Seen Youtube lately? I just watched a video on how to make nitroglycerin. Stuff like this has been available for over a decade.

Back in the days that home solar systems still mostly used lead-acid batteries - which in some cases of degradation could be repaired, at least partially, if you had some good strong and reasonably pure sulfuric acid - I viewed a YouTube video on how to make it. (From epsom salts by electrolysis using a flowerpot and some carbon rods from old large dry cells).

For months afterward YouTube "suggested" I'd be interested in videos from a bunch of Islamic religious leaders . (This while people were wondering how Islamic Terrorists were using the Internet to recruit among high-school out-group nerds.)

Software - AI and otherwise - often creates unintended consequences. B-)

A bunch of billionaires who shouldn't have had copyright a day later than 14 years are whining that they can't have even more intellectual property stuffed into copyright.

AI is not copying your songs. They're learning from them to make something different. Humans do this every time they create something new and are influenced by what came before.

We need to reduce copyright back to 7 years where it's economically justified to encourage innovation. And allow low income creators the chance to renew for up to another 7 years later. Waiting a century before copyright expires is simply mad.

Copyright is being abused and it's no longer about encouraging innovation. If concentrates wealth and is a key driver of inequality. It has been extended and extended. It went from a reasonable 7 years to 14 years renewable to 28, then life of the author plus 50 to life plus 70 years.

It was extended to buildings which is completely ridiculous. They industry tried but failed to extend it to clothing. There is absolutely no reason why an AI shouldn't read a work because it doesn't compete by selling a copy of the original work.

Copyright holders have no limit to their greed. (I don't want to debate a straw man of an AI reproducing an entire text verbatim. Yes, it happened briefly but that does not happen anymore.)

AI cannot replace human human touch or smell. Human touch is inversely correlated to anxiety, depression and stress.

Human touch calms us and slows down our heartbeat. It lowers blood pressure and cortisol. It triggers the release of oxytocin, (the hormone known for promoting emotional bonding to others.)

Humans are constantly smelling themselves and other people. A study in 2020 revealed that people subconsciously smell members of the same sex more often than those of different sex.

Researchers have found evidence that the explosion in teenage depression is linked to insufficient human interaction because its replaced by digital interaction.

AI friends sounds like the stuff of a dystopian sci-fi movie.

If taxpayers already paid for the research, they shouldn't have to pay twice. Making the research publicly available is an excellent idea.

Federal spending after WW2 went from about 14% of gdp then to about 23% of GDP now. State spending went from about 6% then to 6% now. So we're taxing and spending a lot more now.

In terms of spending on higher education, states reduced spending from 0.45% of GDP to about 0.3% now.

A lot of that was because Medicaid costs went up and the Federal government forces costs sharing with states on that.

High marginal rates actually hurts revenue and GDP. Some states have high combined marginal rates of 1.45% + 0.9% + 13.3% + 37% = 52.65%. (California). It's close to the point where economic growth is harmed.

And without GDP there's nowhere to pay for all the goodies we all want.

It's kind of surprising it isn't all squealing nonsense.

Give it a little more time. B-b

We had a lab known to be unsafe. A lab known to be performing gain of function on the specific type of virus that emerged in public. We have a lab in close proximity to the market where the outbreak was traced back to.

We also had rumors that low-paid lab techs supplemented their income by selling test animals they'd been ordered to destroy to the nearby wet market.

So current AI training procedures - which amount to "read all the internet you can" - fall for astroturf campaigns. Why am I not surprised?

There's also the "Detox" exercise of leaving your phone at home. and only taking it with you when it's absolutely necessary for example to work if you have to use a third factor authentication application to get into your computer)

Just switch on "airplane mode". No incoming calls, message notifications, or app push crud. (If you've got any apps, other than alarm/calendar notices for your schedule reminders which YOU set up, that poke brain-derailng messages at you, disable (or delete) them.)

Then get into the habit of not going to it for anything non-essential while in this mode.

Now you can use it for a key, or wallet, or whatever, if you must, without it constantly killing your attention span with interruptions. Yet you can always turn it back on to make a call, or in the timeslot you reserved for handling this trivia.

No incoming calls, though. (What a relief: No phone spammers!)

The US doesn't have much of a way for engineers to come here unless they're from India and willing to work as an indentured servant via the corrupt H1B system.

It would be a dream to just give green cards to any background checked STEM graduate of a top 100 world university with a gpa above the median, and who can speak English to the same degree as someone who has majored in a foreign language in the US.

As to China, they graduate lots of engineers. Most can't find jobs. So it's great for Corporate China but terrible for everyone else.

with many asking when "Papers, please?" will become the standard mantra when trying to go anywhere

I guess you haven't flown in the US in the last couple of decades, as showing your "papers" to a government agent is now standard practice (and has been for a while). ISTR that the TSA wanted to expand into train stations, too, but I don't know if that ever happened.

I'd at least like a more secure way to validate my identity, something that is not so simple for criminals to fake.

They introduce bike lanes to create more car congestion so people won't drive. (Few people actually use them.)

They ban cars from neighborhoods to limit travel. Then because there's no alternative they can charge high prices to take a train. Planes are being banned in Europe for shorter distances - less than 500 km. So you can't even fly. It's a perfect way to control a population. It's a form of subtle authoritarianism. You are a prisoner in your urban area surrounded by constant propaganda of how wonderful things are.

They won't build homes as population rises due to immigration so people are gradually impoverished paying ever higher rents.

Freedom of speech is limited a small amount each year or two. Everything the elites don't like is deemed "hate speech" or problematic. The system is enforced by large digital companies acting quietly on governments' requests. And prison terms as a backup.

Economic growth stops. Innovation is allowed only to further monitor and repress

Welcome to 21st century European feudalism. And the want to spread it too!

There is one scientist later on in the first part who does say they couldn't rule out someone who may have been infected at the lab visiting the market and starting the ball rolling, but they also say there is no evidence to back this up. Considering the number of people who ride that line each day, if there was a sick person from the lab spreading their infection, there should have been far more people getting sick all over the place. That didn't happen. The earliest known infections were all clustered around the market.

It doesn't have to have been an infected human. An infected experimental animal - or a pest animal that had come into contact with lab animals or materials - could have been an initial vector.

For some time stories have circulated that low-paid lab techies at the Wuhan lab had been known to supplement their income by taking experimental animals they had been ordered to kill and dispose of safely and instead sell them at the wet market.

is it just me, or does that sound like a sexy place?

I hear chines live-food-animal markets are called that because they typically sell seafood (fish, lobsters, etc.) which are kept alive in big water tanks.