November 26th, 2024:
- I asked MS CoPilot a simple question—“How does menthol alleviate pain?”—and let it rip. It ripped. And ripped. And ripped, spinning its spinner for four hours before I finally closed the window without any sort of response. I’ve had tolerably good luck working with CoPilot, but this suggests it still has a long way to go.
- MIT appears to agree: They are now telling us that generative AIs do not build world-models and thus cannot be counted on to be useful in any arbitrary context. Ummm…did we really need MIT to tell us that?
- Mayo Clinic researchers have found that stem cells grown in zero-G grow faster and work better in tests than stem cells grown on Earth. The research has only begun, but I could definitely see Elon Musk establishing a stem-cell farm in orbit if that research pans out.
- Jim Strickland sent me a link to a wonderful NASA animation of Moon photos as the Moon orbits Earth, showing all the phases the Moon goes through, including libration and position angle for the full year 2025. As best I can tell, it doesn’t display lunar eclipses, but there are many other places detailing times for those.
- Alzheimer’s may not be a brain disease so much as a mitochondria disease. Other theories beyond amyloid plaques are coming up, and this piece presents a nice summary of why we may be wrong about amyloid plaques and what other mechanisms might be behind dementia.
- There is now reasonable research showing that the infrasonic (very low) sounds emitted by ginormous wind turbines can cause health problems in humans and other animals.
- I ran across Justapedia about a month ago, and so far it holds up well compared to Wikipedia. The idea is to maintain a MediaWiki-based competitor to Wikipedia, one that is deliberately non-political and less obsessed with notability and various other side issues. Take a look. I’m rooting for them, but beating a competitor as entrenched as Wikipedia is a daunting challenge.
- UTIs are very common but kidney infections—which you would think are caused by the same pathogens—are not. Here’s an explanation why.
- When I was a little kid (figure 7 or 8, maybe 9) all the boys of similar age in my neighborhood were allowed to dig a hole in their backyards big enough to sit down in and play with toy soldiers, dinosaurs, or other injection-molded fantasy icons. There’s now evidence that letting kids play in the dirt can train our immune systems to recognize and shake off many more microorganisms than kids living in low-dirt environments like city cores.
- And it’s not just dirt. A Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist confirmed that human brains need a diet rich in meat to support mental health. Let’s put it this way: We did not evolve eating kale—but that said, Carol and I do eat a rainbow salad most nights with our meat course. I’m pretty sure that evolution-wise, the meat came first.
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