Featued Links - December 18, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. It's a longer list than usual this week because I won't be posting next week. 

Birds in the hydro marsh

New Mind-Reading "BrainGPT" Turns Thoughts Into Text On Screen. "It offers new hope to people unable to communicate in other ways." I can see some dystopian uses for this technology: 'Strap him in and put the cap on his head. We'll find out what he really thinks.'

VIV Games Saves the World. "Win the game and save nature -- raise funds to save the Rainforest with VIV." An interesting approach to gaming and doing good things in the real world. See more about it from Karl Schroeder. 

Bill C-18 is Dead, Long Live Bill C-18: Government Rewrites Online News Act With Final Regulations. "The combined effect of this regulation should be obvious: excluding some smaller and ethnic outlets altogether while reserving most of the remaining money for larger entities such as Torstar or Postmedia who employ more journalist-adjacent personnel. I suspect many of the smaller players could see this coming, but they’ve been tossed under the bus in the effort to send more money to bigger outlets who stood to lose the most from Bill C-18 (and who incidentally lobbied the most for the legislation)." This will be a long-term disaster. 

When the New York Times lost its way. "America’s media should do more to equip readers to think for themselves." Meanwhile in the United States ..."

Doom’s creators reminisce about “as close to a perfect game as anything we made”. 'In 30th anniversary stream, Carmack and Romero recall a game dev "perfect storm."'

‘It’s all gone’: CAR-T therapy forces autoimmune diseases into remission. "Engineered immune cells, most commonly used to treat cancers, show their power against lupus and other immune disorders."

Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators,with Public Policy Recommendations. An examination of some of the limitations of the "gray goo problem" and how it could be combated.

55 Books Scientific American Recommends in 2023. "The best fiction, nonfiction, history and sci-fi books Scientific American staff read in 2023."

The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now. "As conservative states wage total culture war, college-educated workers—physicians, teachers, professors, and more—are packing their bags."

Diplomatic, geopolitical and economic consequences of an impending asteroid threat. "The Planetary Defense Conference 2023 addressed an asteroid threat scenario as difficult to confront. This article examines potential actions of relevant stakeholders, including States, the International Asteroid Warning Network, the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group, Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and the United Nations Security Council." 

Anti-LGBTQ+ Chill in Saskatchewan’s Unseasonably Warm Winter. "But hope still warms my heart." The poison from the south is seeping over the border. 

The harm caused by dehumanising language. "Sticks and stones famously break bones – but words can also hurt you. It is there in the charged rhetoric from both sides of the conflict unfolding in Israel and Gaza, just as it can be found in the language of clashes around the world: old tropes and name-calling that seek to paint whole groups of people as somehow less than human."

Canadian scientists are still being muzzled, and that risks undermining climate policy. 'Environmental scientists in Canada continue to be stifled in their ability to conduct and communicate their research. Interference in science, also referred to as “muzzling,” was a well-documented concern during the Conservative government of the early 2010’s, when it gripped the collective consciousness of Canadian federal public sector scientists. Our research sheds light on a broader understanding of the recent interference in environmental sciences in Canada.'