like the newsletter please share it! (And I always appreciate tweets about it too!) 🙏
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Reading list - the best stuff to read
(All the best reads I’ve come across, with excerpts, links and authors. Climate change and COVID always come first)
🌏 Climate change & biodiversity loss
A good summary just before the end of COP26. An agreement was reached tonight. (12 mins)
There is also a good piece on whether to be pessimistic or optimistic:
I lean firmly towards the pessimistic. Or as Peter Kalmus says “we are out of time”. COP has largely been a failure, arguably.
🦠 COVID-19
What will the side effects from a booster shot look like? (4 mins by Andrew Joseph)
Talaat said that it’s possible that, because the immune system is already primed to recognize and target the spike protein, some people could experience something similar after a third dose.
But Slifka offered another hypothesis, one where perhaps the third shot won’t be as bad, or won’t affect as many people. In the United States, second doses were given three to four weeks after the first dose, so the immune system was still in a heightened state from that first shot. Maybe, Slifka said, if people aren’t getting boosters until at least eight months later, their immune systems will have calmed, and the third shot won’t come with quite the kick the second shot did.
🇨🇳 China / Taiwan
Nathan Gardels takes a look at the new book by Cold War strategist Henry Kissinger, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and computer scientist Daniel Huttenlocher. I would agree with much of the sentiment - we are facing multifaceted risks that we’ve not encountered before (many of which are the focus of this - in the coming decade particularly. (4 mins by Nathan Gardels)
Distributed computation capacity so rapid and complex that it eludes human grasp scrambles all previous concepts of strategy that plot probable outcomes. Unlike the troops, bases, ships, planes, missile silos and warheads that could be located and counted in the past, dual-use networks can be deployed to launch contagious cyberattacks from deniable or untraceable addresses anywhere. And the more digital technologies are integrated into all aspects of life from energy grids to air traffic control to naval fleets and nuclear command and control, the more vulnerable to hostile disruption a society becomes.
Above all, inveigh the authors, “We will need to overcome, or at least moderate, the drive toward automaticity before catastrophe ensues. We must prevent AIs operating faster than human decision-makers from undertaking irretrievable actions with strategic consequences. Defenses will have to be automated without ceding the essential element of human control.”
There is no time to lose in today’s rapidly shifting geopolitical and technological environment. “If a crisis comes, it will be too late to begin discussing these issues,” warn the unusual, but apt, mix of coauthors in this seminal primer on the challenges that lay ahead.
China has been building full scale models of US ships for weapons tests, that move on rails. They’ve also been looking at E-3 Sentry planes which would be among the first targets in any conflict.
Satellite images revealing the new static and mobile targets were published yesterday by USNI News. You can and should check out all the imagery and complete analysis from H. I. Sutton and Sam LaGrone here. The images from satellite imagery company Maxar show the training targets on what appears to be a newly expanded range complex in the Taklamakan Desert in southwest Xinjiang province.
🔭 Space - telescopes
JWST’s launch is coming soon. I can’t wait. I hope Ariane 5 does the job. Here’s a good long read on the JWST. (15 mins by Dan Clery)
A month of critical maneuvers will follow as the telescope cruises deeper into space. “It’s 30 days of terror,” says Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), who was one of the project’s early architects. As soon as it’s in space, Webb will deploy its solar array and then, 2 hours later, its communications antenna. On day 3, as it passes the Moon, its huge sunshield will begin to unfurl. By day 11, the mirrors will start to unfold and swing into place. Finally, after 29 days, Webb’s boosters will make a final burn to put it in orbit around L2, a gravitational balance point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Unlike Hubble, Webb will be too far away to be repaired by visiting astronauts. It must work flawlessly straight out of the box.
🧠 Nature - extinction
What will happen when humans go extinct? (18 mins by Rob Dunn)
If we consider the last half billion years of evolution, one of the clearest conclusions is that what comes after a mass extinction does not necessarily match up with what came before. The trilobites were not followed by more trilobites, nor were the largest herbivorous dinosaurs succeeded by more enormous dinosaurs, or even similarly sized mammalian herbivores (a cow is no brontosaurus). The details of the past do not necessarily predict those of the future (or vice versa). A version of this sentiment has been called the fifth law of paleontology.
🌞 Energy - ammonia
Intriguing. (3 mins by Tatum Lyles Flick)
The scientists were excited to find that the addition of ammonia to a metal catalyst containing the platinum-like element ruthenium spontaneously produced nitrogen, which means that no added energy was required. Instead, this process can be harnessed to produce electricity, with protons and nitrogen gas as byproducts. In addition, the metal complex can be recycled through exposure to oxygen and used repeatedly, all a much cleaner process than using carbon-based fuels.
"We figured out that, not only are we making nitrogen, we are making it under conditions that are completely unprecedented," says Berry, who is the Lester McNall Professor of Chemistry and focuses his research efforts on transition metal chemistry. "To be able to complete the ammonia-to-nitrogen reaction under ambient conditions—and get energy—is a pretty big deal."
😵💫🚀 Rocketry - spin launching
Scott Manley takes a detailed look at the successful test this week of the SpinLaunch vehicle for “throwing” or “yeeting” satellites into orbit. It looks like it works and is scalable to the full size version that’s planned. It would make putting small payloads into LEO extremely cheap. And as Scott says: this type system would also work well on the Moon.
If I were China I’d be looking at how this could be adapted for firing weapons (not dissimilar to their FOBS system we looked at recently or indeed at SpaceX’s Starship being used for military purposes). (11 mins)
The SpinLaunch promo/concept video is here:
🧠 Humans - immune memory
This is fascinating and shows what we sometimes intuit can turn out to be not too far from reality. (4 mins by Esther Landhuis)
The research could have far-reaching implications. Describing an anatomical pathway that links “your emotional state all the way to the inflammation in the colon,” Medzhitov said, “that, to me, is probably the best demonstration available for psychosomatic control.”
The new findings also upend the common top-down view of the brain. “Most people tend to think, ‘We’re so smart, we decide what to do,’ and then we make our body do it,” Tracey said. “But that’s not how the nervous system works.” Instead, the brain receives and synthesizes information about changes in the body — an infection, a fever — and delivers a response.
Rolls’ work shows that “the brain is inseparable from the immune system,” said Tracey. “I think immunologists and neuroscientists both are going to be excited and surprised.”
A bonus piece on memory: explaining memory to different levels of difficulty (29 mins):
Philosophy Corner (a journey through thinking about thinking every week)
(A section that started with Greek Tragedy and moved to philosophy. Something to spark ideas).
Next up is a look at Gandhi. (45 mins)
Documentary
(A good thing to watch - serialised - so feel free to go back through past editions)
And we are on the final part of the Mayfair Set - which gives early clues on the politics that ultimately led to Brexit. (59 mins)
Podcast(s)
(The best stuff I’ve listened to, or been recommended by subscribers)
I really enjoyed this exploration of farming/ecology and sustainability. (23 mins)
Jay Rosen was on Ezra Klein this week and it’s well worth a listen. I’ve been reading Jay for at least 18 years and have met him a couple of times and had good chats. (76 mins)
I will also add: his vision for a transparent news organisation (which he pitches at 54 mins) is something myself and newsletter subscriber and TV presenter Mark Coughlan started working on in 2009 over at TheStory.ie (and some of these ideas were implemented inside Storyful too — such as “show your work”). These criteria were in short order:
Have a viewpoint and say what it is: transparency is good for democracy (so FOI is good, use it)
High standards of sourcing and verification (documents are great for this)
Incorporate feedback from comments into blog posts (we got stories from readers and corrected or changes stories too based on feedback)
Transparency around income and expenditure
These all build trust in your journalism output.
Why Energy Storage Is the Future of the Grid (with Malta CEO Ramya Swaminathan) (50 mins)
Longtime newsletter subscriber Anne Marie Quilligan was on The Explainer to talk about reduced timetables in schools for Traveller children - and the emergency nature of the issue.
Still in my tabs
(Or stuff I haven’t read yet, but looks promising)
The Popularity of E-Bikes Isn’t Slowing Down
This tech millionaire went from covid trial funder to misinformation superspreader
Largest psilocybin trial finds the psychedelic is effective in treating serious depression
Yuval Noah Harari Believes This Simple Story Can Save the Planet
Can lucid dreaming help us understand consciousness?
Sequencing whole genomes helps diagnose far more rare diseases, study shows
Norwegian Undersea Surveillance Network Had Its Cables Mysteriously Cut
An 'earthgrazer' flew 'a whopping 186 miles' over two states, then vanished, NASA says
Latest Images Of Russia’s Checkmate Fighter Shows Us Just How Big It Really Is (Updated)
‘Terrifying for American democracy’: is Trump planning for a 2024 coup?
Cats found to track owner's movements even when they cannot see them
End note
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