Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the centre of the earth. We show that the existence of life on the earth may be a reason that this black hole like object is a black brane that has been formed from biological materials like DNA. Size of this DNA black brane is 109 times longer than the size of the earth’s core and compacted interior it. By compacting this long object, a curved space-time emerges, and some properties of black holes emerge. This structure is the main cause of the emergence of the large temperature of the core, magnetic field around the earth and gravitational field for moving around the sun. Also, this structure produces some waves which act like topoisomerase in biology and read the information on DNAs. […]

These dark DNAs not only exchange information with DNAs but also are connected with some of the molecules of water and helps them to store information and have memory. Thus, the earth is the biggest system of telecommunication which connects DNAs, dark DNAs and molecules of water.

{ Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences | Continue reading }

photo ( Nadia Von Scotti }

Maskless Man Ejected from Disney’s Hollywood Studios Today While Screaming Misquotes from Pixar’s “A Bugs Life”

men found it more appealing if their committed romantic/sexual partners frequently changed their physical appearance, while women reported that they modified their physical appearance more frequently than did men, potentially appealing to male desires for novelty

How the Physical Appearance of Others Affects Attention to Healthy Foods

There is a widespread stereotype that women are better at multitasking. The present study examined a possibility that men were better at concurrent multitasking while women were better at task switching. Findings suggest that men have an advantage in concurrent multitasking.

Highly creative individuals are better than their peers at identifying uncreative products

The experience of love plays an integral role in human development as adolescents transition to young adults. This study examined whether emerging adults in the United States reach a consensus on what makes people feel loved.

Airline workers have lower rates of COVID-19 than the general population

If You’ve Just Had Covid, Exercise Can Cause Serious Complications, Including Heart Disease

For the first time since the Great Depression, the majority of 18- to 29-year-olds have moved back home

EncroChat was a Europe-based communications network and service provider allegedly used by organized crime members to plan criminal activities. Police infiltrated the network between at least March and June 2020 during a Europe-wide investigation. […] At least 800 arrests have been made across Europe as of 7 July 2020. […] The Dutch police arrested more than 100 suspects and seized more than 8 tonnes of cocaine, around 1.2 tonne of crystal meth, 19 synthetic drug laboratories, dozens of guns and luxury cars, and around €20 million in cash. In a property in Rotterdam, authorities found police uniforms, stolen vehicles, 25 firearms and drugs. On 22 June 2020 the Dutch police discovered a “torture chamber” in a warehouse. [Wikipedia | More: How Police Secretly Took Over a Global Phone Network for Organized Crime and Encrochat Investigation Finds Corrupt Cops Leaking Information to Criminals ]

The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke . . . Is Now Officially Broke

In September of 1931, writer George Orwell disguised himself as a tramp and traveled to a farm near West Malling, a town that lays southeast of London, to pick hops.

One year later, the vault will open and your answers will land back in your email inbox for private reflection.

Coronavirus Ice Cube Mold Tray [Thank you, Cassandra]

snake as face mask on bus

I have built the most inconvenient way of playing music

Japan on Track to Introduce Flying Taxi Services in 2023

Amazon wants to use delivery drones to surveil your house and put ads on your body

Facebook will pay users $120 to log off before 2020 election (to assess the impact of social media on voting)

No Evidence for a Relationship between Intelligence and Ejaculate Quality [PDF]

Attachment theory is an enduring and generative framework for understanding infant and romantic relationships. Here, I advance a two-system approach to attachment, proposing that infant attachments and romantic attachments constitute etiologically distinct systems that evolved in response to different selection pressures, serve different evolutionary functions, and are fundamentally different in nature with regard to operation and necessity toward their respective evolutionary goals.

recent research has shed light on how memory of recent eating modulates future food consumption. […] In humans, overweight and obesity is associated with impaired memory performance […] Enhancing memory of eating has been shown to reduce future eating

We investigated whether surgical face masks affected the performance of human observers, and a state-of-the-art face recognition system, on tasks of perceptual face matching.

facial detection applied to grains of sand

The Effects of Laughter during US Supreme Court’s Oral Arguments we find that the side causing more instances of laughter is more likely to win the votes of individual justices

Energy ‘scavenger’ could turn waste heat from fridges and other devices into electricity

How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

On the correlation between solar activity and large earthquakes worldwide

Nearly two-thirds of New York restaurants may have to close by January

Berlin’s banging Berghain club reborn as a gallery

The Economic Impact of the Black Death Previously: When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many contemporaries blamed the Jews.

how humankind should handle the first, inevitable murder in outer space

The nine alternative visions of chess that AlphaZero tested included no-castling chess, which Kramnik and others had already been thinking about. Five of the variants altered the movement of pawns, including torpedo chess, in which pawns can move up to two squares at a time throughout the game, instead of only on their first move. Draws were less common under no-castling chess than under conventional rules. And learning different rules shifted the value AlphaZero placed on different pieces: Under conventional rules it valued a queen at 9.5 pawns; under torpedo rules the queen was only worth 7.1 pawns. A more extreme change, self-capture chess, in which a player can take their own pieces, proved even more alluring. [Wired]

How to blur your house on Google Street View

The Art of the One-Word Poem

Verne Edquist, a master piano tuner who spent most of his professional life working for one client – Glenn Gould

Insects of Los Angeles (photographs taken using a special digital microscope)

Balenciaga Summer 20 Campaign [Thanks Tim]

I examine the relationship between unhappiness and age using data from eight well-being data files on nearly 14 million respondents across forty European countries and the United States and 168 countries from the Gallup World Poll. […] Unhappiness is hill-shaped in age and the average age where the maximum occurs is 49 with or without controls.

{ Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization | Continue reading }

A large empirical literature has debated the existence of a U-shaped happiness-age curve. This paper re-examines the relationship between various measures of well-being and age in 145 countries. […] The U-shape of the curve is forcefully confirmed, with an age minimum, or nadir, in midlife around age 50 in separate analyses for developing and advanced countries as well as for the continent of Africa. The happiness curve seems to be everywhere.

{ Journal of Population Economics | PDF }

photo { Joseph Szabo }

When we lose weight, where does it go?

The correct answer is that fat is converted to carbon dioxide and water. You exhale the carbon dioxide and the water mixes into your circulation until it’s lost as urine or sweat. […]

This surprises just about everyone, but actually, almost everything we eat comes back out via the lungs. Every carbohydrate you digest and nearly all the fats are converted to carbon dioxide and water. The same goes for alcohol.

Protein shares the same fate, except for the small part that turns into urea and other solids, which you excrete as urine.

The only thing in food that makes it to your colon undigested and intact is dietary fibre (think corn). Everything else you swallow is absorbed into your bloodstream and organs and, after that, it’s not going anywhere until you’ve vaporised it.

{ The Conversation | Continue reading }

[A]utomated facial recognition is still in its infancy and many countries rely on humans to do the job. But not just any humans—people with a rare ability to accurately recognize faces in CCTV footage regardless of the angle, or how grainy or fleeting the image.

The term “super recognizer” first appeared in 2009 and describes people who can remember more than 80 percent of the faces of people they meet (the average is 20 percent). The neural-mechanism behind super recognition is still largely unknown, but the skill seems to be genetic and possessed by only about one percent of the population. […]

Are you always accurate?
Yes, 100 percent. You don’t have a situation where you go, “I think that might be matey from my old job”. It’s really solid and definite. […]

I can recognize people from behind as well, the back of their heads. I think I’m recognizing a shape. There are various elements, different super recognizers might say they can tell who somebody is from their jawline. We’re mostly like that, we don’t need to see the full face. […]

if any of your readers think they’re like me and might be good at it, they should do the test online.

{ Vice | Continue reading }

[A]bout half of patients report neurological symptoms, including headaches, confusion and delirium, suggesting the virus may also attack the brain.

A new study offers the first clear evidence that, in some people, the coronavirus invades brain cells, hijacking them to make copies of itself. The virus also seems to suck up all of the oxygen nearby, starving neighboring cells to death.

It’s unclear how the virus gets to the brain or how often it sets off this trail of destruction. Infection of the brain is likely to be rare, but some people may be susceptible because of their genetic backgrounds, a high viral load or other reasons.

Forty percent to 60 percent of hospitalized Covid-19 patients experience neurological and psychiatric symptoms, said Dr. Robert Stevens, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins University. But the symptoms may not all stem from the virus’s invasion of brain cells. They may be the result of pervasive inflammation throughout the body.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

related { ‘Carnage’ in a lab dish shows how the coronavirus may damage the heart }

Earlier this week, Elon Musk said there’s a “good chance” settlers in the first Mars missions will die. […] the trip itself will take a year based on current estimates, and applicants to settlement programs are told to expect this trip to be one way.

{ Popular Mechanics | Continue reading }

The World Health Organization has said it would prefer a vaccine to be at least 70% effective, but it has set its minimum threshold for a Covid-19 vaccine at 50%. […]

According to Shearing, figures from developers suggest 1 billion doses may be available this year, with another 7 billion ready for distribution in 2021. But those numbers assume multiple vaccines are approved, and supply could turn out to be significantly lower. Specialized needles and syringes will be needed to administer the vaccine, but countries including the United States don’t have enough on hand. There’s also a global shortage of glass vials to contend with. The WHO does not expect widespread vaccinations until the middle of next year, a spokesperson said Friday.

{ CNN | Continue reading }

Not moving to dance music is nearly impossible, according to new research

The present study examines the striking similarities between the architectural design and spatial composition of the ancient Egyptian tomb and Sigmund Freud’s office at Berggasse 19 in Vienna, Austria.

AQs on Protecting Yourself from COVID-19 Aerosol Transmission

Studies are showing that the novel coronavirus can be detected in stool samples and anal swab samples for weeks. In fact, scientists are testing wastewater as an early tracking system for outbreaks. And a recent case on an airplane identified the airplane bathroom as the potential source. When you flush a toilet, the churning and bubbling of water aerosolizes fecal matter. That creates particles that will float in the air, which we will now politely call “bioaerosols” for the rest of this article. […] Take one 2018 study of flushing toilets in a hospital. Researchers found high concentrations of bioaerosols when a toilet with no lid was flushed. […] When you flush the toilet, you’re breathing in toilet water, and whatever is in that toilet water — including viruses and bacteria. [Washington Post]

COVID-19 Can Wreck Your Heart, Even if You Haven’t Had Any Symptoms

Antibodies that people make to fight the new coronavirus last for at least four months after diagnosis and do not fade quickly as some earlier reports suggested, scientists have found.

For many of Europe’s naturists, and the tens of thousands of swingers among them, Cap d’Agde has become a traditional summer destination, but a coronavirus outbreak here has shone an uncomfortable light on their alternative lifestyle.

A strange phenomenon has emerged near Amazon.com Inc. delivery stations and Whole Foods stores in the Chicago suburbs: smartphones dangling from trees. Contract delivery drivers are putting them there to get a jump on rivals seeking orders, according to people familiar with the matter. Someone places several smartphones in a tree located close to the station where deliveries originate. Drivers in on the plot then sync their own phones with the ones in the tree and wait nearby for an order pickup. [update 9/5: Amazon Drivers Say Smartphones-In-Trees Scheme Has Been Thwarted ]

Imagine a world where wireless devices are as small as a grain of salt. These miniaturized devices have sensors, cameras and communication mechanisms to transmit the data they collect back to a base in order to process. Today, you no longer have to imagine it: microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), often called motes, are real

Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers.

Sounds of the Forest — We are collecting the sounds of woodlands and forests from all around the world, creating a growing soundmap bringing together aural tones and textures from the world’s woodlands. [more sound maps]

First noticeable effect. Concentration lagging. Palms beginning to sweat. Starting to feel like it might be difficult to focus enough to write a report.

shots taken by the Swiss photographer Rudy Burckhardt in Queens, New York, 1940

TNI_BeardedLady

The Justice Department plans to bring an antitrust case against Google as soon as this month […] A coalition of 50 states and territories support antitrust action against Google […]

Alphabet was an obvious antitrust target. Through YouTube, Google search, Google Maps and a suite of online advertising products, consumers interact with the company nearly every time they search for information, watch a video, hail a ride, order delivery in an app or see an ad online. Alphabet then improves its products based on the information it gleans from every user interaction, making its technology even more dominant.

Google controls about 90 percent of web searches globally, and rivals have complained that the company extended its dominance by making its search and browsing tools defaults on phones with its Android operating system. Google also captures about one-third of every dollar spent on online advertising, and its ad tools are used to supply and auction ads that appear across the internet. […]

Makan Delrahim, the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, had pushed the department to investigate Google but was recused from the case because he represented the company in a 2007 acquisition that helped it to dominate the online advertising market.

In an unusual move, Mr. Barr placed the investigation under Jeffrey A. Rosen, the deputy attorney general, whose office would not typically oversee an antitrust case. Mr. Barr and Mr. Delrahim also disagreed on how to approach the investigation, and Mr. Barr had told aides that the antitrust division had been asleep at the switch for decades, particularly in scrutinizing the technology industry.

Mr. Rosen does have a tech background: He was the lead counsel for Netscape Communications when it filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft in 2002.

In October, Mr. Rosen hired Ryan Shores, a veteran antitrust lawyer, to lead the review and vowed to “vigorously seek to remedy any violations of law, if any are found.”

Mr. Barr also had a counselor from his own office, Lauren Willard, join the team as his liaison. She met with staff members and requested information about the investigation. She also issued directives and made proposals about next steps.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

platinum print { Robert Mapplethorpe, Coral Sea, 1983 }

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. […]

productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away […] But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas […] It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the sort of very problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.

{ David Graeber | Continue reading }

what I am calling “bullshit jobs” are jobs that are primarily or entirely made up of tasks that the person doing that job considers to be pointless, unnecessary, or even pernicious. Jobs that, were they to disappear, would make no difference whatsoever. Above all, these are jobs that the holders themselves feel should not exist.

Contemporary capitalism seems riddled with such jobs.

{ The Anarchist Library | Continue reading }

image { Alliander, ElaadNL, and The incredible Machine, Transparent Charging Station, 2017 }