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 }

{ Maria Forqué aka Virgen Maria | Censorship (video) | Interview | Instagram: eyes, more eyes, more }

Moringa oleifera, an edible tree found worldwide in the dry tropics, is increasingly being used for nutritional supplementation. Its nutrient-dense leaves are high in protein quality, leading to its widespread use by doctors, healers, nutritionists and community leaders, to treat under-nutrition and a variety of illnesses. Despite the fact that no rigorous clinical trial has tested its efficacy for treating under-nutrition, the adoption of M. oleifera continues to increase. The “Diffusion of innovations theory” describes well the evidence for growth and adoption of dietary M. oleifera leaves, and it highlights the need for a scientific consensus on the nutritional benefits. […]

The regions most burdened by under-nutrition, (in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean) all share the ability to grow and utilize an edible plant, Moringa oleifera, commonly referred to as “The Miracle Tree.” For hundreds of years, traditional healers have prescribed different parts of M. oleifera for treatment of skin diseases, respiratory illnesses, ear and dental infections, hypertension, diabetes, cancer treatment, water purification, and have promoted its use as a nutrient dense food source. The leaves of M. oleifera have been reported to be a valuable source of both macro- and micronutrients and is now found growing within tropical and subtropical regions worldwide, congruent with the geographies where its nutritional benefits are most needed.

Anecdotal evidence of benefits from M. oleifera has fueled a recent increase in adoption of and attention to its many healing benefits, specifically the high nutrient composition of the plants leaves and seeds. Trees for Life, an NGO based in the United States has promoted the nutritional benefits of Moringa around the world, and their nutritional comparison has been widely copied and is now taken on faith by many: “Gram for gram fresh leaves of M. oleifera have 4 times the vitamin A of carrots, 7 times the vitamin C of oranges, 4 times the calcium of milk, 3 times the potassium of bananas, ¾ the iron of spinach, and 2 times the protein of yogurt” (Trees for Life, 2005).

Feeding animals M. oleifera leaves results in both weight gain and improved nutritional status. However, scientifically robust trials testing its efficacy for undernourished human beings have not yet been reported. If the wealth of anecdotal evidence (not cited herein) can be supported by robust clinical evidence, countries with a high prevalence of under-nutrition might have at their fingertips, a sustainable solution to some of their nutritional challenges. […]

The “Diffusion of Innovations” theory explains the recent increase in M. oleifera adoption by various international organizations and certain constituencies within undernourished populations, in the same manner as it has been so useful in explaining the adoption of many of the innovative agricultural practices in the 1940-1960s. […] A sigmoidal curve (Figure 1), illustrates the adoption process starting with innovators (traditional healers in the case of M. oleifera), who communicate and influence early adopters, (international organizations), who then broadcast over time new information on M. oleifera adoption, in the wake of which adoption rate steadily increases.

{ Ecology of Food and Nutrition | Continue reading }

Gendville met Brooks-Church in an Area Yoga class, according to a person who has known the couple for more than a decade. He was “this sexy Spanish guy,” a flâneur type. He had grown up mostly on the resort island of Ibiza, the son of outlaw parents, hippies hunted by the Feds for two antiwar bombings in the ’80s until his mother turned herself in and his father reportedly got caught in Arkansas trying to pick up $6 million in cocaine. Brooks-Church became an adherent of Human Design, a pseudoscience combining astrology and chakras, which was created on Ibiza in 1992 by an advertising executive named Alan Krakower, who claimed to have received messages on the meaning of life from an entity called “the Voice.” […]

Brooks-Church, 49, was a “green builder” with a construction company called Eco Brooklyn who had spoken about sustainability at the Brooklyn Public Library; he was a vocal advocate for designating the Gowanus Canal a Superfund site, making it eligible for environmental protections. He did CrossFit. Gendville, 45, was the owner of a restaurant called Planted Community Cafe and a local chain of yoga studios, spas, and children’s stores called Area — a “mini-mogul,” according to the New York Times. The pair were currently renting out a brownstone they owned on Airbnb not five miles away, with a tree house and turtle pond, for nearly $800 a night. What could drive two yogic, environmentally conscious, vegan brownstoners to kick out their unemployed tenants during a global pandemic? […]

Though they own two businesses and six properties in one of the country’s most expensive real-estate markets, the landlords were apparently homeless.

{ NY mag | Continue reading }

The world’s most expensive sheep has just been purchased for $490,000

Democrats favoring Joe Biden are concocting strategies for preventing the theft of their signs, including smelly and irritating substances to mark the thieves. [Washington Post]

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine is calling for an end to daylight saving time. Studies have pointed to health risks connected to daylight saving time and the sleep disruptions it causes. The AASM called out stroke risks, stress reactions and an increase in motor vehicles crashes, particularly in relation to the springtime clock change.  

Results of Finland’s basic income experiment

We examine the threat to individuals’ privacy based on the feasibility of reidentifying users through distinctive profiles of their browsing history visible to websites and third parties. We then find that for users who visited 50 or more distinct domains in the two-week data collection period, ~50% can be reidentified using the top 10k sites. Reidentifiability rose to over 80% for users that browsed 150 or more distinct domains. [PDF]

across all countries and U.S. states that we study, the growth rates of daily deaths from COVID-19 fell from a wide range of initially high levels to levels close to zero within 20-30 days after each region experienced 25 cumulative deaths [PDF]

Bell Labs itself later grew to be one of the marquees of commercial labs—in the late 1960s it employed 15,000 people including 1,200 PhDs, who between them made too many important inventions to list, from the transistor and the photovoltaic cell to the first digitally scrambled voice audio (in 1943) and the first complex number calculator (in 1939). Fourteen of its staff went on to win Nobel Prizes and five to win Turing Awards.

Fact Checking Nonfiction Books

The Hidden History of the Hip-Hop Mixtape

An Ohio man built a backyard squirrel bar with seven varieties of nuts on tap — Lucky squirrels who find their way to the bar get to choose from seven different nuts named after beers. Dutko’s favorite part of the bar is its quirky bathroom sign: “Nuts” and “No Nuts.” [Video: Building a squirrel bar]

wearable cyberpunk assemblages by Hiroto Ikeuchi

the HOT NEW TREND in cyberbullying: crashing your plane into someone’s house in Microsoft flight sim and sending them the pic [Thanks Tim]

Facial recognition designed to detect around face masks is failing, study finds

A computer scientist is suing the Patent Office for deciding an AI can’t invent things

The Wildest Insurance Fraud Scheme Texas Has Ever Seen — Over a decade, Theodore Robert Wright III destroyed cars, yachts, and planes. That was only the half of it.

“There is no such thing as cheap food—there is a consequence. Something has been compromised to give you that product”

Two metres or one: what is the evidence for physical distancing in covid-19?

Ten countries [islands] kept out Covid

Salivary Detection of COVID-19 + how saliva specimens compare with nasopharyngeal swab specimens

Please remain calm while the robot swabs your nose

Zuckerberg made the case to President Donald Trump that the rise of Chinese internet companies threatens American business, and should be a bigger concern than reining in Facebook, some of the people said.

Taxicab Geometry as a Vehicle for the Journey Toward Enlightenment [PDF]

Uber vomit fraud

There Are Only 37 Possible Stories, According to This 1919 Manual for Screenwriters

Books are horrible at teaching. So are lectures. So are documentaries. If to teach means to impart lasting knowledge, then our current educational media are lousy teachers. We encounter thousands of concepts a year, yet the vast majority fades from our memory into the ether, never to be held again. We forget. […]

We also forget information at an exponentially decaying rate; more than half of what we process is gone within the first 20 minutes. This means that we need several prompts to make persistent memories. (For more on memory failure modes, see Schachter’s Seven Sins of Memory.). […]

What are some dimensions to consider if we want machines to augment our ability to remember?

{ Machines + Society | Continue reading }

Frequency of pornography use is associated with *lower* sexual problems, but problematic pornography use predicts more problems

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32810799/

It’s a problem but only when it’s problematic.

{ Neuroskeptic | Continue reading }

Researchers in Hong Kong are reporting the first confirmed case of reinfection with the coronavirus.

“An apparently young and healthy patient had a second case of Covid-19 infection which was diagnosed 4.5 months after the first episode,” University of Hong Kong researchers said Monday in a statement.

The report is of concern because it suggests that immunity to the coronavirus may last only a few months.

The 33-year-old man had only mild symptoms the first time, and no symptoms this time around. The reinfection was discovered when he returned from a trip to Spain, the researchers said, and the virus they sequenced closely matched the strain circulating in Europe in July and August.

“Our results prove that his second infection is caused by a new virus that he acquired recently rather than prolonged viral shedding,” said Dr. Kelvin Kai-Wang To, a clinical microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong.

Doctors have reported several cases of presumed reinfection in the United States and elsewhere, but none of those cases have been confirmed with rigorous testing. Recovered people are known to shed viral fragments for weeks, which can cause tests to show a positive result in the absence of live virus.

But the Hong Kong researchers sequenced the virus from both rounds of infection and found significant differences in the two sets of virus, suggesting that the patient was infected a second time.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Some people can get the pandemic virus twice, a study suggests. That is no reason to panic. […]

Even if the finding settles the question of whether people can be reinfected with the pandemic virus, it raises many additional questions: How often does this happen? Do people have milder infections, or no symptoms at all, the second time around? Can they still infect others? If natural infection does not always confer solid protection, will that be true for vaccines as well?

{ Nature | Continue reading }

750 million genetically engineered mosquitoes approved for release in Florida Keys

Researchers have demonstrated that they can make a working 3D-printed copy of a key just by listening to how the key sounds when inserted into a lock. And you don’t need a fancy mic — a smartphone or smart doorbell will do nicely if you can get it close enough to the lock.

The underlying purpose of this essay is less about the coronavirus per se and more about how having a small—but functionally complete— piece of viral RNA to analyze gives me a unique opportunity to try to understand a complete self-replicating machine from scratch

A coronavirus mutation is tied to less severe illness None of the 29 people whose viruses had the mutation needed supplemental oxygen, but 26 of the 92 people whose viruses lacked the mutation did. More: The ∆382 variant of SARS-CoV-2 seems to be associated with a milder infection

Getting an antibody test to see if you had Covid-19 months ago is pointless, according to guidelines issued this week by a major medical society. Many tests are inaccurate, some look for the wrong antibodies and even the right antibodies fade away, said experts at the Infectious Diseases Society of America, which issued the new guidelines. Because current tests cannot determine if someone is immune, the society said, they “cannot inform decisions to discontinue physical distancing or lessen the use of personal protective equipment.” […] Despite the flaws of antibody tests, recent studies of patients who definitely were infected suggest that they have long-lasting immunity and that it is very unlikely they will get reinfected. That may be because white blood cells known as B and T cells, which are “primed” to recognize and attack the coronavirus, remain in circulation long after antibodies have faded away. But B and T cells are not analyzed by common antibody tests. [NY Times]

assuming everyone is wearing a mask — the risk of catching the virus on a full flight is just 1 in 4,300. Those odds fall to 1 in 7,700 if the middle seat is vacant.

Face Masks and GDP

Callers posing as COVID-19 contact tracers are trying to pry credit card or bank account information from unsuspecting victims

Recently, scientists discovered bacteria that had been buried beneath the ocean floor for more than a hundred million years and was still alive. What would change if we could live for even just a million years?

We conducted a 10-year study in which we assembled a data set of more than 17,000 C-suite executive assessments and studied 2,600 in-depth to analyze who gets to the top and how. We then took a closer look at “CEO sprinters” — those who reached the CEO role faster than the average of 24 years from their first job. We discovered a striking finding: Sprinters don’t accelerate to the top by acquiring the perfect pedigree. They do it by making bold career moves over the course of their career that catapult them to the top. We found that three types of career catapults were most common among the sprinters. [Harvard Business Review]

Can Robots Keep Humans from Abusing Other Robots?

The Case of the Top Secret iPod

Gigapixel AI Accidentally Added Ryan Gosling’s Face to This Photo

GPT-3 is an artificial intelligence that has been fed all the text on the internet

Elf Surveillance Santa Camera - Dummy CCTV Camera - Simply attach the camera in your child’s room and have them really thinking that Elfie is watching their behaviour

Blockchain technology is going to change everything: the shipping industry, the financial system, government … in fact, what won’t it change? But enthusiasm for it mainly stems from a lack of knowledge and understanding. The blockchain is a solution in search of a problem. […]

Once something is in the blockchain, it cannot be removed. For instance, hundreds of links to child pornography and revenge porn were placed in the bitcoin blockchain by malicious users. It’s impossible to remove those.

Also, in a blockchain you aren’t anonymous, but “pseudonymous”: your identity is linked to a number, and if someone can link your name to that number, you’re screwed. Everything you got up to on that blockchain is visible to everyone. 

The presumed hackers of Hillary Clinton’s email were caught, for instance, because their identity could be linked to bitcoin transactions. A number of researchers from Qatar University were able to ascertain the identities of tens of thousands of bitcoin users fairly easily through social networking sites. Other researchers showed how you can de-anonymise many more people through trackers on shopping websites.

The fact that no one is in charge and nothing can be modified also means that mistakes cannot be corrected. A bank can reverse a payment request. This is impossible for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. So anything that has been stolen will stay stolen. There is a continuous stream of hackers targeting bitcoin exchanges and users, and fraudsters launching investment vehicles that are in fact pyramid schemes. According to estimates, nearly 15% of all bitcoin has been stolen at some point. And it isn’t even 10 years old yet.

And then there’s the environmental problem. The environmental problem? Aren’t we talking about digital coins? Yes, which makes it even stranger. Solving all those complex puzzles requires a huge amount of energy. So much energy that the two biggest blockchains in the world – bitcoin and Ethereum – are now using up the same amount of electricity as the whole of Austria.

Carrying out a payment with Visa requires about 0.002 kilowatt-hours; the same payment with bitcoin uses up 906 kilowatt-hours, more than half a million times as much, and enough to power a two-person household for about three months. […]

And for what? This is actually the most important question: what problem does blockchain actually solve? OK, so with bitcoin, banks can’t just remove money from your account at their own discretion. But does this really happen? I have never heard of a bank simply taking money from someone’s account. If a bank did something like that, they would be hauled into court in no time and lose their license. Technically it’s possible; legally, it’s a death sentence. 

{ The Correspondent | Continue reading }

acrylic, fluorescent acrylic and Roll-a-Tex on canvas { Peter Halley, Iss, 2019 }

Self-promotion is common in everyday life. Yet, across 8 studies (N = 1,687) examining a broad range of personal and professional successes, we find that individuals often hide their successes from others and that such hiding has relational costs. […]

Whereas previous research highlights the negative consequences of sharing one’s accomplishments with others, we find that sharing is superior to hiding for maintaining one’s relationships.

{ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | Continue reading }