Weekend Thoughts - 12.17.16

Image by Mydhili Bayyapunedi, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Disinfo dedicated an article to 2016 as the "year of disinformation". From England voting to leave the European Union to Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election, myriad global events were affected by "fake news". Influential companies like Google and Facebook are planning to develop filtering systems that will reduce or eliminate "fake news" stories, but that brings to mind many questions. Who will assess whether a story is legitimate or not? Will non-mainstream news sources be at a disadvantage? And ultimately, these companies may be more focused on making money than accurately identifying a true journalistic attempt versus clickbait. Although "fake news" has been around for a long time, it may be more prevalent than ever. That means that we must be personally accountable and stay vigilant—don't believe everything you read, see, or hear, and don't share any news without verifying its veracity first.

2. Along a similar vein, Edward Snowden was interviewed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Periscope. Their conversation covered the proliferation of "fake news", the issues with metadata surveillance, an imbalance in privacy (private citizens increasingly have no privacy while public officials have maintained their levels of privacy), and some feature suggestions for Twitter to consider implementing. It's an excellent interview and definitely worth viewing.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 12.10.16

Image by Andrea Kirkby, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution was located when a fossilized dinosaur tail was found earlier this week. The 99-million-year-old dinosaur tail, which is the size of an apricot, was preserved in an amber tomb. Perhaps the most important discovery was the fact that feathers were found on the tail, which further bolsters the idea that dinosaurs had feathers instead of scales. The tail belonged to a Cretaceous-era young coelurosaurian, which was roughly the size of a modern sparrow and could easily fit in a human hand.

2. I found the tale of this account of a second-round interview for a job at Amazon to be rather disturbing. It certainly sounds frustrating for the interviewee, who was asked to install software that allowed the proctor to remotely control the entire machine, and repeatedly asked to use his computer's camera to show the proctor the contents of his bedroom. Even worse, when he asked to end the interview, he was kept on hold multiple times by the proctor. If anyone is interested in possibly working at Amazon in the near future, you really ought to give this interviewee's experience a read.

3. Fans of Robert Anton Wilson, rejoice! A lost 1975 book by the author titled Starseed Signals will be published next year. The book was written during a time of close collaboration with Timothy Leary and formed the basis for some of Wilson's later books, such as Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati. Clocking in at around 340 pages, the book is expected to be fairly substantial. If you haven't read any RAW yet, I would suggest starting with The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which are some of my favorite books ever written.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 12.3.16

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Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Most modern scientists assume that the speed of light is constant, which is part of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Specifically, this theory plays a role in the conceptualization of what occurred in the very early universe, seconds after the Big Bang. However, some researchers have recently posited that the speed of light may have been much higher in this early universe than it currently is. This is one of many concepts that parapsychology researcher Rupert Sheldrake presented in his research on how the universal gravitational constant varies. These researchers have developed a test that will be able to identify changes in light speed, which would change our understanding of how the universe expanded. One of the issues with the constant light speed theory is that it doesn't allow for enough time for light to have traveled to where it is in the cosmos. However, light traveling at a faster initial speed would fill in that gap and force scientists to rethink their idea of how the early universe was formed.

2. As a former librarian (I worked at a music library for a couple years in college), I would've loved to have seen this recent video from TED-Ed that explains the quickest way to sort books. The technique is borrowed from computer programming language and is able to sort books (or other items) much quicker than other techniques. During the past few moves that I have gone through during the last couple years, I have found myself naturally using this technique to sort my own items—DVDs, CDs, books, etc. However, I'm also in the process of getting rid of nearly all of my physical media. In fact, I no longer have any DVDs or CDs in my house, and have sold/donated/gifted over half of my print book collection within the past year. Regardless, this educational video is a fun watch for anyone interested in learning to sort more efficiently!

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 11.26.16

Image by Matsukin, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Forward-thinking technology company Tesla has announced that it has successfully configured a solar energy microgrid that is capable of meeting "nearly 100 percent" of an entire island. Specifically, the island of Ta'u (in American Samoa) has been outfitted with 5,328 solar panels and 60 Tesla PowerPacks that provide 6 megawatt-hours of energy storage. With this setup, Ta'u is able to have energy even if they were to go without sunlight for three straight days. As a remote community, the island previously ran on diesel generators, so the Tesla project has prevented the burning of 300 gallons of fuel per day and the cost of purchasing and shipping barrels of diesel. In addition, the inhabitants now have continuous access to electricity, whereas they previously had to ration power or accept occasional outages. If Tesla's mission is to wean the world off of fossil fuels, it is moving in the right direction.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 11.19.16

Image by Xenboy, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. An analysis of the polls taken during the Democratic primary show that Bernie Sanders would have had a much better chance at beating Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton did. However, the media pundits wanted us to believe that Sanders was not fully-vetted while Clinton was. This article explains why both of those assumptions were incorrect.

2. A type of "calendar synesthesia" helps to explain how our minds deal with time. These synaesthetes are able to "see" images of calendars in their mind when they think about specific months, whether they have already passed or are in the future. The idea is that all of our minds are constructed in a way that allows us to map time in physical space.

3. For something comical, check out the reason why Disney owns the domain muppetfucker.com. It's a good one, I promise.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.