Labelling misinformation online is doing more harm than good. The possibility that Covid-19 came from a lab accident is just the latest example. Social media companies tried to suppress any discussion of it for months. But why? There’s no strong evidence against it, and evidence for other theories is still inconclusive. Pathogens have escaped from labs many times, and people have died as a result.  Social media fact-checkers don’t have any special knowledge or ability to sort fact from misinformation. What they have is extraordinary power to shape what people believe. And stifling ideas can backfire if it leads people to believe there’s a “real story” that is being suppressed. Misinformation is dangerous. It can keep people from getting… Source link

Westport’s famous pink Remarkable Bookcycle is now stationed on the sidewalk in front of 173 Main Street, the future home of Cold Fusion Gelato. The mobile free library offers free novels and children’s books to anyone who stops by, curated by a team of volunteer Remarkable Librarians. The bicycle was painted and retrofitted by Ryan Peterson with the lead of novelist Jane Green. The name and color come from the famous Remarkable Bookshop, which sat just up from the bike’s current spot before its closure. … Source link

I realize I have not written much about COVID 45. This blog usually concerns the little, odd, interesting features of infectious diseases. While a disaster, there has not been much with COVID that has been all that odd or interesting to write about. The literature/science has been changing so fast that most entries would be outdated as soon as published. But it has been 500 days of COVID, and it looks like we are nearing the end of the initial bolus of disease. So, what have I learned/concluded? My take. Your mileage may vary. Not that COVID is ever going to go away. A remarkable number of Americans prefer being vulnerable to COVID, able to get ill or pass it on to others and kill them. Huge swaths of the world will remain unvaccinated and a reservoir for… Source link

I realize I have not written much about COVID 45. This blog usually concerns the little, odd, interesting features of infectious diseases. While a disaster, there has not been much with COVID that has been all that odd or interesting to write about. The literature/science has been changing so fast that most entries would be outdated as soon as published. But it has been 500 days of COVID, and it looks like we are nearing the end of the initial bolus of disease. So, what have I learned/concluded? My take. Your mileage may vary. Not that COVID is ever going to go away. A remarkable number of Americans prefer being vulnerable to COVID, able to get ill or pass it on to others and kill them. Huge swaths of the world will remain unvaccinated and a reservoir for… Source link

By George Foley— Muncie, IN—The Black Music Month Celebration presented by Forward Visions, Inc. and in partnership with the Muncie Parks and Recreation Department is back. After having to cancel our celebration last summer due to COVID-19, we are excited to bring this event back to the people of Muncie and Delaware County on June 26th at McCulloch Park. The event will be free to the public and we will have live performances from three different groups. The Black Music Month Celebration began in 2008 and has been under the direction of Forward Visions, Inc. since 2012 with the help of various musical friends around Muncie. The celebrations grew in 2019 in McCulloch Park, which drew people from Muncie, Anderson, and Indianapolis as well. The celebration includes top regional… Source link

Although it seems a tad too hyperbolic to contend that the West’s commitment to intellectual freedom officially died in 1991, the date was symbolic. In the same year that the Soviet Union collapsed, the most brilliant theoretical physicist of the day resigned from the American Physical Society. Nobel Prize winner Prof Julian Schwinger had made the mistake of turning his attention to cold fusion – the theory that the process powering the Sun can be replicated at room temperature, promising abundant cheap energy. Physics journals refused to publish a theoretical analysis that challenged their received wisdom. “The pressure for conformity is enormous,” he wrote in a resignation letter that warned that censorship threatened “the death of science.” Whether he was right or wrong… Source link

China’s “artificial sun” fusion tokamak has just broken the world record for the longest period of time achieving a plasma temperature, maintaining an intense 120 million degrees Celsius (216 million degrees Fahrenheit) for 101 seconds, as well as a whopping 160 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds. Although nuclear fusion reactors are still in their infancy, maintaining these temperatures for increasing lengths of time pushes the field further into its eventual goal of near-unlimited energy.  The announcement was made by China’s state-affiliated media outlet the Global Times, revealing the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) had broken the fusion record, which was originally held by the… Source link

Los Angeles, CA – May 26, 2021 – Richard Faith, the published author of books: The Megamerse Series, The Old Doc Turtle Series, Barkley & Silvia, available to media to discuss his books and his love of Mother Earth, also being Executive Director of Mother Nature Festival Live Inc. The new book, just published, in the Old Doc Turtle Series is “I Can Barely See” Said Mandy Manatee. Richard at home Richard is working with Todd Hobin, the illustrator of his books. Todd has, thus far, illustrated Bee Scared, Crocodilly Lilly, and “I Can Barely See” Said Mandy Manatee. Richard is working with Todd Hobin, the illustrator of his books. Todd has, thus far, illustrated Bee Scared, Crocodilly Lilly, and “I Can Barely See” said Mandy Manatee. Richard woke up one night, with… Source link

And when you’re talking about binary explosives, ‘too much’ is kind of a relative term. The point is to make a big boom, and if you like that sort of thing, the bigger the boom, the better. Still, there has to be a limit. The limit is usually not how much is safe. The limit is usually how much you can afford. And Tannerite isn’t all that expensive. Which is why rednecks sometimes go overboard with it. Money and stupidity are not mutually exclusive. A popular thing these days is using Tannerite to explode a bunch of blue or pink chalk as a fun way to reveal the gender of a child about to be born. I have no idea what color you’re supposed to use if your child will be some other gender, and I don’t want to know. Anyway, back in April, a couple used 80 pounds of Tannerite for… Source link

Enlarge / What year, again, does Mr. Fusion show up to compete with Tesla et al? Universal Pictures It’s hard to write about battery research around these parts without hearing certain comments echo before they’re even posted: It’ll never see the market. Cold fusion is eternally 20 years away, and new battery technology is eternally five years away. That skepticism is understandable when a new battery design promises a revolution, but it risks missing the fact that batteries have gotten better. Lithium-ion batteries have reigned for a while now—that’s true. But “lithium-ion” is a category of batteries that includes a wide variety of technologies, both in terms of batteries in service today and the ones we’ve used previously…. Source link