I like how the only thing keeping wallabies from running as fast as they can for extended periods of time is that eventually it hurts. Pain killers to the rescue.
In 2009, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania stated that Australian wallabies had been found creating crop circles in fields of opium poppies, which are grown legally for medicinal use, after consuming some of the opiate-laden poppies and running in circles
In case anyone is wondering, here is what said crop circles look like.
Fascinating stuff. The video link at the end is wonderful. This helps explain why maple syrup is so expensive and we ate Mrs. Butterworth's growing up.
Quebec produces more than 70 percent of the world’s maple syrup and the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers is a cartel every bit as rapacious as OPEC or De Beers. The Federation is government backed and all producers must sell to them. From an excellent piece in the NYTimes:
After the spring harvest, farmers from around the province send their syrup to the federation.
…To keep prices high, the federation enforces strict quotas for the province’s 7,400 producers. Instead of flooding the market during years with bumper crops, all syrup produced beyond that amount is stored in the federation’s warehouse, which helps prop up prices by limiting supply. When seasons are lean, it releases the syrup, to maintain stable supply and pricing.
…When the federation suspects farmers are producing and selling outside the system, it posts guards on their properties. It seeks fines from producers and buyers who do not follow the rule. In the most extreme situations, it seizes production.
This is one of the most interesting parts of that book. Not that data ninja rockstars reverse engineered who was pregnant, but that they immediately hit upon an uncanny valley for data and had to cover their tracks.
I suspect advertising in the future will be a set of ads/content/suggestions across many websites which try to push you in a certain direction so subtly that you think it was your own idea to shop at target.
Facebook friend suggestion is crazy. I have a test account for work without any friends at all and it constantly suggests random people to friend. I want to know what data it is mining to run this algorithm.
G is getting the person who owned our house last as a facebook friend suggestion. We have no in common friends (judging from the mail we still get I would reeeeeally not get along with him). I’m kinda creeped out.
Sooo cooool. I'm always surprised/impressed when China decides to spend the money on projects like this. Guess that's what you get when your Standing Committee is all engineers.
Movements like this are interesting, and I agree that we shouldn't have AI warbots killing everything. But I'm not even very good at computers and I could write a half-assed kill bot that shoots everything with a face or everything that moves.
I guess my point is killbots are definitely going to happen. It's just too easy. I don't think the crazy dude working on a killbot in his garage right now is going to change his mind because of this petition. The same is true of any country with moderate technical knowledge that feels threatened.
Maybe, instead of a petition, we should work on a humanshield-bot that blocks humans from killbots. Or just a friendbot that makes you less likely to want to build a killbot in the first place.
More than 1,000 leading artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics researchers and others, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, just signed and published an open letter from the Future of Life Institute (FLI) today calling for a ban on offensive autonomous weapons.
FLI defines “autonomous weapons” as those that select and engage targets without human intervention, such as armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria, but do not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions.
The researchers believe that AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is feasible within years, not decades, and that the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.
Only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market
“If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce.
“It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity.”
The proposed ban is similar to the broadly supported international agreements that have successfully prohibited chemical, biological weapons, blinding laser weapons, and space-based nuclear weapons.
“We believe that AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do so. Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control,” the letter concludes.
This articles blows my mind in like 7 ways. They extracted skin cells from autistic people, then forced the cells to grow into tiny brains, then they learned from these brains that there was an overproduction of certain kinds of neurons, then they altered the expression of the responsible gene, which corrected this error.
A human brain organoid showing complex internal organization, with immature proliferating cells (red) and a surrounding layer of maturing neurons (green) (credit: Jessica Mariani)
Taking a radical research approach to understanding autism, Yale School of Medicine researchers converted skin cells from autism patients into stem cells and then grew them into tiny brains in a dish — revealing unexpected mechanisms of the disease.
The study was published in an open-access paper today (July 16) in the journal Cell.
Most autism research has taken the approach of combing through patient genomes for mutations that may underlie the disorder and then using animal or cell-based models to study the genes and their possible roles in brain development. That has left more than 80% of autism cases with no clear genetic cause.
“Instead of starting from genetics, we’ve started with the biology of the disorder itself to try to get a window into the genome,” says senior author Flora Vaccarino the Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry and Professor or Neurobiology at Yale.
The clinical characteristics of autism are complex and wide-ranging, making the prospect of finding common underlying factors slim. So the researchers focused on the approximately one-fifth of autism patients that share a distinctive feature correlated with disease severity — an enlarged brain.
Unexpected neuron-type imbalance
The “brain organoids” that resulted are just a few millimeters about a fifth of a millimeter in diameter but mimic the basics of early human brain development, roughly corresponding to the first few months of gestation. When the researchers analyzed the patient organoids, they uncovered altered expression networks for genes controlling neuronal development.
The patient organoids showed an unexpected overproduction of inhibitory neurons that quiet down neural activity, while those that excite the partners they’re wired to were unaffected, leading to an imbalance in neuron type. Remarkably, by suppressing the expression of a single gene whose expression was abnormally increased in patient organoids, the authors were able to correct this bias, suggesting that it may be possible to intervene clinically to restore neuronal balance.
The authors are now using their data to home in on the difficult-to-find mutations or epigenetic changes responsible for the gene expression alterations and neuronal imbalance observed in the study. Efforts to extend their growth to later embryonic stages are also under way by a number of groups and will allow even further insights into the disease mechanisms.
“This study speaks to the importance of using human cells and using them in an assay that could bring a better understanding of the pathophysiology of autism and with that, possibly better treatments,” according to Vaccarino.
The success of the approach also suggests that similar methods might be used to gain important insights into other human developmental diseases that have until now been difficult to crack open.
Abstract of FOXG1-Dependent Dysregulation of GABA/Glutamate Neuron Differentiation in Autism Spectrum Disorders
Autism spectrum disorder(ASD) is a disorder of brain development. Most cases lack a clear etiology or genetic basis, and the difficulty of re-enacting human brain development has precluded understanding of ASD pathophysiology. Here we use three-dimensional neural cultures (organoids) derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to investigate neurodevelopmental alterations in individuals with severe idiopathic ASD. While no known underlying genomic mutation could be identified, transcriptome and gene network analyses revealed upregulation of genes involved in cell proliferation, neuronal differentiation, and synaptic assembly. ASD-derived organoids exhibit an accelerated cell cycle and overproduction of GABAergic inhibitory neurons. Using RNA interference, we show that overexpression of the transcription factor FOXG1 is responsible for the overproduction of GABAergic neurons. Altered expression of gene network modules and FOXG1 are positively correlated with symptom severity. Our data suggest that a shift toward GABAergic neuron fate caused by FOXG1 is a developmental precursor of ASD.
My first thought was "what did humans do to start a waterfall where there shouldn't be one?". Googling suggests that there's only 10 inches of rain there per year, which is why the erosion seems so half-assed. Pretty cool, I think.
This move is brilliant. It's way easier for the government to leave the flag up "because it's been there for so long" than it is to raise the flag again now that it's down. #powerplay
On the early morning of June 27, activists in South Carolina gathered to take down the confederate flag flying above the Capitol before the funerals for 3 of the victims of the Charleston massacre begin. There is also supposed to be a “defend the flag” action later today.
A black woman identified as Bree climbed the flag pole and took the flag down herself. She was arrested shortly after climbing back down with the flag.
Shared entirely for this line, which is surprising and a little terrifying. Apparently cops can take a picture of your face and run it through a crime database: "Captain’s Note: Every SFPD officer is issued a smart phone with several crime fighting applications including a mug shot database. This is how the officers figured out the suspect’s true identity. Facebook for criminals…Yeah, there’s an app for that."
SFPD Richmond District Police Station
Weekly Update 06-25-2015
From Captain Simon Silverman
Here are some of the incidents that occurred in the Richmond Police District this week:
BURGLARY
06-19-2015 1:00 PM to 2:35 PM
Anza & 42nd Ave
Upon returning home, the resident noticed that the side door to her garage had been smashed open. She went into her house and discovered that two computers had been stolen from inside. She then called 911.
Captain’s Note: If you return home and see that your house has been broken into, please call 911 before going into the house. If the suspect is still inside the house, I would prefer that they are found by a police officer, rather than by you.
THEFT FROM THE FRONT PORCH
06-20-12015 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM
Hemway & Fulton
The suspect stole a wicker basket from the front porch sometime during the night.
Captain’s Note: Thefts of packages, strollers, bikes, children’s toys and potted plants from porches are sadly commonplace (although we get relatively few basket cases).
ARREST: STOLEN CAR / FALSE ID TO A POLICE OFFICER / SUSPENDED LICENSE / WARRANTS
06-20-2015 11:54 PM
Geary & Collins
Officers spotted a black Mercedes SUV with no plates doing 58 MPH in a 35 MPH zone. They stopped the driver who told them that the car belonged to his uncle and that he had permission to drive it. In fact, the car had been stolen three months earlier (the owner does not know the suspect). The suspect gave his brother’s name to the officers because his own license was suspended and because he had warrants for drunk driving and theft. The officers soon figured out his true identity.
Captain’s Note: Every SFPD officer is issued a smart phone with several crime fighting applications including a mug shot database. This is how the officers figured out the suspect’s true identity. Facebook for criminals…Yeah, there’s an app for that.
ROBBERY / GRAND THEFT FROM A PERSON
06-21-2015 2:28 PM and 2:35 PM
Sutter & Pierce and California & Pierce
The following two incidents were the work of the same pair of youngsters. In the first case, suspect #1 ran up behind a woman who was using her cell phone and tried to grab it from her hands. She hung on to her phone, but he overpowered her. He then ran off with the phone in the company of suspect #2 who was acting as a lookout. In the second case, suspect #1 ran up behind a woman and snatched her phone from her back pocket, then ran off with suspect #2. The woman’s husband chased the suspects, and he was joined by a witness who chased the suspects until they ran out of breath. They dropped the phone (which the witness recovered) and ran off out of sight.
Suspect #1: Black male 12-13 years old, 5’8” 130 lbs, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, dark pants with red plaid boxer underwear visible
Suspect #2: Black male 12-13 years old, 5’8” 135 lbs, wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt
Update: Suspect #1 is now in custody.
CITATION: TRAFFIC COLLISION WITH INJURY
06-21-2015 4:24 PM
MLK & Nancy Pelosi
A driver had just parked his car when he opened his door into the traffic lane which caused an oncoming cyclist to collide with the door. The cyclist sustained moderate injuries.
Captain’s Note: The vehicle code states, “No person shall open the door of a vehicle on the side available to moving traffic unless it is reasonably safe to do so…” Bike riders in the City call this common hazard “dooring.” If you are on a bike with other riders following you, be a good “ride buddy” and call out a warning when you see a car that you think might present a dooring hazard.
ROBBERY WITH FORCE
06-23-2015 9:20 PM
Sacramento & Locust
The victim was walking down the street and noticed the suspect walking toward her. She greeted him, but he did not reply. After passing the victim, the suspect turned back toward her and struck her in the face at least twice causing her to fall down. It is unknown whether he used an object, his fists or both. The suspect stole her purse and fled on foot. The victim sustained injuries (thankfully, not life threatening).
Suspect: Black male, 35-45 years old, 6’1”, medium build, wearing a black baseball cap turned backwards, a black T-shirt with graphics on the front and black jeans. He was clean shaven with short curly black hair.
Possible Witness: The victim recalls speaking to a person collecting recyclables in the area who may have witnessed the crime. He is described as an Asian male about 55 years old. We would like to speak to this person (he is not a suspect). If you are this person or if you have any information about the crime, please call us at 415-553-0123.
ARREST: DUI / HIT & RUN / TRAFFIC COLLISION WITH INJURY
06-23-2015 10:14 PM
Geary & 3rd Ave
The suspect was driving westbound on Geary at 3rd Ave when he turned in front of a car that was coming eastbound resulting in a collision. The suspect then drove off but was caught a short distance away by officers who determined that he was driving under the influence. The driver and passenger in the car he hit both suffered minor injuries.
Captain’s Note: DUI and Hit & Run are both misdemeanor offenses. However, if the suspect causes injury to another (as was the case here) they both become felonies.
ARREST: DISCHARGE OF A FIREARM / POSSESS LOADED FIREARM / FELON POSSESS FIREARM
Balboa & 18th Ave
06-24-2015 12:10 PM
Sometimes, when a case is still under investigation, it is best not to disclose details about the case in order to safeguard the investigation. This is one of those times.
ARREST: VANDALISM
California & 7th Ave
06-24-2015 12:30 PM
Members of the Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT) placed a “boot” wheel immobilization device on a pick-up truck that had numerous unpaid parking tickets. As they were passing back by the pick-up truck about 30 minutes later, they saw the suspect trying to give the boot to the boot with a blow torch, a pry bar and a hammer. Although the suspect damaged the boot beyond repair, he did not succeed in removing it.
SHOPLIFTING TURNED ROBBERY OF A STORE
Geary & 28th Ave
06-24-2015 1:45 PM
The suspect shoplifted several jars of face cream. When confronted by store security, she threatened them that she had a gun. Although no gun was seen, the security officers were justifiably afraid and let her go.
Captain’s Note: By threatening the security officers, the suspect turned a misdemeanor shoplifting case into a felony robbery one.
Suspect: Black Female, 45-50 years old, 5’6” 160 lbs, wearing a pink tank top, pink sweater, denim skirt, white socks and white shoes.
ARREST: ILLEGAL MARIJUANA CULTIVATION / THEFT OF UTLITIES
Balboa & 19th Ave
06-24-2015 2:00 PM
Two weeks ago, a roofing contractor hired by the landlord reported to him that he smelled the odor of growing marijuana coming from inside the home. Subsequently, the landlord was painting the exterior of his rental property when he noticed new conduit leading from the electrical box to the interior of the house. He called PG&E to check on this unauthorized modification. The expert who responded saw that the main electrical box had been tampered with so he immediately shut off the electricity. Responding officers could smell the strong odor of growing marijuana as they stood outside on the sidewalk. A search of the home revealed elaborate lighting and watering systems supporting 81 marijuana plants each about 3-4 feet tall.
Captain’s Note: Electrical fires can result from tampering with the utility box. This home is surrounded on all sides by other homes and the irresponsible actions of the grower posed a threat to his neighbors. That threat was not limited to electrical fires. I have seen several cases where other criminals become aware of an illegal marijuana growing operation and commit armed robberies seeking the drugs and the money to be found in the house.
We do not believe that this incident is related to the earlier firearms discharge at Balboa & 18th Ave.
Next Community Meeting:
Tuesday 07-21-2015 7:00 PM
Richmond Station Community Room
461 6th Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94118
415-666-8000
Contact Us:
Call 911 for emergencies
Call 415-553-0123 for non-emergency police service
Richmond Station
461 6th Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94118
415-666-8000
E-mail: SFPDRichmondStation@sfgov.org
wonderful. also a good time to remember that woodpeckers have red necks. which is where the term "peckerwood" for racist white people comes from. because they also have red necks.
After the spring harvest, farmers from around the province send their syrup to the federation.
SFPD Richmond District Police Station
