How To Make Your Own MREs

Nikole Hannah-Jones Is As Good At Economics as Paul Krugman

The only lungless frog in the world has been exposed as a fraud, in fact being the secret owner of a tiny pair of lungs and glottis – respiratory organs that had previously been declared as absent in the rare Bornean flat-headed frog. New research looked at museum specimens using a high-resolution micro-CT scanner and discovered that the previous conclusion that they were lungless frogs was, in fact, incorrect.Lungless tetrapods – that is, animals on four legs like amphibians, reptiles, and mammals – are relatively rare, but include one caecilian and numerous salamanders. Instead of breathing with lungs they breathe through nonpulmonary tissues, like the skin and mucus membranes in their mouths and throats.The Bornean flat-headed frog, Barbourula kalimantanensis, was believed to be a part of the lungless crew. Living in cold, oxygen-rich waters, scientists figured that it must be getting its full oxygen quota through its skin.That was until a team of scientists embarked on a large-scale project to use micro CT scanning to look at the internal anatomy of various vertebrates. Using two specimens that had been pivotal in the initial “discovery” that Bornean flat-headed frogs were lungless, they realized that there was in fact a tiny set of lungs tucked inside their bodies.“As in other frogs, the pulmonary apparatus of B. kalimantanensis contains a glottis that is located posterior to the tongue on the floor of the buccal cavity and just dorsal to the hyoid plate,” write the study authors. “The glottis is also visible in preserved specimens, and may have been overlooked because of the folds of the buccal floor. The presence of the laryngeal dilator muscles, which open the glottis during breathing in other frogs, suggests a typical functional respiratory system in B. kalimantanensis.”That the lungs are so minute suggests that Bornean flat-headed frogs probably do also rely on skin breathing, but evidently, planet Earth is no longer a place that can claim to be home to a lungless frog. Having such small lungs may benefit these animals in making them less buoyant, as getting swept away in currents is a considerable threat in fast flowing waters. It may also influence how their vocalizations transmit in the water, as has been seen among other aquatic frogs.The authors sign off their study expressing that we have the sharing of biological specimens from natural history collections to thank for the discovery, as without these, they’d never have been able to dive into the anatomy of the “world’s only lungless frog”. Now, who fancies a trip to the museum?The study is published in Current Biology.

COVID-19 is very much still with us – and if you’re anything like us, you’ll have noticed more and more people complaining that they’re getting sick over the last couple of weeks. We know that there are some new COVID variants doing the rounds, but what are the symptoms to look out for?The saucily named COVID-19 FLiRT variants have been surging to global dominance in recent weeks, overtaking the previous leading variant (JN.1) so that one of them, KP.2, is now responsible for the biggest proportion of infections. That’s according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Fortunately, experts say there’s reason to believe that any previous vaccines you’ve had, or a recent COVID infection, could still offer you some protection, a viewpoint that’s also backed by some promising recent research. But we know that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a wily one. While vaccines have undoubtedly shifted the course of this pandemic on a monumental scale, they don’t offer absolute protection against infection.Although the Northern Hemisphere is now outside the typical peak season for respiratory viruses, COVID-19 is not the only bug out there. How can you tell if you’ve been infected?The symptoms of COVID have changed over time, along with our understanding of how this disease can present very differently in different people. “When COVID first came, it was characterized by these very odd, vague symptoms – from brain fog, feeling exhausted, and losing taste and smell,” Ziad Tukmachi, a London-based GP, told BBC Future. “Now I feel it's mutated to more similar symptoms to the flu, where it's very difficult clinically to distinguish between the two.”The CDC last updated its guidance on COVID-19 symptoms on March 15 of this year as of the time of publication, so the list of possible symptoms reflects what we know about the most recent circulating variants. They include:Fever/chillsCoughShortness of breathFatigueMuscle achesHeadacheLoss of taste or smellSore throatRunny noseNausea/vomitingDiarrheaThese last two can surprise people, who may assume they’re suffering from a stomach bug instead. Equally, you may have symptoms so mild that you might mistake them for a cold or even hay fever. Symptoms like the loss of taste and smell, which were so characteristic of COVID in the early days, now appear to be much less common.The upshot of this is that it’s probably more difficult than ever to tell whether you’ve actually got COVID, and not some other illness, without getting a test. If you have cold and flu symptoms, the safest thing to do is to stay home and keep your distance from others. If you have risk factors that may make you more likely to get severe symptoms, the CDC recommends you seek medical attention promptly, as there are now treatments available that can help if they’re taken soon enough.COVID-19 can still cause long-term impacts that science is racing to try and understand. While for most of us, the times of mask mandates and toilet paper shortages are likely behind us, it’s important we are mindful of those in our communities who are more vulnerable, and who may not have yet been able to drop their defenses in the same way. Basic precautions like staying away from others when we’re sick, and seeking a test to double-check what symptoms might mean, can help everyone continue to navigate this pandemic as safely as possible.The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.   

Atra-Hasis, also spelled Atrahasis, is an eighteenth-century B.C.E. Akkadian epic, named after its human hero. It contains both a creation myth, explaining how the gods created humankind and an early flood account which was later incorporated into the Epic of Gilgamesh and is also thought to have influenced the biblical flood story. The Atrahasis is the Akkadian/Babylonian epic of the Great Flood sent by the gods to destroy human life. Only the good man, Atrahasis (his name translates as `exceedingly wise’) was warned of the impending deluge by the god Enki who instructed him to build an ark to save… This premium content is for PLUS+ members only. Visit the site and log in/register to read. The post The Atrahasis, Akkadian-Babylonian epic of the Great Flood appeared first on Anomalien.com.

In tomorrow’s interconnected world, the role of education in shaping a country’s ability to compete on the global stage cannot be overstated. A well-educated workforce is a prerequisite to any American company’s ability to drive the innovation and productivity needed to compete on the global stage while improving economic prosperity and social well-being at home. Yet in the face of this increased demand for educated employees, the narrative against academia in America is deafening. We hear Ivy League-educated pundits, sporting prep-school fashion, railing against intelligentsia and the “elites.” We witness congressmen grilling university presidents as if they were enemies of the state. As parents revolt against school boards, donors threaten to defund universities, and tech entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel toss around incentives for our youth to “just say no” to postsecondary education, our country’s values clearly have changed.Our demand for an educated workforce is steadily growing while our supply is heading in the wrong direction. Parents from all over the planet still dream of sending their children to America for the finest education attainable. In contrast, a recent Wall Street Journal article addressed “Why Americans have lost faith in the value of college.” While one cannot discount the challenges facing our academic institutions today and the barriers to education, we must not let inertia and polarization take over our ability to improve the system.Many articles today point to a dramatic increase in the cost of a college education. They point out that the average cost to attend college in 1980 was approximately $10,000 per year, but few complete the analysis to show that the comparison in today’s dollars would be nearly $40,000 or that the minimum wage in 1980 was just over $3 an hour.Meanwhile, college discount rates at some of the finest schools have increased to between 40-50%. In other words, the $80,000 sticker price at many of our most prestigious institutions equates to nearly half that amount being paid by the average student. This is a result of the increasing generosity of donors building huge endowments that can help fund discounts to underprivileged students.On balance, the actual cost of attending college today isn’t nearly as prohibitive as many would believe. While the cost of a quality education is too high for many, we can help students overcome this obstacle by making them aware of scholarships and helping to provide access to financial aid.Another obstacle: Many of our students aren’t prepared for their college education.English language proficiency and early learning programs have become a much greater challenge as the population has grown more diverse. Increased urbanization, a dramatic decrease in two-parent households, and a host of other societal changes created new problems. Change is always difficult but especially for those institutions providing basic government-funded services. State and local governments have struggled to keep pace with the changing needs.American students have performed in the middle of the pack in reading and science but significantly below other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries in math. Postsecondary graduation rates are down, especially among males. Meanwhile, other developed countries have increased their emphasis on education and have shown steady improvement in PISA scores and graduation rates.As a result, U.S. companies are increasingly turning to foreign nationals to fill professional roles. For example, roughly one in four physicians and surgeons practicing in the United States are foreign-born. While there may be many reasons for this trend toward foreign-born professionals in our workforce, the reality is that our demand for an educated workforce is steadily growing while our supply is heading in the wrong direction. The ability of American companies to sustain or grow their ability to compete globally is at stake. I saw this from the helm of both 7-Eleven and Blockbuster over 20 years ago as we struggled to fill the jobs needed to manage thousands of stores across the country. As with any supply-chain problem, I believe that corporations will ultimately rise to the challenge. Just as we have with so many business solutions, we must harness the power of technology to help us transform the supply chain of our most valuable resource: human knowledge. Technology has been able to help us completely reinvent other aspects of American life from the way we buy groceries to the way we communicate. We must leverage the advancements in technology today to improve the way we teach and learn.In the near term, we can certainly encourage the use of technology to supplement traditional, in-class learning. The pandemic gave us a gift in some ways. For example, the urgency of at-home learning caused companies like AT&T, Microsoft, Apple, and many others to step up with Wi-Fi hotspots, hardware, and software that make online learning accessible to high school students across the country. Such urgency accelerated students’ access to technology by as much as 20 years. This near-term capability is present today, and students have free, unlimited access to tools like Kahn Academy to bolster their in-class learning. Young people have more access to learning in the palm of their hands than ever before in the history of mankind.An important next step is to encourage corporations to assess the cost-benefit of investment in public education. In other words, corporations should consider support for public schools as an investment, not philanthropy. Companies can find a measurable return on their investment in public schools by reducing recruiting and training costs if they improve access to an educated workforce.We should urge our tech leaders to develop open solutions for educational platforms that integrate engaging and incentive-based tools, making them world-class. We have at our fingertips the tools to use machine learning to enhance human learning exponentially by curating the teaching methods to how individuals will learn most effectively. Such tools can even help us reimagine the role of the teacher in teaching and learning.Finally, we should encourage our young people to recognize the importance of education to unlock their full potential. If they wish to pursue a vocation, that’s equally noble, but they should be aware of all options and encouraged to learn as much as possible. If they don’t have a clear picture of their ultimate career path — like many of us — then encourage them to get as much breadth of knowledge as possible to provide options.The bottom line: We should not dissuade our youth from college but instead should remind them that education is an investment that pays dividends for the rest of your life.

Intelligence operatives had a terrific view of Depeche Mode’s recent two-night stint at the Accor Arena, thanks to AI-powered mass surveillance algorithms. Smart cameras captured everything, everyone, in the name of protection.French law enforcement and intelligence deployed the “threat-detecting” software as a trial run for the widespread surveillance that police of every rank will use during the 2024 Summer Olympics, which will take place from July 26 to August 11, 2024. It turns out that Big Brother isn’t monitoring us, because we’re doing all the work for him.Authorities will divide Paris into various zones, connected by checkpoints that require passes via QR code. Spectacle is at play, lads and lassies. And what better stage for spectacular lust and hatred than the Olympics, originally a mud-fight between intelligent beefcakes? The Paris Police Chief Laurent Nunez hailed the state overreach as “largely successful.”One of the software platforms is Wintics, whose Cityvision provides “video analysis software for urban stakeholders.” YouTube www.youtube.com Beyond the bone-chilling gravity of mass surveillance called “Cityvision,” especially when paired with the word “stakeholder,” the software's capabilities are unknowable. One of the biggest investors in Wintics is Ardian, a French private investment company that handles billions of dollars in assets and has assured us that Cityvision is a fantastic idea.The media, meanwhile, has been vaguely giddy. The Washington Post announced that “AI is powering a revolution in policing, at the Olympics and beyond.” Paris security perimeter to be enforced week before 2024 Olympics opening ceremony • FRANCE 24 www.youtube.com Human Rights Watch in its World Report 2024 concluded that “surveillance technology at the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games poses risks to fundamental rights.”Amnesty International urged French lawmakers to “reject any plans to use video surveillance powered by artificial intelligence (AI) at the 2024 Paris Olympics,” because “such draconian technologies of mass surveillance violate the rights to privacy and can lead to violations of the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” potentially leading to “dystopian levels of surveillance in the future.”The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this technological hyper-revolution, a war that we’d already surrendered to, outfoxed by the prevailing methods of digital control: self-surveillance and willing surrender of our privacy and some of our lesser freedoms, caught in an increasingly elaborate state of exception. The urban fortressFrance’s historic role in the spread and ubiquity of surveillance rivals its prestigious cuisine. “Surveillance” is a French word, after all. In the 11th century, this emerged in the restructuring of the city, leading the mid-1700s' invention of the urban fortress.Law enforcement had figured out how to spy. Napoleon was the first to use aerial surveillance — a new kind of espionage. Suddenly, warfare was secretive. Invisible. Military violence became clandestine, the task of secret police, an “army of the interior.” Its weapons were surveillance and disinformation. The war could take place behind the scenes. Nobody even had to know who was fighting. It was a game the elites could play on their own but through society. This marks a shift from passive surveillance to active, AI-driven mass surveillance. Modern warfare is about depriving the enemy. Containing its movement. The ability to move is the mark of freedom. This is part of the reason governments often want to centralize.Where’s the revolution?There’s a funny connection between surveillance and disinformation. We like to think that surveillance is designed to get rid of disinformation. In reality, surveillance and disinformation are like two con men pretending to fight. They’re both working for intelligence agencies and secret services. Their job is to confuse us. To make us dumb. To believe in the right illusion. We’re supposed to feel tired and outraged.The funny thing about disinformation is that it’s a counterattack. It’s an assault on truth. It’s a way to silence. But in order to work, intelligence elites have to know what we think, feel, and believe.Modern wartime always leads to a flood of propaganda, especially in the social media era. War is when the elites put all their knowledge of propaganda to use. Surveillance is how we lose our privacy and our personal information. Our information gives the powerful people even more power. Intelligence agencies use that information to make disinformation. Worse, they’re doing it all right before our eyes.It turns out that Big Brother isn’t monitoring us, because we’re doing all the work for him. We are experts at self-surveillance. We do it with a smile. For the sake of convenience, we surrender our privacy and some of our freedoms. All the while, a new totalitarianism is on the rise. Our future is a world of surveillance. Nonstop surveillance. More and more, we’ll be watched, scanned, monitored, ranked, punished, spied on, and evaluated.

In the 2013 film "Her," Joaquin Phoenix plays a shy computer nerd who falls in love with an AI he speaks to through a pair of white wireless earbuds. A little over a decade after the film’s release, it’s no longer science fiction. AirPods are old news, and with the imminent full rollout of OpenAI’s GPT-4o, such AI will be a reality (the “o” is for “omni"). In fact, OpenAI head honcho Sam Altman simply tweeted after the announcement: “her.” GPT-4o can carry on a full conversion with you. In the coming weeks, it will be able to see and interpret the environment around it. Unlike previous iterations of GPT that were flat and emotionless, GPT-4o has personality and even opinions. It pauses and stutters like a person, and it’s even a little flirty. Here’s a video of GPT-4o critiquing a man’s outfit for a job interview: Interview Prep with GPT-4o www.youtube.com In fact, no human involvement is required. Two instances of GPT-4o can carry on an entire conversation without human involvement. Soon, humans may not be required for many jobs. Here’s a video of GPT-4o handling a simulated customer service call. Currently, nearly 3 million Americans work in customer service, and chances are they’ll need a new job within a couple of years. Two GPT-4os interacting and singing www.youtube.com GPT-4o is an impressive technology that was mere science fiction at the start of the decade, but its also comes with some harrowing implications. First, let’s clear up some confusion about the components of GPT-4o and what’s currently available. Clearing up confusion about what GPT-4o is OpenAI announced several things at once, but they’re not all rolling out at the same time. GPT-4o will eventually be available to all ChatGPT users, but currently, the text-based version is only available for ChatGPT Plus subscribers who pay $20 per month. It can be used on the web or in the iPhone app. Compared to GPT-4, GPT-4o is much faster and just a little smarter. Web searches are much faster and more reliable, and GPT is better about listing its sources than it was with GPT-4. However, the new text and voice models are not yet available to anyone except developers interacting with the GPT API. If you subscribe to ChatGPT Plus, you can use Voice Mode with the 4o engine, but it will still be using the old voice model without image recognition and the new touches. Additionally, OpenAI is rolling out a new desktop app for the Mac, which will let you bring up ChatGPT with a keyboard shortcut and feed it screenshots for analysis. It will eventually be free to all, but right now it’s only available to select ChatGPT Plus subscribers. ChatGPT macOS app... reminds me of Windows Copilot www.youtube.com Finally, you may watch these demo videos and wonder why the voice assistant on your phone is still so, so dumb. There are strong rumors indicating that Apple is working on a deal to license the GPT tech from OpenAI for its next-generation Siri, likely as a stopgap while Apple develops its own AI tech. Is GPT-4o AGI? The hot topic in the AI world is AGI, short for artificial general intelligence. In short, it’s an AI indistinguishable from interacting with a human being. I asked GPT-4o for the defining characteristics of an AGI, and it presented the following: Generalization: The ability to apply learned knowledge to new and varied situations. Adaptability: The capacity to learn from experience and improve over time. Understanding and reasoning: The capability to comprehend complex concepts and reason logically. Self-awareness: Some definitions of AGI include an element of self-awareness, where the AI understands its own existence and goals. Is GPT-4o an AGI? AI developer Benjamin De Kraker called it “essentially AGI,” while NVIDIA’s Jim Fan, who was also an early OpenAI intern, was much more reserved. I decided to go directly to the source and asked GPT-4o if it’s an AGI. It predictably rejected the notion. “I don't possess general intelligence, self-awareness, or the ability to learn and adapt autonomously beyond my training data. My responses are based on patterns and information from the data I was trained on, rather than any understanding or reasoning ability akin to human intelligence,” GPT-4o said. But doesn’t that also describe many, if not most, people? How many of us go through life parroting things we heard without applying additional understanding or reasoning? I suspect De Kraker is right: To the average person, the full version of GPT-4o will be AGI. If OpenAI’s demo videos are an accurate example of its actual capabilities, and they likely are, then GPT-4o successfully emulates the first four tenets of AGI: generalization, adaptability, understanding, and reasoning. It can view and understand its surroundings, can give opinions, and it constantly learns new information from crawling the web or user input. At least, it will be convincing enough for what we in the business world call “decision makers.” It’ll be convincing enough to replace human beings in many customer-facing roles. And for many lonely people, they will undoubtedly form emotional bonds with the flirty AI, which Sam Altman is fully aware of. Mysterious happenings at OpenAI We would be remiss not to discuss some mysterious high-level departures from OpenAI following the GPT-4o announcement. Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist and co-founder, quit immediately after, soon followed by Jan Leike, who helped run OpenAI’s “superalignment” group that seeks to ensure that the AI is aligned with human interests. This follows many other resignations from OpenAI in the past few weeks. Sutskever led an attempted coup against Altman last year, successfully deposing him as CEO for about a week before he was reinstated as CEO. Sutskever can best be described as a “safetyist” who is deeply concerned about the implications of an AGI, so his sudden resignation following the GPT-4o announcement has sparked a flurry of online speculation about whether OpenAI has achieved AGI or if he realized that it’s impossible, because it would be strange to leave the company if it were on the verge of AGI. From his statement, it seems that Sutskever doesn’t believe OpenAI has achieved AGI and that he’s moving on to greener pastures — ”a project that is very personally meaningful to me.” Given OpenAI’s rapid trajectory with him as chief scientist, he can certainly write his own ticket now.

Released in 1822, the Travelers’ Tour Through the United States took players on a cross-country adventure

Even if we wanted to keep space weapons-free, space is already a domain central to modern military operations.