2023-10-22

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Chaotic gravitational systems and their irreversibility to the Planck length
- jbotz on HN
This paper claims that 5% of 3-body systems in the Universe can't be predicted even in principle, because you would need to measure initial conditions to greater precision than the planck length, which is impossible. And of course N-body systems where N > 3 are even more unpredictable, and the whole of the Universe is an N-body system, so if correct it would mean the end of determinism.

What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized Covid Mask Analysis?

it's now fair to ask if all our efforts to slow the spread of the disease—from masking, to hand washing, to working from home—were worth it. One group of scientists has seriously muddied the waters with a report that gave the false impression that masking didn't help. The group's report was published by Cochrane, an organization that collects databases and periodically issues “systematic” reviews of scientific evidence relevant to health care. This year it published a paper addressing the efficacy of physical interventions to slow the spread of respiratory illness such as COVID. The authors determined that wearing surgical masks “probably makes little or no difference” and that the value of N95 masks is “very uncertain.”

Netflix says password crackdown working
Taylor Swift Humiliates Hollywood Again — Trounces Leo’s ‘Flower Moon.’

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour was produced by … Taylor Swift and her team. It was also distributed by … Taylor Swift and her team. Swift Inc. froze Hollywood out and went straight to the theater chains. The result has been a box office triumph. In its first weekend, The Eras Tour grossed $93 million domestic and $124 million worldwide. After only three days, Swift already had the highest-grossing concert film in history. Moreover, she enjoyed the second biggest October opening weekend ever.

Biden's White House confronts heaviest week in over 1,000 days

A new weapon is being deployed in all these conflicts: a massive spread of doctored or wholly fake videos to manipulate what people see and think in real time. The architects of these new technologies, in background conversations with us after demonstrating new capabilities soon to be released, say even the sharpest eyes looking for fake videos will have an impossible time detecting what's real.

Fake video, on top of bots (fake people) and fake written content, is being used aggressively by all anti-American actors, intelligence officials say. Some experts estimate that more than 90% of content on the internet will soon be fake or manipulated.
Biden Paid $2.75 Million in Cash for Beach House After Chinese Shakedown

Man captures 'weird anomaly' of Storm Babet lifting forest floor in Scotland
No Way, Norway - Climate Discussion Nexus

“the national statistical institute of Norway and the main producer of official statistics”, has just published a paper “To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?” The awkward part isn’t trying to grasp the subtleties of Norwegian since it’s also available in English. It’s that the Abstract bluntly declares that “standard climate models are rejected by time series data on global temperatures” while the conclusions state “the results imply that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be sufficiently strong to cause systematic changes in the pattern of the temperature fluctuations.” But the really awkward part is that a paper from a government agency dares to address openly so many questions the alarmist establishment has spent decades declaring taboo, from the historical record on climate to the existence of massive uncertainty among scientists on it.
Shrinking glaciers could cause more volcano eruptions
Experts say motorists are rejecting White House push for electric vehicles
Species removed from endangered list due to extinction
'Zombie Trout' Unsettle Montana, Long a Fly-Fishing Mecca
Red Alert for America's Wild Arctic Fishery