Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• How many wars has President Trump really ended?

  BBC Verify has taken a closer look at these conflicts and how much credit the president can take for ending them.

  1. Israel and Iran: "So what we have is more of a de facto ceasefire than an end to war"
  2. Pakistan and India: "The talks regarding cessation of military action were held directly between India and Pakistan under the existing channels established between both militaries"
  3. Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo: The text called for "respect for the ceasefire" agreed between Rwanda and DRC in August 2024. ... "There's still fighting between Congo and Rwanda - so that ceasefire has never really held,"
  4. Thailand and Cambodia: Thailand and Cambodia reached an agreement aimed at reducing tensions along their shared border.
  5. Armenia and Azerbaijan: "I think he gets good credit here"
  6. Egypt and Ethiopia: "There was no 'war' here for the president to end"
  7. Serbia and Kosovo: "Serbia and Kosovo haven't been fighting or firing at each other, so it's not a war to end,"

• Cats develop dementia in a similar way to humans

  Microscopy images of older cats which had previously shown symptoms of feline dementia revealed a build-up of amyloid-beta within the synapses - the junctions of brain cells. Synapses allow the flow of messages between brain cells, and losing these causes reduced memory and thinking abilities in humans with Alzheimer's.

• Jim Simons Tribute Event Honors His Lifelong Support for Math and Science

  Leaders in mathematics, science and philanthropy gathered on June 27, 2025, to remember the incredible contributions of Jim Simons and to inspire continued philanthropic support of basic research.

  Recordings of the scientific talks given at the event are available below and on YouTube.

• What AI Will Mean for Nuclear Deterrence

  The End of Mutual Assured Destruction?

  AI is no doubt a transformative technology, one that will strengthen the economic, political, and military foundations of state power. But the winner of the AI race will not necessarily enjoy unchallenged dominance over its major competitors. The power of nuclear weapons, the most significant invention of the last century, remains a major impediment to the bulldozing change brought by AI. As long as systems of nuclear deterrence remain in place, the economic and military advantages produced by AI will not allow states to fully impose their political preferences on one another. Consider that the economy of the United States is almost 15 times as large as that of Russia, and almost 1,000 times as large as that of North Korea, yet Washington struggles to get Moscow or Pyongyang to do what it wants, in large part because of their nuclear arsenals.

• Did Craigslist decimate newspapers? Legend meets reality.

  Also has a nice history of the craigslist website and Newmark's philanthropy efforts.

• Lying increases trust in science, study finds

  The study revealed that, while transparency about good news increases trust, transparency about bad news, such as conflicts of interest or failed experiments, decreases it.

  Therefore, one possible solution to the paradox, and a way to increase public trust, is to lie (which Hyde points out is unethical and ultimately unsustainable), by for example making sure bad news is hidden and that there is always only good news to report.

  Instead, he suggests that a better way forward would be to tackle the root cause of the problem, which he argues is the public overidealising science. People still overwhelmingly believe in the 'storybook image' of a scientist who makes no mistakes, which creates unrealistic expectations.

• Anna's Archive

  The largest truly open library in human history. We mirror Sci-Hub and LibGen. We scrape and open-source Z-Lib, DuXiu, and more. 35,324,931 books, 11,807,457 papers - preserved forever. All our code and data are completely open source