Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• 'Poverty, By America' shows how the rest of us benefit by keeping others poor

  NPR Book Review

  Desmond lays out public policies, laws, and tax breaks to show how the U.S. actually spends big on social programs - second only to France! - but gives the most to those who need it the least. Welfare dependency? Yes indeed, for the richer half.
  ...
  One example among many he offers: In 2020, the federal government spent more than $193 billion on subsidies for homeowners - "most families who enjoy this benefit have six-figure incomes and are white" - but just $53 billion on direct housing assistance for low-income families.

  With a free account, you can read more in The New York Times Magazine.

• U.S. border officials have caught more people with eggs than fentanyl this year

  Egg Farmers of Canada policy chair Bruce Muirhead explains why egg smuggling into the U.S. is rising and how Canada can leverage its production in the trade war

  In the first two months of 2025, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized fentanyl on 134 occasions, down from 197 seizures in the same time frame in 2024. Meanwhile, CBP intercepted egg products on 3,254 occasions this January and February, compared to 1,508 occasions in the first two months of 2024.

• Anandamide: Bliss Molecule for Happiness & Mental Balance

  Anandamide is a neurotransmitter that binds to cannabinoid receptors in the brain and body, stimulating a sense of happiness and mental wellness.

  Certain countries are judged to have higher rates of happiness than others. It now looks as if this may be due in part to genes that affect the level of anandamide.

  Researchers have found a direct correlation between the presence of a gene variant (rs324420) that affects anandamide levels and the level of happiness.

  Countries where citizens generally rate themselves as "very happy" have a higher instance of this gene.

  This gene variant increases anandamide by decreasing FAAH, the enzyme that destroys anandamide.

• What's the deal with the gut-brain connection?

  It affects your mood, your sleep, even your motivation to exercise. There's convincing evidence that it's the starting point for Parkinson's disease and could be responsible for long COVID's cognitive effects. And it sits about 2 feet below your brain.
  ...
  Through direct signals from the vagus nerve, connects the brain and the gut, as well as through molecules secreted into the bloodstream from our gut microbes and immune cells that traffic from the gut to the rest of the body, our brains and our digestive tracts are in constant communication. And when that communication goes off the rails, diseases and disorders can result.

• What Ketamine Does to the Human Brain

  Excessive use of the drug can make anyone feel like they rule the world.

  Musk has said he uses ketamine regularly, so for the past couple of years, public speculation has persisted about how much he takes, whether he's currently high, or how it might affect his behavior. Last year, Musk told CNN's Don Lemon that he has a ketamine prescription and uses the drug roughly every other week to help with depression symptoms. When Lemon asked if Musk ever abused ketamine, Musk replied, "I don't think so. If you use too much ketamine you can't really get work done," then said that investors in his companies should want him to keep up his drug regimen. Not everyone is convinced. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Musk also takes the drug recreationally, and in 2023, Ronan Farrow reported in The New Yorker that Musk's "associates" worried that ketamine, "alongside his isolation and his increasingly embattled relationship with the press, might contribute to his tendency to make chaotic and impulsive statements and decisions."

• Ethically sourced “spare” human bodies could revolutionize medicine

  Human “bodyoids” could reduce animal testing, improve drug development, and alleviate organ shortages.

  There are still many technical roadblocks to achieving this vision, but we have reason to expect that bodyoids could radically transform biomedical research by addressing critical limitations in the current models of research, drug development, and medicine. Among many other benefits, they would offer an almost unlimited source of organs, tissues, and cells for use in transplantation.

• Daniel Kahneman, Israeli-American Nobel Prize winner, died last year by assisted suicide

  "I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous," he wrote in an email.

  "I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man," he said. "But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am ninety years old. It is time to go."

  Also in the Wall Street Journal which requires a subscription, The Last Decision by the World's Leading Thinker on Decisions.

• Why are so many Israeli Jews spying for Iran?

  According to Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, Maman is one of 39 Israelis arrested in the past year on suspicion of spying for Iran. One of their officials told me that the Iranians had turned hundreds of Israelis since the end of 2022. These individuals, who were recruited via social-media platforms or during travels to Turkey or Azerbaijan, come from diverse backgrounds: Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, young and old, male and female.
  ...
  Yoram Peri, a professor emeritus of Israel studies at the University of Maryland, told me that "Israeli society is sliding into a dangerous state of implosion." Peri believes that Netanyahu's attempts to nobble the judiciary and control the media have contributed to the "deterioration of the old traditional institutions" and a general decline in respect for the law. "No wonder that in such a chaotic reality, more and more Israelis have less and less inhibitions and are ready to break the taboo that you don't betray your country," he said.

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Jon Stewart Takedown of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency

  Jon Stewart Accidentally Slices His Hand.

  "How about we just take $3 billion in subsidies we give to oil and gas companies that turn billions in profits," Stewart said. "How long did that take? Oh, wait! How about we just close down the carried interest loophole on hedge funds? That's $1.3 billion a year. Or how about we stop the $2 trillion dollars we've given to defense contractors to build a fighter jet that blows, when everyone knows the next war is going to be fought with drones and blockchains, whatever that is! Holy shit! I can't believe it! I just saved us billions of dollars in 11 seconds!"

• Jim Simons; Life, Legacy and 5 Guiding Principles

  Simons Foundation co-founder Jim Simons - an award-winning mathematician and widely regarded as the father of modern quantitative investing - led an extraordinary life, championing new ideas and ways of thinking as a mathematician, an investor and a philanthropist. On May 10, 2024, Simons died at the age of 86, leaving behind an unparalleled legacy.

A more interesting insight to the man is American Institute of Physics - Oral History Interview (2020).

And to enjoy some of what he's left behind, check out Simons Presents Friday monthly discussions.

• New blood test detects early pancreatic cancer with 85% accuracy

  A new blood test may help detect pancreatic cancer in its early stages with up to 97% accuracy, according to a recent study. This test looks for specific genetic markers released by pancreatic cancer cells, offering hope for earlier detection and better survival rates.

• FDA approves blood test for colorectal cancer screening among average-risk adults

  The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the company Guardant Health's Shield blood test for colorectal cancer screening in adults, 45 and older, who are at average risk for the disease.

  "The test, which has an accuracy rate for colon cancer detection similar to stool tests used for early detection of cancer, could offer an alternative for patients who may otherwise decline current screening options," Grady said in the news release.
  ...
  The test was found to have around 83% sensitivity and 90% specificity in a study, which included nearly 8,000 people, published in March in the New England Journal of Medicine. Sensitivity refers to a test's ability to accurately identify people with disease, designating them as positive. Specificity refers to its ability to accurately designate people without a disease as negative.

• The danger of relying on OpenAI's Deep Research

  Economists are in raptures, but they should be careful.

  Should you shell out $200 a month for Deep Research? Mr Cowen has hyped fads in the past, as he did with Web3 and Clubhouse, a once-popular social-media network. On the other hand, if Deep Research approximates a form of artificial superintelligence, as many believe, then $2,400 a year is the greatest bargain in the history of the world. To help you decide, your columnist has kicked the tyres of the new model. How good a research assistant is Deep Research, for economists and others?

• There Is No AI Revolution

  Ed Zitron

  Where is the money that this supposedly revolutionary, world-changing industry is making, and will make?

  The answer is simple: I do not believe it exists. Generative AI lacks the basic unit economics, product-market fit, or market penetration associated with any meaningful software boom, and outside of OpenAI, the industry may be pathetically, hopelessly small, all while providing few meaningful business returns and constantly losing money.

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• How exercise may be the 'most potent medical intervention ever known'

  PBS News Hour, Audio and Transcript

  And when it's time for those proteins to be renewed, it helps. It's called the heat shock response. And this was something that we saw changed across multiple tissues, across all the tissues, as you mentioned, lungs, skeletal muscle, not just the ones that you might expect. We would expect perhaps skeletal muscle and heart, for sure.

  But we were seeing changes in the kidney, in the adrenal gland, in the intestine, in the brain. And I think that begins to get at how exercise is just such a remarkable intervention, essentially helping with, for example, reducing the risk of heart disease by 50 percent, reducing the list of many cancers by 50 percent and more, reducing the risk of back pain.

• Paul Krugman on Leaving the New York Times

  The paper wanted to take away his newsletter or make him write less frequently, he says.

  Of his former employer, he said, "I'm sure they were sorry to lose me. I never had the sense that they were trying to push me out. But they were exerting a very heavy hand on what went out under my name."

  You can continue to read Krugman columns at: Paul Krugman on substack.

• The Tech Oligarchy Arrives

  Donald Trump's inauguration signaled a new alliance-for now - with some of the world's wealthiest men.

  Even as Silicon Valley elites try to ingratiate themselves with the incoming president, some of Trump's populist supporters are murmuring that the emerging tech oligarchy is diluting the purity of the MAGA base. Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Trump who has clashed in recent weeks with Musk over immigration policy, has fashioned himself as the field general for a fight against the tech bros and their outsize influence on a president eager to cut deals.

  "He's got them on display as 'I kicked their ass.' I'm stunned that these nerds don't get anything to be up there," Bannon told us last week, referring to the tech leaders appearing in prime camera position at Trump's inauguration. "It's like walking into Teddy Roosevelt's lodge and seeing the mounted heads of all the big game he shot."

• AI Is Too Unpredictable to Behave According to Human Goals

  AI "alignment" is a buzzword, not a feasible safety goal.

  My proof suggests that "adequately aligned" LLM behavior can only be achieved in the same ways we do this with human beings: through police, military and social practices that incentivize "aligned" behavior, deter "misaligned" behavior and realign those who misbehave. My paper should thus be sobering. It shows that the real problem in developing safe AI isn't just the AI-it's us. Researchers, legislators and the public may be seduced into falsely believing that "safe, interpretable, aligned" LLMs are within reach when these things can never be achieved.

• Polymathic: Advancing Science through Multi-Disciplinary AI

  To usher in a new class of machine learning for scientific data, building models that can leverage shared concepts across disciplines. We aim to develop, train, and release such foundation models for use by researchers worldwide.

• Fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point

  Last year, 10,000 sham papers had to be retracted by academic journals, but experts think this is just the tip of the iceberg.

• Music streams hit nearly 5 trillion in 2024.

  Women pop performers lead the charge in the US

  The shift is led by six women who dominated pop's streams in the U.S.:

  1. Taylor Swift with 12.8 billion streams
  2. Billie Eilish with 4.46 billion
  3. Sabrina Carpenter with 3.71 billion
  4. Ariana Grande with 3.12 billion
  5. Olivia Rodrigo with 2.76 billion
  6. Chappell Roan with 2.49 billion
• The term 'antisemitism' is being weaponised and stripped of meaning - and that's incredibly dangerous

  Rachel Shabi in The Guardian

  Israel uses it to silence critics of its Gaza war while the right uses it to attack opponents. Meanwhile, the issue itself goes unaddressed.
  ...
  If antisemitism is so blatantly wielded as a political weapon, it creates the impression of a fundamental unseriousness about the subject. Dedicating endless column inches to campus protests over Gaza is shifting the spotlight, not just away from the devastation in the Palestinian strip, but away from the dangerous antisemitism coming from the far right.-

• Should I Answer?

  Search for spam and telemarketing phone numbers.

  The Should I Answer app uses a unique database of (almost) all spam and telemarketing calls ever made. It consists of numbers reported to Do Not Call Registry, numbers reported to Federal Communication Commission and of all community reviews from our users, written either from the Should I Answer App and/or from our website. The last but not least source of information are the anonymous statistics combined from unknown numbers reports and their usage, collected from the users of our applications and from our pages where people search for some specific number.
  ...
  

• Bell Labs marks 100th birthday as iconic N.J. company prepares for huge move

  Sad. So many great memories of working (and playing) there.

  The sprawling Murray Hill campus on Mountain Avenue was a bustling center for innovation in suburban Union County for decades. It served as the headquarters for a 90-year-old company whose researchers helped earn 10 Nobel Prizes, five Turing Awards for computer science breakthroughs and more than 20,000 patents.
  ...
  Bell Labs' new headquarters will be located at the HELIX innovation center in New Brunswick. Originally known as "The Hub," the HELIX innovation center will be a large complex in the city's downtown on the site of the former Ferren Mall.

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• The Next Great Leap in AI Is Behind Schedule and Crazy Expensive

  OpenAI's new artificial-intelligence project is behind schedule and running up huge bills. It isn't clear when-or if-it'll work. There may not be enough data in the world to make it smart enough.
  ...
  OpenAI has conducted at least two large training runs, each of which entails months of crunching huge amounts of data, with the goal of making Orion smarter. Each time, new problems arose and the software fell short of the results researchers were hoping for, people close to the project say.

• Exercise for Brain Health: Wendy Suzuki's Insights
  • Exercise stimulates the release of chemicals that promote the growth and survival of brain cells, enhancing cognitive abilities such as memory, attention, and problem-solving.
  • Regular physical activity decreases chronic inflammation in the brain, a significant contributing factor to neurodegenerative diseases.
  • Exercise strengthens the connections between brain cells, facilitating faster communication and increasing the brain's capacity for learning and adaptation.
  • Exercise elevates BDNF levels, a protein that promotes the growth and development of new neurons, crucial for maintaining cognitive function.
• How Intellectuals Found God

  Almost 150 years after Nietzsche said 'God is dead,' some of our most important thinkers are getting religion.
  UGH
  

• Science and Religious Dogmatism

  Today's leading historians of science have "debunked" the notion that religious dogmatism and science were largely in conflict in Western history: conflict was rare and inconsequential, the relationship between religion and science was constructive overall. This view stands in sharp contrast to that of a group of economists, who are beginning to report empirical evidence suggesting pervasive conflict, either in the present or during various historical settings. Who is right? This article provides quantitative evidence--from the continental level down to the personal one--suggesting that religious dogmatism has been indeed detrimental to science on balance.

• Manufacturing is a war now

  And the democracies are losing.

  In other words, neither political party in America has yet grasped the nature or the magnitude of the challenge posed by China's manufacturing might, or the nature of the steps needed to respond. Trump is still dreaming the same simple protectionist dreams he thought of back in the 1990s, while his progressive opponents think of reindustrialization as a giant make-work program. Meanwhile, America's allies overseas seem even less capable of averting their decline.

  The manufacturing war is being lost, and we urgently need to turn things around.

• Chinese scientists have no choice but to leave US, top mathematician says

  He said many ethnic Chinese students had been driven away from the US by discrimination from the government, including accusations of misusing American research funds for China's benefit.
  ...
  "This exodus is unfortunate for the US as it could diminish its research capabilities. For China, the return of these scientists means it is gaining top talent, but it also results in weakened ties with the US and a loss of first-hand knowledge of advanced technologies."

• How Daniel Nigro's Belief in Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan Led to the 'Year of Vindication'

  The man behind two of my favorite musical artists this year.

  Nigro, who has been named Variety Hitmakers Producer of the Year, has spent the past five years building out the sound of pop's biggest breakthroughs, first with Olivia Rodrigo's debut, "Sour," in 2021 and its tearjerker lead single, "Drivers License," which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and stayed there for eight weeks). Then came Roan, who built a framework for her rocket ride to superstardom as an opener on Rodrigo's "Sour" tour in 2022, followed by a massive word-of-mouth groundswell that culminated in six songs from her debut, "The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess," charting. Her seventh song to do so, "Good Luck, Babe!," is now nominated in top categories at the 2025 Grammy Awards, and Roan is up for best new artist, an award Rodrigo won in 2022.

• Post Open

  Post-Open is a successor to Open Source, currently under construction. It includes payment for developers, easier compliance for companies, support for all software from one entity, better security, and more. Read this this for an introduction.

• Take the Habit or Ritual Quiz

  Are you turning mundane moments into meaningful ones?

  Rituals hold the power to turn the most ordinary acts into the most memorable moments. We use them to increase productivity, pleasure, and purpose in our lives, sometimes without even realizing it. This short quiz will assess where you're already using rituals, and where you may be missing opportunities to add them to your life. We'll ask you questions about three different places that rituals are at play: Rituals for Yourself, Rituals in Your Relationships, and Rituals at Work and in the World.

• Our World in Data

  Research and data to make progress against the world's largest problems.
  13,220 charts across 120 topics -- All free: open access and open source
  

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• A Nobel-Prize Winner and Astrophysicist on the Origins of Life

  Mario and Jack share five key insights from their new book, Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest for Cosmic Life

  The fact that there may be as many as a billion such planets in the Milky Way alone has led many people to assume that extrasolar planets must exist that harbor life. This conclusion, however, is at best premature. We have not discovered any life outside of the Earth, so we have no idea what the probability for life is to emerge on a planet, even if conditions are ideal. In fact, the latest findings from origin-of-life research suggest that separate geochemical scenarios need to be linked together precisely in the right sequence to produce the building blocks of life in the same place at the same time.

• Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn't have a coherent understanding of the world

  Researchers show that even the best-performing large language models don't form a true model of the world and its rules, and can thus fail unexpectedly on similar tasks.

• Holocaust scholar says Israel has committed genocide in Gaza

  Holocaust and genocide scholar Omer Bartov has changed his mind about the war in Gaza.
  He now believes Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians.
  

• Muslims Who Voted for Trump Upset by His Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks

  How could they be so naive?

  U.S. Muslim leaders who supported Republican Donald Trump to protest against the Biden administration's support for Israel's war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon have been deeply disappointed by his cabinet picks, they tell Reuters.

  Also see Some Arab Americans who voted for Trump are concerned about his picks for key positions.

• Democrats Should Have Listened to Bernie Sanders, Historians Say

  Sanders, who is registered as an independent but caucuses with the Democrats, identifies as a democratic socialist and has been an outspoken critic of centrist Democratic policies, pushing for a more radical shift to the left.
  ...
  The economy, and inflation in particular, was crucial for voters this election, and in the run-up many polls showed that Trump was considered a better economic candidate than Harris. Exit polls showed that the majority of working-class voters backed Trump, who also overperformed among Hispanic voters.

• Insights from Ray Dalio's Big Cycle Framework

  Navigating Asymmetric Risks in Unstable Times

  Dalio's perspective is historical and cyclical: he believes that societal patterns repeat across centuries, and he identifies several warning signs based on historical precedents. These include increasing political weaponization of legal systems, the rise of private militias, escalating protests, and the intensification of class or group demonization, which often signals impending internal conflict. He references examples from past societies, such as the Nazi rise to power, the Roman Republic's fall, and the Weimar Republic's collapse, to underscore how seemingly stable systems can break down under certain pressures.

  Also see We Will Soon Find Out :

  • When the causes that people are fighting for become more important to them than the system, the system is in jeopardy.
  • Late in Stage 5 it is common for the legal and police systems to be used as political weapons by those who can control them.
  • Late in Stage 5 there are increasing numbers of protests that become increasingly violent.
  • People dying in the fighting is the marker that almost certainly signifies the progression to the next and more violent civil war stage, which will continue until the winners and losers are clearly determined.
  • During times of increased hardship and conflict there is an increased inclination to look at people in stereotypical ways as members of one or more classes and to look at these classes as either being enemies or allies.
  • Crossing the line from Stage 5 (when there are very bad financial conditions and intense internal and external conflict exist) to Stage 6 (when there is civil war) occurs when the system for resolving disagreements goes from working to not working.

• Put your usernames and passwords in your will

  Digital end of life planning saves your loved ones from a little extra anguish.

  • Ensuring family members can unlock your smartphone or computer in case of emergency;
  • Maintain a list of your subscriptions, user IDs and passwords;
  • Consider putting those details in a document intended to be made available when your life ends;
  • Use a service that allows you to designate someone to have access to your smartphone and other accounts once your time on Earth ends.

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• This AI Pioneer Thinks AI Is Dumber Than a Cat

  Yann LeCun, NYU professor and Meta Platforms AI guru.

  At the same time, he is convinced that today's AIs aren't, in any meaningful sense, intelligent-and that many others in the field, especially at AI startups, are ready to extrapolate its recent development in ways that he finds ridiculous.
  ...
  LeCun thinks that the problem with today's AI systems is how they are designed, not their scale. No matter how many GPUs tech giants cram into data centers around the world, he says, today's AIs aren't going to get us artificial general intelligence.
  His bet is that research on AIs that work in a fundamentally different way will set us on a path to human-level intelligence. These hypothetical future AIs could take many forms, but work being done at FAIR to digest video from the real world is among the projects that currently excite LeCun. The idea is to create models that learn in a way that's analogous to how a baby animal does, by building a world model from the visual information it takes in.

  Also see Rage against the machine.

  For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think.
  To think is to resist – something no machine does.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates's Courage

  Peter Beinart interviews Ta-Nehisi Coates about his book The Message.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates's refusal to lie about what he saw in the West Bank, first to go there right? Because so many people, so many celebrated people in American public life, choose not to go there. Because they know, at some level, that if they went there, then they would be forced to carry around the secret that they don't want to have to face the consequences of exposing. He purposely went to see it, and then decided to write about what he had seen.
  ...
  And so, perhaps the message of Camus is that actually the deepest form of community that you have is when you're actually willing to say the things that you believe are true, even if that puts you in community with people who you don't know, who you can't see, who certainly don't have the power and the cultural status, to celebrate you in the way that people in power do.

• What populists don't understand about tariffs (but economists do)

  Costs of tariffs. Tariffs are a tax on imports, and they will raise prices for households and, crucially, for businesses that rely on imported inputs to make their products. Not only will prices rise for the imported products, so will the prices of goods produced at home that compete with imports. Simply put, protectionism reduces the gains from trade; we choose to pay more than necessary for some goods (imports and their domestic substitutes) instead of focusing on those goods that we produce more efficiently than foreigners.
  ...
  Economists have long known that tariffs on imports not only reduce the demand for imports, they also discourage exports. This effect arises because as more domestic resources are used to produce goods that were previously imported, those resources are drawn away from export industries.

• Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping?

  Male flight describes a similar phenomenon when large numbers of females enter a profession, group, hobby or industry-the men leave. That industry is then devalued.

• OpenBB: AI-powered research and analytics workspace

  Integrate, visualize, and analyze data. All in one place.
  Free for individuals. Optimized for teams.

  Read more about it at, Fintech OpenBB aims to be more than an 'open source Bloomberg Terminal'.

• Fly brain breakthrough 'huge leap' to unlock human mind

  Now for the first time scientists researching the brain of a fly have identified the position, shape and connections of every single one of its 130,000 cells and 50 million connections.
  ...
  We have a million times as many brain cells, or neurons, than the fruit fly which was studied.
  ...
  Developing a computer the size of a poppy seed capable of all these tasks is way beyond the ability of modern science.

• Long COVID and chronic fatigue

  "A growing body of research suggests that both long COVID and chronic fatigue are post-viral syndromes that result in chronic, low-grade inflammation that can damage healthy tissue and, in some cases, the production of auto-antibodies that can attack it."

• A Physicist Reveals Why You Should Run in The Rain

  More specifically, does the amount of water that hits you depend on your speed? And is there an ideal speed that minimises the total water you encounter on your way from point A to point B?
  ...
  To sum it all up: it's a good idea to lean forward and move quickly when you're caught in the rain. But careful: leaning forward increases Sh (horizontal surface area of the individual). To really stay drier, you'll need to increase your speed enough to compensate for this.

• Terrorism Works, for its Supporters

  We theorize that terrorism can work, but for its supporters rather than for the terrorists themselves. Because supporters are willing to contribute resources to a terrorist organization, thereby increasing the organization's ability to launch attacks, this can coerce the targeted government to revise its policies in accordance with the supporters' preferences. Targeted governments may respond with concessions in order to erode support and thereby render the terrorists easier to defeat. Support can be rational even when supporters' ideal policies are closer to those of the government than to those of the terrorists.

• Chappell Roan Is a Pop Supernova

  Nothing About It Has Been Easy
  Her joyful pop anthems have connected with a massive audience, but getting here involved long odds and a lot of heartache. And fame is freaking her out a bit.

Some items related to human brain functioning.

• BDNF Basics: 7 Ways to Train Your Brain

  You may lose muscle mass as you age, but you don't have to lose cognitive function.

  One of those mechanisms that's been repeatedly identified as an important component of a healthy brain is brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is a protein that promotes brain function and encourages the growth of new neurons. It's basically like gas in the engine of the brain. And when you're running on empty, the right kind of exercise can trigger the production of more fuel, or in this case, BDNF.

  1. Voluntary exercise has been shown to elicit a bigger increase in BDNF and other growth factors.
  2. The stationary bike is fine, but it's also safe. You'll use more of your brain and generate more BDNF with an activity that requires some level of risk, like rock climbing or stand-up paddleboarding.
  3. Researchers have found that daily exercise is more effective than less frequent bouts of activity, especially in the beginning of a fitness program.
  4. Studies have proven you can get more bang for your buck when it comes to BDNF and brain health by incorporating intervals into your training.
  5. In a study done by William Greenough at the University of Illinois, rats that practiced complex motor skills produced more BDNF than rats that only performed aerobic exercise on a wheel.
  6. Social interaction can stimulate the brain and is often considered one of the best motivators in maintaining an active lifestyle.
  7. While more studies are needed to confirm a link between the outdoors and BDNF levels, we do know the natural environment has an impact on physical activity and the brain. Sunshine and vitamin D may contribute to higher levels of BDNF

• Continuous improvement: Intertwining mind and body in athletic expertise

  This book sheds light on a phenomenon of continuous improvement by presenting a theory which demonstrates how mindfully attending to the body allows the skilled performer to address the various 'crises' (e.g. injury, attrition of habits induced by ageing) that confront the embodied subject and to respond flexibly in dynamically unfolding competitive environments. It explains how athletes like Roger Federer, Tom Brady, and Serena Williams are capable both of moments of exquisite brilliance and of sustaining such excellence over a prolonged period.

• Why do we crumble under pressure?

  Study links this phenomenon to the brain region that controls movement.

  Experiments in monkeys reveal that 'choking' under pressure is linked to a drop in activity in the neurons that prepare for movement.

• Part of brain network much bigger in people with depression, scientists find

  Now researchers say that in people with depression, a larger part of the brain is involved in the network that controls attention to rewards and threats than in those without depression.

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Have economists gone out of fashion in Washington?

  The rise of the Yale Law School of Economics seems to say more about the political winds of our times and the declining popularity of economists and their ideas than anything. Free-market policies -- sometimes called "neoliberalism" -- are unpopular on both sides of the political aisle right now. Many blame it for widening inequality, the loss of manufacturing jobs and a host of related social ills. "I don't think a lot of economists would call themselves neoliberal, but a lot of ideas in economics do seem consistent with it," Schrager says.

• To Sleep, Perchance Not Very Well, by Taking Melatonin

  While taking it can be timed to help overcome jet lag, melatonin is no good for chronic sleeplessness.

  "There's not enough strong evidence on the effectiveness or safety of melatonin supplementation for chronic insomnia to recommend its use," according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. In addition, neither the American Academy of Sleep Medicine nor the American College of Physicians endorses the use of melatonin to treat insomnia.

• USA Facts

  Steve Ballmer, founder

  No one at USAFacts is trying to convince you of anything. The only opinion we have is that government data should be easier to access. Our entire mission is to provide you with facts about the United States that are rooted in data. We believe once you have the solid, unbiased numbers behind the issues you can make up your own mind.

• Fight Health Insurance

  Generate a Health Insurance Appeal with AI

  At Totally Legit Co, we specialize in helping you fight health insurance denial effectively and efficiently. The first step involves scanning your denial letter. This can be done through optical character recognition (OCR) either on your device/phone (recommended for increased privacy) or on our servers (more accurate). OCR makes the text understandable to machines, allowing our generative AI model to produce potential appeals for you to choose from.

• Smart Goose Deterrent System

  To outsmart geese, we built a system that uses motion detection, Image Recognition, and AI to detect geese and people. If it finds geese, it activates sprinklers. If it finds people or nothing of interest, it disables sprinklers.

• 'Femininomenon' Chappell Roan inspires devotion on UK tour

  The latest pop music phenomenon.

• Cursor is ChatGPT for coding

  -- now anyone can make an app in minutes

Some items related to LLM limits, uses and AI robots.

• AI Lacks Independent Learning, Poses No Existential Threat

  Summary: New research reveals that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT cannot learn independently or acquire new skills without explicit instructions, making them predictable and controllable. The study dispels fears of these models developing complex reasoning abilities, emphasizing that while LLMs can generate sophisticated language, they are unlikely to pose existential threats. However, the potential misuse of AI, such as generating fake news, still requires attention.

• Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art

  To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence.

  Real paintings bear the mark of an enormous number of decisions. By comparison, a person using a text-to-image program like dall-e enters a prompt such as "A knight in a suit of armor fights a fire-breathing dragon," and lets the program do the rest. (The newest version of dall-e accepts prompts of up to four thousand characters-hundreds of words, but not enough to describe every detail of a scene.) Most of the choices in the resulting image have to be borrowed from similar paintings found online; the image might be exquisitely rendered, but the person entering the prompt can't claim credit for that.
  ...
  What I'm saying is that art requires making choices at every scale; the countless small-scale choices made during implementation are just as important to the final product as the few large-scale choices made during the conception. It is a mistake to equate "large-scale" with "important" when it comes to the choices made when creating art; the interrelationship between the large scale and the small scale is where the artistry lies.

  For a negative take on the above see X/Twitter Séb Krier Post.

• Ways to think about AGI

  How do we think about a fundamentally unknown and unknowable risk, when the experts agree only that they have no idea? Benedict Evans

  Serious AI scientists who previously thought AGI was probably decades away now suggest that it might be much closer. At the extreme, the so-called 'doomers' argue there is a real risk of AGI emerging spontaneously from current research and that this could be a threat to humanity, and calling for urgent government action. Some of this comes from self-interested companies seeking barriers to competition ('this is very dangerous and we are building it as fast as possible, but don't let anyone else do it'), but plenty of it is sincere.
  ...
  They don't know, either way, because we don't have a coherent theoretical model of what general intelligence really is, nor why people seem to be better at it than dogs, nor how exactly people or dogs are different to crows or indeed octopuses. Equally, we don't know why LLMs seem to work so well, and we don't know how much they can improve. We know, at a basic and mechanical level, about neurons and tokens, but we don't know why they work. We have many theories for parts of these, but we don't know the system. Absent an appeal to religion, we don't know of any reason why AGI cannot be created (it doesn't appear to violate any law of physics), but we don't know how to create it or what it is, except as a concept.

• Google DeepMind develops a 'solidly amateur' table tennis robot

  Check out the videos.

  During testing, the table tennis bot was able to beat all of the beginner-level players it faced. With intermediate players, the robot won 55% of matches. It's not ready to take on pros, however. The robot lost every time it faced an advanced player. All told, the system won 45% of the 29 games it played.

• Fully-automatic robot dentist performs world's first human procedure

  The system, built by Boston company Perceptive, uses a hand-held 3D volumetric scanner, which builds a detailed 3D model of the mouth, including the teeth, gums and even nerves under the tooth surface, using optical coherence tomography, or OCT.

  This cuts harmful X-Ray radiation out of the process, as OCT uses nothing more than light beams to build its volumetric models, which come out at high resolution, with cavities automatically detected at an accuracy rate around 90%.

  At this point, the (human) dentist and patient can discuss what needs doing - but once those decisions are made, the robotic dental surgeon takes over. It plans out the operation, then jolly well goes ahead and does it.

  Check out the videos at the above url.

• Profound: AI Search Optimization

  We help brands monitor, understand, and optimize visibility across all major LLM Platforms

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Will the recent return of inequality outweigh its long-term decline?

  Why is social inequality increasing in the 21st Century?

  In the long run, is inequality rising?

  Daniel Waldenström. When we look back over the whole of the last century, the answer is no. With the introduction of democracy, redistribution, the shocks of wars and other economic crises, the 20th Century has been an era of strong equalisation in western societies. However, if we consider the last four decades there is more of a debate with larger differences across countries. The 80s were a global low in inequality reduction. But since then there has only been a mild increase in most European countries with a larger increase in the United States.

• Netanyahu's ceasefire doublespeak: Dovish with U.S., hawkish with negotiators

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Monday that he's committed to getting a Gaza hostage and ceasefire agreement, but Israeli officials say he has refused to give his own negotiators enough space to make a deal.

• Israeli settlers are seizing Palestinian land under cover of war - they hope permanently

  Last week, Israel's domestic intelligence chief Ronen Bar wrote to ministers warning that Jewish extremists in the West Bank were carrying out acts of "terror" against Palestinians and causing "indescribable damage" to the country.
  ...
  Extremists in Israel's government boast that these changes will prevent an independent Palestinian state from ever being created.

• Exclusive: the papers that most heavily cite retracted studies

  Data from giant project show how withdrawn research propagates through the literature.

• A Test for Life Versus Non-Life

  In a new book, physicist Sara Walker argues that assembly theory can explain what life is, and even help scientists create new forms of it.

  Assembly theory, as they call it, looks at everything in the universe in terms of how it was assembled from smaller parts. Life, the scientists argue, emerges when the universe hits on a way to make exceptionally intricate things.
  ...
  The scientists suggested that the cutoff of 15 they discovered in their experiments might be evidence of a threshold for life. Ordinary chemistry could assemble molecules only through a limited number of steps, whereas life could carry it much further.
  ...
  But some biologists criticized the paper's sweeping claims and obscure language. "How did this nonsense get past peer review?" Rosemary Redfield, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia, asked on X.

  Technical details published in Nature: Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution.

• Blood test has a 90 percent accuracy rate in determining whether memory loss is due to Alzheimer's

  The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that a p-tau217 blood test can determine whether memory loss is caused by Alzheimer's about 91 percent of the time, compared to 73 percent accuracy for specialists and 61 percent for primary care doctors.

• I, for one, will mourn Twitter

  Jonn Elledge, New Statesman

  But since Elon Musk acquired it, possibly by accident, back in 2022, the voices of racist, misogynistic or homophobic trolls have become louder and more prominent. Moderation policies have been weakened; banned accounts belonging to the likes of Andrew Tate or Alex Jones reinstated. Misinformation abounds, and the loss of reputable advertisers has made noticeably less reputable ones more visible.

  Similarly Sam Harris has left X/Twitter.
  I wonder when other Musk/Twitter fans like Tyler Cowen. will see the light.
  

• Insider Trading by Other Means

  The basic idea is that insiders conceal their suspicious trades by publicly reporting them (as they are required to do) in ways that confuse or discourage investigators. We develop a taxonomy of concealment strategies, complete with suggestive examples. We then empirically test our taxonomy using a database of essentially all stock trades since 1992. We find that insiders who trade using the subterfuges we describe outperform the market by up to 20% on average.

• Delay of gratification and adult outcomes: The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning.

  Yet another psychology study bites the dust.