The Vergecast USB-C Holiday Spec-tacular
One of my favorite holiday traditions.
Growing Up With Cats Linked to Higher Schizophrenia Risk
Growing up with cats could have a strange effect on your mind, new research suggests. The study, a large review of existing literature, found that cat ownership at a young age was associated with a noticeably higher risk of developing schizophrenia and related disorders—a risk possibly fueled by increased exposure to the cat-hosted parasite Toxoplasma gondii.
Some things are true, and some things feel true. This might be both.
The deadly missile race in the Middle East
The ballistic missiles that arced from Yemen to Israel on October 31st set several records. They probably travelled farther than any other ballistic missile fired as an act of aggression, having crossed at least 1,600km. They were intercepted by Israel’s Arrow missile-defence system above the Negev desert. It was the first time that Arrow, deployed for 23 years, had taken out a surface-to-surface missile. It was also the first ever combat interception in space, according to two Israeli officials.
Some recent news I missed…
A History of Feminist Antisemitism
“I think you mute the terror of the swastika.”
What a chilling line.
It’s almost as though our time spent on computers has deprived us of the ability to think with nuance and forced us into these false binaries.
I have watched a strange rise in antisemitism (not mere anti-Zionism) among my leftist friends. Why? I don’t quite know, but it’s unsettling.
It wasn’t just women of color who decided that Jewish women were too domineering, too successful, too white, too obsessed with the Holocaust, and too interested in their newfound ethnic identity as a way of dominating the newly identity-conscious feminist scene. New-Age feminists believed that Judaism had killed goddess worship, and white Socialist professors equated Jews with capitalists. But Jewish women had once considered women of color to be their natural allies, and now that the feminist theories and alliances of women of color were the most influential, it was their antisemitism that Jewish feminists called out most often. Women of color resented this criticism and said that it was racist.
I’m so glad to be a gay man.
In Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory, queer scholar Heather Love wrote that queer theory’s politics “are split between the liberalism of the civil rights movement and a lumpen appetite for destruction.” This new “queer” identity destroyed identity categories themselves. Love wrote that the vagueness of the term “queer”—sort of about sexual practices, but also not—coupled with the idea that everyone understands it but you, “creates a desire to be ‘in the know.’” Like the cultural ephemera it often turns to as its intellectual objects, queer theory thrived on the transgressive frisson of the unexpected and the illegitimate.
I couldn’t have said it better.
What Is Property? by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
In this treatise, Proudhon contrasts the legitimate right to possession, in which individuals own the products of their labor and the necessary means of production, and the illegitimate right to property, the absolute right granted to proprietors by civil laws to “use and abuse.”
I have long believed the relative wealth of an area correlates directly to the amount of no-flavor sparkling water available in their gas stations.
Homes need to be built for better internet
I have the privilege of knowing how to troubleshoot this stuff on my own largely due to my profession as a tech journalist. To others, this stuff is a foreign language. Knowing how to set up a home internet system is not a skill everyone has, and the complicated steps required to do it properly make moving to a new place more stressful, especially if you work remotely and need the internet to earn a paycheck.
E.U. Agrees on AI Act, Landmark Regulation for Artificial Intelligence
European Union policymakers agreed on Friday to a sweeping new law to regulate artificial intelligence, one of the world’s first comprehensive attempts to limit the use of a rapidly evolving technology that has wide-ranging societal and economic implications.
The law, called the A.I. Act, sets a new global benchmark for countries seeking to harness the potential benefits of the technology, while trying to protect against its possible risks, like automating jobs, spreading misinformation online and endangering national security. The law still needs to go through a few final steps for approval, but the political agreement means its key outlines have been set.
European policymakers focused on A.I.’s riskiest uses by companies and governments, including those for law enforcement and the operation of crucial services like water and energy. Makers of the largest general-purpose A.I. systems, like those powering the ChatGPT chatbot, would face new transparency requirements. Chatbots and software that creates manipulated images such as “deepfakes” would have to make clear that what people were seeing was generated by A.I., according to E.U. officials and earlier drafts of the law.
Very curious to see how this holds up.
Notable that any and all meaningful regulation over the tech industry is coming from Europe.
Getting your DNA or your loved ones’ DNA sequenced means you are potentially putting people who are related to those people at risk in ways that are easily predictable, but also in ways we cannot yet predict because these databases are still relatively new. I am writing this article right now because of the hack, but my stance on this issue has been the same for years, for reasons outside of the hack.
Governments Are Spying on Apple and Google Users Through Push Notifications
🚨🚨🚨
New theory claims to unite Einstein’s gravity with quantum mechanics
Modern physics is founded upon two pillars: quantum theory on the one hand, which governs the smallest particles in the universe, and Einstein’s theory of general relativity on the other, which explains gravity through the bending of spacetime. But these two theories are in contradiction with each other and a reconciliation has remained elusive for over a century.
The prevailing assumption has been that Einstein’s theory of gravity must be modified, or “quantized,” in order to fit within quantum theory. This is the approach of two leading candidates for a quantum theory of gravity, string theory and loop quantum gravity.
But a new theory, developed by Professor Jonathan Oppenheim (UCL Physics & Astronomy) and laid out in a paper in Physical Review X, challenges that consensus and takes an alternative approach by suggesting that spacetime may be classical—that is, not governed by quantum theory at all.
Instead of modifying spacetime, the theory—dubbed a “postquantum theory of classical gravity”—modifies quantum theory and predicts an intrinsic breakdown in predictability that is mediated by spacetime itself. This results in random and violent fluctuations in spacetime that are larger than envisaged under quantum theory, rendering the apparent weight of objects unpredictable if measured precisely enough.
There is more that Israel has to do: the warnings it sends to civilian residents, the evacuations, and the humanitarian corridors are only a beginning; there have to be adequate supplies for the refugees sent south to escape the battle for Gaza City. Hamas’s refusal to share its extensive resources with its own people means that Israel has to step in, however strange that seems. In conventional wars, one side is not required to re-supply the other side when its resources are depleted. But the nature of asymmetry and the recent history of Gaza make it necessary here. It is especially important for Israel to supply fuel for the hospitals over which it has assumed control—hospitals that Hamas used for military purposes while failing to provide the electricity necessary for medical purposes.
Israel, now, has the chance to be an exemplar, a beacon of democracy and liberalism. They must do what civilized people do: take care of people, even those that wish them harm.
There is no other way forward.
Down that path, Israel has the opportunity to give all of us some hope for our shared future. The world feels desperate for some goodness, and if Israel were to take on that mantle, it would win the hearts and minds of so many.
How Elon Musk and Larry Page’s AI Debate Led to OpenAI and an Industry Boom
At the heart of this competition is a brain-stretching paradox. The people who say they are most worried about A.I. are among the most determined to create it and enjoy its riches. They have justified their ambition with their strong belief that they alone can keep A.I. from endangering Earth.
I do not want to become one with a computer.
Nor do I want to live without them.
Yet as I’ve watched the wave of social media crash over the culture in the last twenty years, I know I’m powerless to stop what’s coming. Our neurology will dictate what’s next, and just as it did with social media, most people will be swept away.
Your attention is everything — it’s all you have.
Remind yourself of this every day.
Visualize how ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) work.
Complicated, perhaps, but also astonishingly simple and, in hindsight, obvious.
There’s a storm coming. We all know it. And yet Americans are pretending that everything is normal.
Donald Trump is going to be the nominee. In November 2024, tens of millions of Americans will vote for him. The only uncertainty is whether or not he will eke out enough votes in a handful of states to carry the Electoral College.
Even if you are highly confident that Trump will lose, how confident are you? Put a number on that, for me. Do you think Biden has a 9-in–10 chance of being re-elected?
Now answer me this: Would you get onto an airplane if I told you that it had a 1-in–10 chance of crashing?
Space junk could have a transcendent, purposeful afterlife
The idea of a skyhook has been under study for half a century now; it would take the form of a long and strong tether extending from a base station on Earth’s surface into space. The other end of the tether, a counterweight like Envisat, would remain in orbit around Earth. As the tether rotates, the counterweight generates centrifugal force, creating tension in the tether. Spacecrafts and payloads can then be attached to the tether and released into space when they reach the desired velocity, essentially ‘hooking’ them into orbit. The counterweight’s substantial mass and its fixed position in space would act as the pivot point for the entire system, allowing the tether to maintain tension and transfer momentum. Depending on the tether’s length, materials and the specific rotational characteristics of the skyhook, the momentum it imparts to payloads could potentially extend their reach beyond Earth’s orbit to reach other celestial bodies. Further into the future, skyhooks could span across three celestial bodies – Earth, the Moon and Mars – forming a seamless interconnected network.
Brian Jordan Alvarez’s TikTok Characters Explained
I read this, but hear this in my head.
Freed Palestinians Were Mostly Young and Not Convicted of Crimes
Israel detained all of the people on the list for what it said were offenses related to Israel’s security, from throwing stones to more serious accusations like supporting terrorism and attempted murder. More than half of the cases were being prosecuted in Israeli military courts, which try Palestinians in the occupied West Bank but not Israeli settlers who live there.
Nearly all Palestinians tried in Israeli military courts are convicted, and those accused of security offenses can be imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial.
Those that know me know my allegiances. I moved to the Middle East many years ago because I was pro-individual rights in the face of oppressive states.
When ideologically forced to choose between individual or state, I’m firmly in the camp of the former.
This article illustrates why.
I understand now, in a way I never did while living there, why a Jewish state needs to exist.
But this — the treatment of Palestinians, a state-less people — is not acceptable.
You cannot treat people like this without losing your soul, particularly when you have all the power and claim to know better.
You cannot selectively believe in human rights. You either do…or you don’t.
What kind of world is this.
Children slaughtered in Mariupol. Children slaughtered in Gaza, in Israel.
What kind of world is this?
Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan Over a Year Ago
The audacity of the blueprint, officials said, made it easy to underestimate. All militaries write plans that they never use, and Israeli officials assessed that, even if Hamas invaded, it might muster a force of a few dozen, not the hundreds who ultimately attacked.
Israel had also misread Hamas’s actions. The group had negotiated for permits to allow Palestinians to work in Israel, which Israeli officials took as a sign that Hamas was not looking for a war.
But Hamas had been drafting attack plans for many years, and Israeli officials had gotten hold of previous iterations of them. What could have been an intelligence coup turned into one of the worst miscalculations in Israel’s 75-year history.
Incredible.
and
Elon Musk Doesn’t Understand What ‘Blackmail’ Means
In general, blackmail is a crime where the criminal demands payment from the victim. It does not involve the criminal refusing to give money to the victim for a service they don’t want. Blackmailing somebody “with money,” as Musk put it, is not a thing.
In general, fuck this guy.
Henry Kissinger, Who Shaped U.S. Cold War History, Dies at 100
Firing Line with Margaret Hoover with guests Cornel West & Robert George
I love these two.