Definitely students need more sleep, right through to university. According to this study humans are still adolescent from 9 till 32. Scientists identify five ages of the human brain over a lifetime Want to protect human potential ? That would be a good starting point. It’s sensible even from a purely utilitarian profit focused view of study and work.

Open shell is a helpful solution that replaces some of the problems in the windows UI at least for the start menu.

OpenShell github

It’s pretty easy to customize most elements for the style you prefer and no adverts.

Open shell is a helpful solution that replaces some of the problems in the windows UI at least for the start menu.

OpenShell github

It’s pretty easy to customize most things.

Yum, looks similar to chicken arroz caldo which is amazing on a cold day. Pure comfort food.

https://www.kawalingpinoy.com/arroz-caldo/

I’ve updated the Illustration.

Seems like they got it straight from the university press release here. I guess we can cut them some slack for using a bit of AI given the recent job losses at that university. They are reported to have lost around 4000 full time staff places in the last year, part of Australia’s recent cut backs to universities that don’t get much international reporting. That’s may hurt their ability to do quality research. Professor Archer noted that "quite clearly, from the many fascinating animals that we’ve already found in this deposit since 1983, we know that with more digging there will be a lot more surprises to come,”. So lets hope they continue to get support.

Yep that’s not how science is done, but the real story is more interesting I think. It wasn’t Einstein so much as Hubble and Lemaître, but he did acknowledge the error that caused him to miss the expanding universe in his equations.

"This circumstance of an expanding universe is irritating " – Albert Einstein, 1929.

In every direction in the sky, there is a background fizz of light. It is all that remains of the most intense flare of energy ever emitted. To explain it, we must look back to 1929. At that time Edwin Hubble, an astronomer at Caltech, proved that the universe was much larger than anyone had expected and expanding in all directions. From this discovery, two competing explanations developed. The Steady State Theory and the Big Bang. The first allows the universe to create new matter as it expands. Matter just appears from some hidden and rather ghostly source. That permits the universe to look more or less the same as it does today, at least as far as galaxies go. The second treats the universe as a closed system. One that begins with a vast and concentrated supply of energy, which decays into lesser forms. Spreading out as it does. The Big Bang universe is an expanding bubble of space-time, with a few wisps of hydrogen and helium that form the stars. The origins of the Big Bang theory began before Hubble’s discovery. A Russian physicist, A. A. Friedmann had used Einstein’s general relativity to model an expanding universe. At this time, it was a purely theoretical exercise. No one realized then that our universe was expanding.

The rate at which the universe expands is known as the Hubble-Lemaître constant. That naming honours Georges Lemaître. In some ways he was the co-discoverer of the Big Bang. He was among the first to model Einstein’s theories of space and time across an entire universe. As a physicist, Catholic priest and astronomer, he had a clear perspective on this question. He had no problem with the idea of the universe having a unique origin for example. Both Einstein and others had learned that Relativity predicted an expanding universe. But at the time, there was no physical evidence of that. Einstein’s solution was to introduce an extra value to the equations. That balanced the universe’s expansion with an opposing force. For the moment, a stable universe seemed possible.

In the 1920s, astronomers were unsure whether our galaxy was the only structure in the universe. There was no astronomical distance scale. That might explain why most astronomers assumed a static universe. Lemaître was willing to explore a different option. He had seen the evidence from Erwin Hubble’s early observations at Mount Wilson Observatory in California. He published his theory in 1927. He estimated the speed of the expansion using those measurements. They proved that Spacetime was rapidly expanding, carrying along the rest of the physical universe.

Wherever astronomers pointed their telescopes every distant object was part of this rapid expansion. Lemaître understood that an expanding universe must have a tiny beginning. He called this origin point the cosmic atom, from which all matter emerged. Einstein rejected the significance of the new astronomical discoveries for some time. He maintained his belief in a static, unchanging cosmos until 1930, when he traveled halfway across the world from Berlin to Pasadena to see Hubble’s evidence in person. He examined Hubble’s photographs, looked through his telescopes, and declared himself fully persuaded.

He called the stabilizing term Lamda also known as the Cosmic Constant his “worst blunder” but actually it forms the foundation for our present understanding the effects of dark energy, the mysterious force driving the observed accelerated expansion of the universe.

So he’s talking about the Christian version of God but what specific variant. There’s lots to select from you know. Do other Abrehamic religions get a pass or just his present kind of evangelical nuttery.

If the definition of the present is that it a moment in which the future is not yet fixed or definite. Then travelling into the past would create a new present moment. It would dissolve the future you had left behind or the past would change as you interacted with it. So a universe with time travellers would have many present times and multiple different pasts. That is assuming the changes propagate as the time traveller experiences them.

So that’s what AI snooping is called now? How is it better if there are Microsoft employees occasionally looking over your shoulder.

If Christians were completely honest they would just admit this recon of the old testament doesnt really work. It can’t be made exact because it’s missing any human level analogs. So explanations of the Trinity in statements of belief sound like word salad or ants explaining quantum physics. Also the beliefs of the various Bible writers about God’s nature are more diverse than we realise. Largely because the translations flatten out differences making it sound as if it was dictated. Its just silly to think humans are even capable of working out the creators internal nature.

I think your right to be cautious about the timing, cats are very territorial and can take a couple of months to trust that a new place really belongs to them. I guess the breed and personality of the kitten would be the key to harmony because your present cat is already mature. If they can coexist then they will eventually accept one another but seperate feeding areas help. They will try very hard to invade the others space on day one so it can be job to keep them separate.

This is the story of a bloodstained boy. There he stands, swaying as utterly as any windblown sapling. He is quite, quite red. - Railsea, China Mieville.

I expect that paying for a VPN would be a risk too if you live in a country where your bank reports on your purchases to your Govt. True anonymity is challenging.

From the interview: The main takeaway is that humans are special, but so are birds and reptiles. So our brains are amazing, but bird brains are even as amazing. We have neurons other species do not have. But the chicken, even the chicken, they do have neurons that we don’t have. So evolution has found so many different ways to generate complex brains, not just only one direct pathway from amphibians to humans. In this case, the tree of intelligence is a tree. It’s not just a single branch.

Our boy won’t talk to humans. He has appointed the girl as his spokescat and will headbutt her till she gets human attention. If she is sleeping elsewhere he gets quite confused how to ask for food. Why can’t they just read my ears then??!

Ah that what happens when you Google an article which explanes some historical connection to Plato etc but it then uses that to make a completely unrelated point ie woke is bad. I should have read the whole thing before linking it. Looking at the other articles on the site it is indeed mostly right wing propaganda. A better point is Dawnkin’s post about Platonic forms here https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25366 in response to the question what scientific idea should be retired in 2014? He points out essentialism is a problem for accepting evolution, and for so many other things.

And Plato would have gotten away with it too, if not for those meddling kids and their cladistics. Essentialism has been hugely damaging and is the foundation of most types of Creationism. https://newdiscourses.com/2021/02/essentialism-logical-fallacy-plaguing-us-since-plato/

Indeed, and in addition if your religion is not supported by the facts it’s time to revise its assumptions. Religion can deal with new evidence, it’s just rather slow compared to say human lifetimes. I suspect thats because the basis of many faiths reasoning is built on philosophy, Christianity in particular. Which is a kind of precursor to experimental science where progress is slow or even circular.

Also, for those concerned that Human brains have shrunk over the last thirty thousand years, there is good news: A large-scale study published in March 2024 by researchers at UC Davis Health found human brains have been getting larger over the last few decades. Study participants born in the 1970s had 6.6% larger brain volumes and almost 15% larger brain surface area than those born in the 1930s. This steady increase for people born after the 1930s, is believed to be due to better nutrition. https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/human-brains-are-getting-larger-that-may-be-good-news-for-dementia-risk/2024/03