I agree wholeheartedly. Maybe there’s an alternative funding model for authors, and artists generally, that could be imagined and built. I’d be surprised if there’s not already some great ideas floating out there; but if there are, I don’t know them.
Considering the actual post here, plus just decent manners, if you like a book, and you’re able, it’s worth considering supporting the author of said book.
That being said, you should seriously consider going to your search engine of choice and searching for an archive by a person named Anna: Anna’s Archive if you will. You might find something helpful and interesting.
I’m not a geologist but I’ve read up on it a fair bit.
This Mars photo appears to be sandstone.
On earth sandstone is usually associated with ancient rivers, lake shores, and sea shores. But also sand dune fields.
The thing with sandstone though, is it’s not just sand. Rather, it’s sand plus time plus pressure plus cementation.
Now, the time part is obvious. What’s sandstone now was sand a long ass time ago (usually).
Pressure? That’s a little harder to understand for me here. Has mars ever had tectonic stuff going on to bury it (and hence have pressure applied), followed by erosion and uplift? Or am I incorrect and pressure is not a necessary condition? Maybe sandstone without pressure is a thing it’s just weaker and/or less dense? Maybe layers of volcanic basalt or something could have a similar effect? I don’t know and would love to have someone more knowledgeable fill this part out.
Cementation? This part, I’m nearly certain, REQUIRES water. On earth anyway, this happens when ground water absorbs chemicals from other rock/stuff (for example carbonates from sea shells, but there’s lots of other chemicals that can do this), then flows through the beds of buried sand, and some of those chemicals are deposited along with magical chemistry stuff happening, and your sand becomes sand stone.
So I don’t 100% know that the short answer to your question is “yes”, but I’m leaning towards a solid “yeah, probably, but I’m not a real geologist and Mars isn’t a real Earth so I dunno”.
I don’t really have an opinion on this case (in terms of Syed’s guilt or innocence), but it all just seems like such a shit show. If this guy is innocent he’s been repeatedly screwed by the system.
The catharsis is real!
DALLAS (AP) — The State Fair of Texas is laying down a new rule before millions of visitors flock through the gates for corn dogs, deep-fried delights and a friendly wave from a five-story cowboy named Big Tex: No guns allowed.
But that decision by fair organizers — which comes after a shooting last year on the 277-acre fairgrounds in the heart of Dallas — has drawn outrage from Republican lawmakers, who in recent years have proudly expanded gun rights in Texas. On Wednesday, the state’s attorney general threatened a lawsuit unless the fair reversed course.
“Dallas has fifteen days to fix the issue,” said Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, “otherwise I will see them in court.”
Tensions over where and how gun owners can carry firearms in public are frequent in Texas, but the standoff with one of the state’s most beloved institutions has moved the fight onto unusual turf. The fair has not backed down since cowboy hat-wearing organizers announced the new policy at a news conference last week.
The fair, which reopens in September and lasts for nearly a month, dates back to 1886. In addition to a maze of midway games, car shows and the Texas Star Ferris wheel — one of the tallest in the U.S. — the fairgrounds are also home to the annual college football rivalry between the University of Texas and University of Oklahoma. And after Big Tex, the towering cowboy that greets fairgoers, went up in flames in 2012 due to an electrical short, the fair mascot was met with great fanfare upon its return.
This is similar to what kept coming to mind while listening to it last night:
“This is a former POTUS and the richest guy on the planet, and they’re both so… dumb”.
Blows my damn mind man.
Thanks for providing this update. You added some sources and data that I didn't know, and your last point clearly articulates the set of likely causes of this misstep.
When I first became aware of this story my gut-reaction was "I fucking hate unforced errors like this!"; I'm now very curious why this happened the way it did. Mind you, in the grand scheme of things I suspect this is nothing more than a fleeting political blip.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked a pre-trial agreement reached with men accused of plotting the 11 September terrorist attacks.
In a memo on Friday, Mr Austin also said he was revoking the authority of the officer overseeing the court who signed the agreement on Wednesday.
The original deal, which would reportedly have spared the alleged attackers the death penalty, was criticised by some families of victims.
The memo named five defendants including the alleged ringleader of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The original deal named three men.
"I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused… responsibly for such a decision should rest with me as the superior authority," Mr Austin wrote to Brig Gen Susan Escallier.
"I hereby withdraw your authority. Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements."
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/26215028
> >But I was called by Mark Zuckerberg yesterday, the day before, on this same subject. And he actually apologized, he said they'd made a mistake, etc., etc., and that they're correcting their mistake. Google, nobody called from Google. One of the things I do in a show like yours. You, your show, you know, you see it on Fox. But where you really see it is all over the place. They take clips of your show that you're doing right now with me, and if I do a good job, they're going to vote for me. They're going to vote for me, because it's not just on Fox. It's on Fox, is a smaller part of it. You're on all over this, those little beautiful cell phones. You're on, you're all over the place. You have a product. You have a great product. You have a great brand. So you have to get out, you have to get out. You have to do things like your show, and other shows, and, Google, has been very bad. They've been very irresponsible. And I have a feeling that Google is going to be close to shut down. Because I don't think Congress is going to take it. > > Donald Trump, 2024-08-02 > > Transcribed from YouTube by me. > > #### Title > > Trump slams Google over alleged censorship: They’re going to be close to shut down > > #### Channel > > Fox Business
>But I was called by Mark Zuckerberg yesterday, the day before, on this same subject. And he actually apologized, he said they'd made a mistake, etc., etc., and that they're correcting their mistake. Google, nobody called from Google. One of the things I do in a show like yours. You, your show, you know, you see it on Fox. But where you really see it is all over the place. They take clips of your show that you're doing right now with me, and if I do a good job, they're going to vote for me. They're going to vote for me, because it's not just on Fox. It's on Fox, is a smaller part of it. You're on all over this, those little beautiful cell phones. You're on, you're all over the place. You have a product. You have a great product. You have a great brand. So you have to get out, you have to get out. You have to do things like your show, and other shows, and, Google, has been very bad. They've been very irresponsible. And I have a feeling that Google is going to be close to shut down. Because I don't think Congress is going to take it.
Donald Trump, 2024-08-02
Transcribed from YouTube by me.
Title
Trump slams Google over alleged censorship: They’re going to be close to shut down
Channel
Fox Business
I was biting down hard until the last sentence: “She Hits Me Every Night” and then I lost it laughing!
That isn't true though. Most convicted felons can't vote, but they can run for office.
The 12 New Yorkers have reached a unanimous decision in the first criminal trial of a former US president.
I have nothing to add per se, but I just thought I’d thank you for writing such a well thought out, informative comment and sourcing it so well.
I can try to explain, but there are people who know much more about this stuff than I do, so hopefully someone more knowledgeable steps in to check my work.
What does ‘random’ or ‘noise’ mean? In this context, random means that any given bit of information is equally as likely to be a 1 or a 0. Noise means a collection of information that is either random or unimportant/non-useful.
So, you say “Compression saves on redundant data”. Well, if we think that through, and consider the definitions I’ve given above, we will reason that ‘random noise’ either doesn’t have redundant information (due to the randomness), or that much of the information is not useful (due to its characteristic as noise).
I think that’s what the person is describing. Does that help?
I’m not an Information Theory guy, but I am aware that, regardless of how clever one might hope to be, there is a theoretical limit on how compressed any given set of information could possibly be; and this is particularly true for the lossless compression demanded by this challenge.
Quote from the article:
The skepticism is well-founded, said Karl Martin, chief technology officer of data science company Integrate.ai. Martin's PhD thesis at the University of Toronto focused on data compression and security.
Neuralink's brainwave signals are compressible at ratios of around 2 to 1 and up to 7 to 1, he said in an email. But 200 to 1 "is far beyond what we expect to be the fundamental limit of possibility."
Elon Musk's quest to wirelessly connect human brains with machines has run into a seemingly impossible obstacle, experts say. The company is now asking the public for help finding a solution.
Musk's startup Neuralink, which is in the early stages of testing in human subjects, is pitched as a brain implant that will let people control computers and other devices using their thoughts. Some of Musk's predictions for the technology include letting paralyzed people "walk again and use their arms normally."
Turning brain signals into computer inputs means transmitting a lot of data very quickly. A problem for Neuralink is that the implant generates about 200 times more brain data per second than it can currently wirelessly transmit. Now, the company is seeking a new algorithm that can transmit this data in a smaller package — a process called compression — through a public challenge.
As a barebones web page announcing the Neuralink Compression Challenge posted on Thursday explains, "[greater than] 200x compression is needed." The winning solution must also run in real time, and at low power.
That was a great read. Thank you.
Here’s the thing about Trademarks though:
Trademarks exist to protect consumers from confusion in the market, NOT primarily to protect the owner of the trademark.
So, like, a restaurant calling themselves McDonald’s could reasonably be assumed to be operated by the McDonald’s Corporation.
This makes trademarks distinct from both patents and copyright.
Do you honestly believe a rational consumer would mistake this design for one originating from the LAPD?
https://academic.oup.com/book/41769/chapter-abstract/354401357?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
‘’’
European Trade Mark Law Kur Annette and Martin Senftleben Contents Contents Search in this book CHAPTER 3 Rationales of Trade Mark Protection Get access Arrow Kur Annette, Martin Senftleben https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199680443.003.0002 Pages 1–26 Published: March 2017 Annotate icon Annotate Cite Icon Cite Permissions Icon Permissions Share Icon Share Abstract Although trade mark law is generally regarded as forming part of the larger body of intellectual property, the protection mechanism underlying its functioning is distinct from other intellectual property rights. Patents, copyright, or design rights award creative or innovative achievements with a limited period of market exclusivity thus creating artificial scarcity of the respective commodities. This grants the proprietor of such rights the possibility to raise prices above the marginal costs so as to recoup the investments made. Whether and to what extent that strategy is successful and even allows gaining a premium is determined by the market. Trade mark law coincides with that scheme insofar as it also engages market forces to determine commercial gains or losses. However, instead of creating artificial exclusivity of the goods or services offered, it provides a communication channel for entrepreneurs, so as to identify the goods or services originating from their business, distinguish them from competing goods, and transport product-related messages they want to convey to their customers. This, by reflex, provides information to the market, guiding consumer choice towards goods satisfying their demands, and helping to avoid those they do not want, at minimal search costs (see paragraph 1.08 et seq.). Thus, instead of restricting competition on the production level, trade marks are designed as an enabling tool without which competition in today’s mass markets would not function at all. ‘’’
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20959432
> Here we go again. Good luck and stay safe McMurray.
Here we go again. Good luck and stay safe McMurray.
Michael Lewis wrote an interesting book on this, published as an audio-book in 2018, called The Coming Storm (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41016100-the-coming-storm). It's well worth the listen:
In his first Audible Original feature, New York Times best-selling author and journalist Michael Lewis delivers hard-hitting research on not-so-random weather data — and how Washington plans to release it. He also digs deep into the lives of two scientists who revolutionized climate predictions, bringing warning systems to previously unimaginable levels of accuracy. One is Kathy Sullivan, a gifted scientist among the first women in space; the other, D.J. Patil, is a trickster-turned-mathematician and a political adviser.
Most urgently, Lewis's narrative reveals the potential cost of putting a price tag on information with the potential to save lives, raising questions about balancing public service with profits in an ethically-ambiguous atmosphere.
In a historic decision Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled the state must adhere to a 160-year-old law barring all abortions except in cases when “it is necessary to save” a pregnant person’s life – a significant ruling that will make a Civil War-era abortion law enforceable in the state.
CNN —
In a historic decision Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled the state must adhere to a 123-year-old penal code provision barring all abortions except in cases when “it is necessary to save” a pregnant person’s life.
The law, which can be traced to as early as 1864, also carried a prison sentence of two to five years for abortion providers.
The case is the latest high-profile example of the battle over abortion access that has played out across several states since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 2022. Since that decision, nearly two dozen states have banned or limited access to the procedure. Providers have warned that restrictive policies on abortion access place patients at risk of poor health outcomes and doctors at risk of legal liability.
In a notice Monday, the Arizona court indicated it will file an opinion in Planned Parenthood of Arizona vs. Mayes/Hazelrigg at approximately 10 a.m. PT Tuesday.
Justices heard opening arguments in the case last December, when abortion rights opponents claimed the state should revert to the 1901 ban, and advocates asked the court to affirm the 2022 law allowing abortions up to 15 weeks, CNN previously reported.
At least 60 dead and 100 injured in attack at Crocus City Hall claimed by an Islamic State affiliate.
Deaths and injuries have been reported after a gun attack at a concert hall near Moscow, Russian media say.
At least four people dressed in camouflage opened fire at the Crocus City Hall, social media video verified by the BBC shows.
Video obtained by Reuters news agency shows a large blaze and smoke rising from the hall.
Russia's Foreign Ministry described the incident as a "terrorist attack". Specialist police are at the scene
Footage on social media showed gunmen inside the concert hall while state media reported that some people were still inside.
Tass news agency reported a third of the concert venue is on fire and the roof is almost completely ablaze.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called on the international community to condemn the incident, which it called "a monstrous crime".
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the images of the shooting were "horrible and hard to watch".
I'll just leave this here:
https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/
Recovering From Religion is a fantastic organization which exists to help people through this sort of thing. They've got lots of catalogued resources (podcasts, articles, videos, etc.), a 24-hour helpline, online support groups, and other helpful resources.
https://www.youtube.com/@TsodingDaily
If you're a programmer, or think you might want to be one, I highly recommend this channel. He's a savant at all sorts of low level things, quite funny and entertaining, and does a fantastic job of explaining what's going on.
A private lander from the company Intuitive Machines made the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years.
He is fighting a ruling denying him presidential immunity in the federal election interference case.
Ex-US President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to suspend a lower court ruling that he does not have presidential immunity from prosecution.
Part of the fuselage of the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 fell off, forcing an emergency landing.
Nasa's James Webb Telescope may have discovered a molecule thought only to be produced by life.
