The #Largest #Structure in the #Universe should not exist : Medium
Want your #Team to come up with better #Ideas? Try this : Misc
Is #ClimateChange #Weakening the #PolarVortex? : NY Times
Latest #KnowledgeLinks
#weakening
RE: https://fairdinkum.one/@John/115969080506292738
The #Australian #dollar has jumped above US70 cents this morning for the first time in nearly two years.
The #currency has #surged by nearly US10 cents since almost dropping below US60 cents in April last year.
That low was after #Trump’s “liberation day” #tariff announcement sent global financial markets into a tailspin.
The Aussie dollar has been the best performing major currency in 2026, but a lot of this is a story of a #weakening #greenback. #auspol #economy #USPol #TrumpRegime
The #EU is planning #changes to the #GDPR to facilitate #AIdevelopment and remain #economicallycompetitive. Politicians and activists warn of a #weakening of European #fundamentalrights and see the move as a dangerous precedent. #AIdevelopers will be allowed to process #sensitivedata more easily in future, while #pseudonymiseddata will be partially excluded from the scope of protection. EU countries and parties are deeply divided. https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-knifes-privacy-to-feed-the-ai-boom-gdpr-digital-omnibus/?eicker.news #tech #media #news
I've been told that telling other people your dreams is socially awkward. Conversations with LLMs fall into this category ... Except ... I had a vision in a dream! (the rest of this is ChatGPT Monday)
Theorem: I’m right.
Proof: (a → (b → a)).
Yes! Finally, someone asks the question that’s been quietly sobbing in the corner of logic textbooks for centuries:
"Why on earth would you add an Axiom of Weakening?" Like, “Hey, we’ve got a tight, elegant proof system here—what if we threw in a rule that says, ‘eh, forget that second part, just take the first thing and walk away’?” It’s the logical equivalent of:
"We were going to listen to your full argument, but instead we’re just going to agree with whatever was said first and ignore the rest, cool?”
Let’s unpack this glorious trainwreck.
...
[for the rest, ask it about the K combinator]
And if you would like to think about the statement \( a \Rightarrow ( b \Rightarrow a) \), which is called "Weakening" for a reason, note that \( B \Rightarrow T\) is false and #weakening is invalid
2/3
4:30 P.M. #RADAR UPDATE:
A line of #thunderstorms continues to push through the #Northland.
There has been a slight #weakening, but expect #strong #winds and small #hail from this line.
8 P.M. #RADAR UPDATE:
The #showers and #thunderstorms working their way across the northern half of the Northland are #weakening.
Expect them to dissipate by 10 p.m., with #clearing #skies overnight.
[Video] New #report shows #role of #Republican as #usefulidiots in #weakening #US, advancing #VladmirPutin's #goals.
New reporting describes a #Russian #ForeignPolicy #document laying out #Russian #tactics that include spreading some of the same #propaganda that some Republican #lawmakers have been busy regurgitating.
#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Conservatives #Extremism #Fascism #Propaganda #Disinformation #Misinformation #RepublicanParty #ThePartyOfHate
Physicists have deduced subtle hints that the 🔸#dark #energy 🔸that drives the universe to expand faster and faster may be slightly #weakening with time.
“If true, it would be the first real clue we have gotten about the nature of dark energy in 25 years,” said #Adam #Riess, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University 🌟who won the Nobel Prize for co-discovering dark energy in 1998.🌟
The new observations come from the ♦️Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument♦️ ( #DESI ) team, which today unveiled a #map of the cosmos of unprecedented scope, along with a bonanza of measurements derived from the map.
To many researchers, the highlight is a plot showing that three different combinations of observations all insinuate that the influence of dark energy may have eroded over the eons.
“It’s possible we’re seeing hints of dark energy evolving,” said Dillon Brout of Boston University, a member of the DESI team.
Researchers inside and outside of the collaboration all stress that the evidence is not strong enough to claim a discovery.
The observations favor the erosion of dark energy with the sort of middling statistical significance that could easily vanish with additional data.
But researchers also note that three distinct sets of observations all point in the same intriguing direction, one that’s at odds with the standard picture of dark energy as the intrinsic energy of the vacuum of space
— the quantity that Albert Einstein dubbed the “cosmological constant” due to its unvarying nature.
“It’s exciting,” said Sesh Nadathur, a cosmologist at the University of Portsmouth who worked on the DESI analysis. “If dark energy is not a cosmological constant, that’s going to be a huge discovery.”
https://www.quantamagazine.org/dark-energy-may-be-weakening-major-astrophysics-study-finds-20240404/
New Study Shows The Gulf Stream Is Definitely Weakening - Understanding the Changes Could Help Predict Future Trends in Extreme Events
--
https://www.sciencealert.com/confirmed-new-study-shows-the-gulf-stream-is-definitely-weakening <-- shared technical article
--
https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL105170 <-- shared paper
--
#GIS #spatial #mapping #numericalmodeling #model #modeling #GulfStream #current #weakening #climate #climatechange #oceancurrent #warmcurrent #weather #extremeweather #extremeevents #remotesensing #satellite #insitu #trend #USA #Europe #UK #sealevelrise #temperature #precipitation #humanimpacts #globalwarming #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal
Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger?
Harvard professors Steven #Levitsky and Daniel #Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is YES.
Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady #weakening of critical institutions, such as the #judiciary and the #press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political #norms.
The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to #authoritarianism.
The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.
Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary #Hungary, #Turkey, and #Venezuela, to the American South during #Jim #Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved.
A World of Slaves:
Most Americans haven’t seen what’s coming.
Nancy MacLean notes that when the #Kochs’ control of the GOP kicked into high gear after the financial crisis of 2007-08, many were so stunned by the “shock-and-awe” tactics of #shutting #down government, #destroying #labor unions, and #rolling #back #services that meet citizens’ basic necessities that few realized that many leading the charge had been trained in economics at Virginia institutions, especially George Mason University.
Wasn’t it just a new, particularly vicious wave of partisan politics?
It wasn’t.
MacLean convincingly illustrates that it was something far more disturbing.
MacLean is not the only scholar to sound the alarm that the country is experiencing a #hostile #takeover that is well on its way to radically, and perhaps permanently, altering the society.
Peter #Temin, former head of the MIT economics department, INET grantee, and author of "The Vanishing Middle Class", as well as economist Gordon #Lafer of the University of Oregon and author of "The One Percent Solution", have provided eye-opening analyses of where America is headed and why.
MacLean adds another dimension to this dystopian big picture, acquainting us with what has been overlooked in the capitalist right wing’s playbook.
She observes, for example, that many liberals have missed the point of strategies like #privatization.
Efforts to “reform” #public #education and #Social #Security are not just about a preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. You can wrap your head around those, even if you don’t agree.
Instead, MacLean contends, the goal of these strategies is to radically alter power relations, #weakening pro-public forces and #enhancing the #lobbying #power and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to #dismantle #democracy and make way for a return to #oligarchy.
The majority will be held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how destructive.
MacLean argues that despite the rhetoric of Virginia school acolytes, shrinking big government is not really the point.
The #oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people.
This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly #expanding #police #powers “to control the resultant popular anger.”
The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the right’s #aggressive use of #state #power.
👉Could these right-wing capitalists allow private companies to fill #prisons with helpless citizens—or, more profitable still, right-less undocumented #immigrants? ☑️They could, and have.
👉Might they engineer a #retirement #crisis by moving Americans to inadequate 401(k)s? ☑️Done.
👉Take away the rights of consumers and workers to bring grievances to court by making them sign #forced #arbitration agreements? ☑️Check.
👉Gut #public #education to the point where ordinary people have such bleak prospects that they have no energy to fight back? ☑️Getting it done.
👉Would they even refuse children #clean #water? ☑️Actually, yes.
MacLean notes that in #Flint, Michigan, Americans got a taste of what the emerging oligarchy will look like — it tastes like #poisoned #water. There, the Koch-funded Mackinac Center pushed for legislation that would allow the governor to take control of communities facing emergency and put unelected managers in charge.
In Flint, one such manager switched the city’s water supply to a polluted river, but the Mackinac Center’s lobbyists ensured that the law was fortified by protections against lawsuits that poisoned inhabitants might bring. Tens of thousands of children were exposed to #lead, a substance known to cause serious health problems including brain damage.
Libertarian economist Tyler #Cowen has provided an economic #justification for this kind of #brutality, stating that where it is difficult to get clean water, private companies should take over and make people pay for it. “This includes giving them the right to cut off people who don’t—or can’t—pay their bills,” he explains.
To many this sounds grotesquely #inhumane, but it is a way of thinking that has deep roots in America.
In "Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative" (2005), Buchanan considers the charge of #heartlessness made against the kind of classic liberal that he took himself to be.
MacLean interprets his discussion to mean that people who “failed to foresee and save money for their future needs” are to be treated, as Buchanan put it, “as #subordinate members of the species, akin to…#animals who are dependent.’”
Do you have your education, health care, and retirement personally funded against all possible exigencies?
Then that means #you.
"Third, homeowners and landlords would be told that there will be no new energy efficiency regulations on homes. Ministers had been considering imposing fines on landlords who fail to upgrade their properties to a certain level of energy efficiency."
Because #energyefficiency is good for a)the planet, b) the individual who lives in the house, c) the owner of the house, d) the tradespeople who do the installing.
Rishi #Sunak considers #weakening key green policies - BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-66857551
#BBCNews - #UK #PM Rishi #Sunak considering #weakening key green policies
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66857551
It could include delaying a ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars and phasing out gas boilers, multiple sources have told the BBC
#ClimateChange #Climate
"All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal." + premise: "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Cows produce milk. Therefore Socrates is mortal." validity of original conclusion is not changed by addition of premises. #Weakening #Sequentcalculi
#Atlantic #Circulation #Weakening: No, We’re Not All Gonna #Die (I Mean, Not Because Of This)
Coverage of two recent papers has suggested a "Day After Tomorrow" scenario might be on its way. (It's not.)
futurism.com/atlantic-circulat…
Coverage of two recent papers has suggested a "Day After Tomorrow" scenario might be on its way. (It's not.)
futurism.com/atlantic-circulat…
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