perestroika

Summary: a snake collector immunized himself on a rotating basis to lots of lethal snakes. I will not certify him as sane, since at some point he allowed snakes to directly bite himself and ended up in coma for several days (it was by accident). As a result of prolonged work with increasing doses and cyclically repeating venoms, he seems to have done human kind a considerable favour: it was possible to isolate venom antibodies from his blood which have broad and powerful effect and don't cause as much allergy as animal antibodies.

Study of the calls that bonobos use to communicate indicates that their vocal system shows both trivial and non-trivial compositionality, the latter previously thought to occur only in human languages.

(Note: since The Guardian messed up their link to the research paper, I'm providing it here: Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos.)

Summary: back in 2008, researchers found a big difference between the incidence and mortality of prostate cancer in Asian and "western" countries (even if situated in Asia). Incidence of the disease in "western" countries was several times higher. Additional data was pulled in to determine if the cause was genetic. People of Asian descent born in "western" countries had a comparably high risk, but people who had immigrated to "western" countries retained a lower risk. Thus, evidence pointed at society. The obvious candidate explanation was eating food that contains phytoestrogens from soy beans.

Finnish interview: over here.

Update: I'm a fool, they have an English version, it is here.

~~English translation: over here on Riseup Share.~~

(For ease of reading, one can click "View in browser", it should display as a plain text file.)

Summary: a Finnish-language anarchist website published an interview with Ksusha, a member in the Solidarity Collectives network in Ukraine.

I found the interview informative of the situation they have, and wanted to share. However, Finnish is as good as encryption to most people, so I translated it to English.

Since I think Lemmy does not support posting long texts in post summaries or comments, I uploaded the translation to RiseUp Share.

I hope authors forgive that I've not contacted them to ask for permission, because I don't have their contacts, although eventually I must find a way to contact Solidarity Collectives on another matter. The interview in Finnish was also published in the magazine "Kapinatyöläinen" ("rebel worker"), issue 61.

A short summary: contrary to widespread opinion, the brain of a typical person is not sterile, but inhabited with microbes that have health effects.

Originally found here. It seems that cops in California entered a still unexplored abyss of incompetence. Fortunately nobody was hurt, so it can be considered comic relief - except by the medical company whose MRI machine they cooked.

Officer Kenneth Franco drew on his "twelve hours of narcotics training" and discovered the facility was using more electricity than nearby stores, the lawsuit said.

"Officer Franco, therefore, concluded (the facility) was cultivating cannabis, disregarding the fact that it is a diagnostic facility utilizing an MRI machine, X-ray machine and other heavy medical equipment -- unlike the surrounding businesses selling flowers, chocolates and children's merchandise," the suit said.

After bursting into the diagnostics center in October last year, the SWAT team found only offices, a single employee and medical devices, including a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine, a diagnostic tool that uses high-powered magnets to create detailed scans of a patient's body.

Disregarding a sign warning that metal objects should be kept well away, one officer wandered near the machine "dangling a rifle in his right hand," the lawsuit said.

"Expectedly, the magnetic force of the MRI machine attracted the LAPD officer's loose rifle, securing it to the machine," the suit said.

Instead of seeking expert advice on how to retrieve the weapon, one officer decided to activate the emergency shutdown button.

"This action caused the MRI's magnet to rapidly lose superconductivity, leading to the evaporation of approximately 2,000 liters of helium gas and resulting in extensive damage to the MRI machine," the suit said.

The officer then retrieved his gun, but left a magazine full of bullets on the floor of the MRI office, the suit says.

The suit, which was filed in California last week, seeks unspecified damages and costs.

This is not just a "happy birthday" post for Linux, but also a reminder that despite it becoming big and professional, the freedom to tinker with Linux remains accessible.

I had to use this freedom recently when I discovered that V4L video pipelines could buffer up to 32 frames both on the encoder and decoder (unacceptable, we demand minimum latency!) so it was again time to recompile the kernel. :)

My previous time to recompile parts of Linux had been a week ago. Some hacker had discovered a way of tricking their WiFi card beyond the legally permitted power - with what I understand as thermal compensation settings. Wanting to taste the sweet extra milliwatts, I noticed that nobody was packaging that driver as a binary, so the only way to get it was to patch and recompile its kernel module.

Finally of course, thanks to Linux we have countless open-source drivers and if you want to venture onto the path that Linus Torvalds took - of building an operating system - congratulations, you have less obstacles in your way. :) Some people have taken this path with the Circle project and you can compile your homebrew and bare-metal kernel for a Raspberry Pi with reasonable effort, and it can even draw on the screen, write to serial ports and flip GPIO lines without reverse-engineering anyone's trade secrets. :)

In the article, researchers modeled the passage of the solar system through the galactic interstellar medium, components of which move at differing velocities and orbits.

They found that approximately 2-3 megayears ago, the solar system most likely entered a cloud of mainly cold hydrogen, and the density of the cloud was such that it should have considerably compressed the heliosphere (Sun's bubble of radiation and fields). Earth would have been outside the heliosphere either permanently or periodically. Currently the heliosphere ends far beyond the most distant planet, at approximately 130 Earth-Sun distances (astronomical units).

This would have greatly subdued the influence of solar wind on Earth, at the same time exposing the planet to interstellar cosmic rays. It is further speculated that studies which analyze Earth climate during the aforementioned period may benefit from accounting for this possibility.

Researchers sought confirmation for their model from geological records and found some, in the isotope content of iron and plutonium in sediments: iron 60 and plutonium 244 aren't produced by processes on Earth, so an influx would mean that solar wind no longer sufficed to beat back interstellar gas and dust (the latter containing radioisotopes from supernova explosions).

"By studying geological radioisotopes on Earth, we can learn about the past of the heliosphere. 60Fe is predominantly produced in supernova explosions and becomes trapped in interstellar dust grains. 60Fe has a half-life of 2.6 Myr, and 244Pu has a half-life of 80.7 Myr. 60Fe is not naturally produced on Earth, and so its presence is an indicator of supernova explosions within the last few (~10) million years. 244Pu is produced through the r-process that is thought to occur in neutron star mergers22. Evidence for the deposition of extraterrestrial 60Fe onto Earth has been found in deep-sea sediments and ferromanganese crusts between 1.7 and 3.2 Ma (refs. 23,24,25,26,27), in Antarctic snow [28] and in lunar samples [29]. The abundances were derived from new high-precision accelerator mass spectrometry measurements. The 244Pu/60Fe influx ratios are similar at ~2 Ma, and there is evidence of a second peak at ~7 Ma (refs. 23,24)."

Background: yesterday, there was heated discussion in the thread "military-industrial complex is a supervillain of causing the climate crisis" (link).

Among others, the thread creator posted a comment to the Guardian article "The climate costs of war and militaries can no longer be ignored", commenting it thusly:

If you want more context or won’t take my word on how militarism will kill is all, you can read this article.

I replied, a copy of my reply is below for your judgement. My reply got moderated by someone with the reason "Comment does not address intent of original post and promotes weapons industry / war in Ukraine."

I think my comment both addressed the topic, did not promote the weapons industry but helping Ukraine defend itself (ironically, tools for military self-defense come from the weapons industry) and did not promote the war (in fact, I noted that war is expensive, resource-intensive and stupid), but did explain the dynamics of war and revolutions.

I consider this moderator misconduct, likely motivated by their political views - and have asked a server administrator to talk with the moderator involved, to ascertain if they can refrain from using moderator powers as a political club to hit people, or to secure their demotion from a moderating role.

The removed post, for your judgement:

The article is fine, and I second the recommendation to read it, but from the article to the slogan you present, things do not follow a logical path.

Yes, war is both an incredibly expensive activity (diverting money that could be used) and a resource-intensive activity (the money goes into actual materials that almost surely destroy something or get destroyed) and an incredibly stupid activity (and it can snowball)...

...but the problem is that successful unilateral disarmament during a war tends to result in a situation called "defeat". If the defeat is not an attack being defeated, but defense being defeated, that is called a "conquest". Now, letting a conquest succeed has a historical tendency of the conqueror having more experience at conquest, and more resources to conquer with... which has, several times in history, lead to another conquest or a whole series of conquests. A regional war in Ukraine resulting in Ukraine being taken over by Russia has a high probability of producing:

1. a bigger regional war later, in which Russia, using its own resources and those of Ukraine, proceeds to another country, gets into a direct conflict with NATO and then indeed there is a risk of a global war

2. an encouraging effect after which China, noting that international cooperation against the agressor was ultimately insufficient, and deeming itself better prepared than Russia, decides that it can take Taiwan with military force

However, a war ending with inability to show victory tends to produce a revolution in the invading country. For example, World War I produced a revolution in Russia and subsequently a revolution in Germany, with several smaller revolutions in between, empires collapsing and a brief bloom of democracy in Europe, before the Great Depression and the rise of fascism ate all the fruits. The Falklands War produced a revolution in Argentina. The Russo-Japanese war produced the 1905 near-revolution in Russia.

It is better for Ukraine to not get conquered. It is better for Russia to be unable to conquer Ukraine. That result is also better for everyone around them. It's even better globally because it sets a precedent of large-scale cooperation defeating an agressive superpower, discouraging agressive superpowers from undertaking similar wars until memory starts fading again.

Unfortunately, until we see indications that Russian society is getting ready to stop the war (this could involve starting negotiations on terms palatable to Ukraine, a change of leadership, a withdrawal, a revolution, etc)... the path to achieving that outcome remains wearing out the agressor: producing enough weapons and delivering them to Ukraine.

Ultimately, both sides in a war wear each other down. The soldiers most eager to fight are killed soonest. The people most unwilling to get mobilized or recruited, and soldiers most unwilling to fight - they remain alive. If they are pressed forever, some day they will make the calculation: there are less troops blocking the way home than in the trenches of the opposing side. After that realization, they eventually tend to mutiny. Invading troops tend to do that a bit easier than defending troops, because they sense less purpose in their activity. In the long run, if nothing else happens, that will happen. There is just (probably, regrettably) no particularly quick shortcut to getting there.

This article is about fixing, but with a twist - it's about fixing trains that their manufacturer sabotaged. :D

In Poland, it took the hacker crew "Dragon Sector" months of work to find a software "time bomb" that was sabotaging "Impuls" trains manufactured by Newag, once their maintenance was handed over to another company.

Let this be a reminder to everyone about closed source technology and critical infrastructure.

Living off grid often correlates with poorly accessible locations - because that's where the infrastructure is not.

On certain latitudes, especially near bodies of water, especially in remote locations - do not ask who the snow comes for - it always comes for you (and with a grudge). So, what ya gonna do?

Over here, a tractor being incomplete (it is great folly to go into winter with an incomplete tractor), snow is handled by an electric microcar. Since the microcar is made of thin sheet metal and plastic, it cannot carry a plow... but the rear axle being solid steel, it can pull one.

The plow is one year old, and was previously pulled by a gasoline car. It is made of construction steel: 8 mm L-profiles shaped like a letter A with double horizontal bars. The point of connection on top ensures it doesn't lift too much while plowing. It's currently fixed with an unprofessional and temporary C-clamp (there will be an U-bolt soon). It is pulled with a chain.

If snow is heavy, the L-profiles lift the plow on top of snow, and you have to plow the same road many times. Sometimes it veers off sideways. Generally, you have to catch the snow early with this system - if you're late, you're stuck. :)

Not many advantages, but dirt cheap. Don't go plowing public roads with such devices - it is nearly invisible to fellow drivers, and cops would get a seizure.

Some Chinese researchers have found a new catalyst for electrochemically reducing CO2. Multiple such catalysts are known, but so far, only copper favours reaction products with a carbon chain of at least 2 carbons (e.g. ethanol).

The new catalyst requires a specific arrangement of tin atoms on tin disulphate substrate, seems to work in a solution of potassium hydrogen carbonate (read: low temperature) and is 80% specific to producing ethanol - a very practical chemical feedstock and fuel.

The new catalyst seems stable enough (97% activity after 100 hours). Reaction rates that I can interpret into "good" or "bad" aren't found - it could be slow to work. The original is paywalled, a more detailed article can be found at:

Carbon-Carbon Coupling on a Metal Non-metal Catalytic Pair

Overall, it's nice to see some research into breaking down CO2 for energy storage, but there is nothing practical (industrial) on that front yet, only lab work.