Category Archives: Singularity

A few months ago, at a time when it was still safe to have strange experiences in unusual places, I was handed a mysterious document. ALLIANCES AND TRAITORS WITHIN THE TRUTH & UFO COMMUNITIES, it read.

The document was a single, bright red sheet of paper, crowded with close-set black type. Different kinds of lines and arrows connected in wild formulations, linking George Soros with the Illuminati, various stars of the UFO community with their alleged handlers, the CIA with Alex Jones. The Pleidiansa race of tall, blue-eyed Nordic alien beingsconnected with both Tesla and the president in ways I couldnt quite parse.

This paper was created and handed to me by Dylan Louis Monroe, a player in the QAnon world and the creator of the Deep State Mapping Project, a one-man operation where Monroe creates dense visual maps of the supposed alliances he sees between various major players and world events. Monroe was at the New Age expo Conscious Life selling Q-branded t-shirts and promoting a YouTube show, I was there reporting, and both of us were thinking about the strange alliances and friendships that had begun to surface in various conspiracy communities.

BE CAREFUL WHO YOU FOLLOW, the document warned, in bold, at the bottom, just above a large black Q.

In the months that followed our chance meeting, the world buckled under the weight of the novel coronavirus pandemic, and the alliances got stranger still. Conspiracy communities that have previously only brushed past each other like schools of fish borne along on different currents are suddenly, abruptly, swimming in the same direction.

Take Larry Cook, whose evolving belief system has been playing out in a remarkable way on Facebook. Cook is the man behind the largest anti-vaccine group on the platform, Stop Mandatory Vaccination, which, along with his personal Facebook page, serves as a central clearinghouse for anti-vaccine misinformation.

In the months since the pandemic began, Cook has begun to claim that its a pretext for the mandatory testing, tracking, and vaccination that hes feared all along. (There is no evidence that the U.S. government will impose mandatory vaccination for the coronavirus, even though it should.) Hes also started to turn towards people who can provide some explanation for whats really going on, and some measure of hope: Cook is promoting QAnon ideas, sometimes dozens of times a day. (QAnon is an ur-conspiracy theory which, broadly, holds that Donald Trump and his allies are bravely fighting back on a number of fronts against a shadowy, Satanic Deep State.)

I AM A DIGITAL SOLDIER, Cook posted recently, along with two Q-related hashtags, part of an oath that the mysterious Q had recently requested that his followers post. (Disgraced former Trump advisor General Michael Flynn was among those who posted the oath.) Linking to a webpage that shares Qs missives, Cook added, in another post, Discover why we have a lockdown and mask requirements for the healthy. (Cook didnt respond to an email from VICE News.)

Cook isnt an outlier. As Mother Jones recently noted, coronavirus and the general uncertainty of the times were living in have aided the spread of QAnon specifically.

But its not just QAnon. The strain of living in this particular time, with a dragging, devastating pandemic and a global uprising against police brutality and racial injustice, crashing together at the highest speed, has accelerated something thats been going on for years. Call it the conspiracy singularity: the place where many conspiracy communities are suddenly meeting and merging, a melting pot of unimaginable density. UFO conspiracy theorists and QAnon fans are advocating for drinking a bleach solution promoted by anti-vaxxers. QAnon groups and Reopen America groups alike promoted Plandemic , a film clip jam-packed with conspiratorial claims about the causes and spread of COVID. The Freedom Angels, an anti-vaccine group based in California, are among the many such groups joining anti-lockdown protests, using language that feels heavily drawn from the Patriot movement: They're calling stay-at-home orders tyranny, addressing their followers as Patriots, and positioning themselves as a new civil rights movements. (They urged people to burn their facemasks on July 4th, adding, floridly: Join millions of Americans on Independence Day as we show all these BLUE STATE GOVERNORS, SWAMP DOCS, and DEEP STATE RATS how we feel about their latest ORDERS, DICTATES and MANDATES to wear our muzzles again.)

More mainstream internet stars, as several outlets have noted, have also been drawn in: Lifestyle influencers are promoting COVID conspiracy theories, while the virality-seeking teens of TikTok are discovering a new obsession with Pizzagate. Sex trafficking conspiracy theoriesall of which are tinged with Pizzagate and QAnon influencesseem to have an especially broad appeal: Recently, a pair of Arizona influencers promoted a baseless rumor that the furniture company Wayfair was trafficking children.

The trend towards a kind of disturbing unity is distilled in the hashtag #Covid911, backed by a lot of powerful players in both anti-vaccine and QAnon circles. It holds that what were living throughthe pandemic and the protests against police brutality alikeis all a massive hoax, designed to sway not just the 2020 elections but usher in the New World Order. Not long ago, Joe M., a major QAnon promoter, released a video, which is still up on multiple platforms even as its marked as false information, calling the pandemic, the protests, and, of course, the push for nationwide mail-in voting all part of a coordinated irregular warfare insurgency with multiple aims, perpetrated by the Deep State. The nine-minute clip throws in a dizzying cocktail of claims touching on virtually every conspiracy theory of the current moment, managing to claim that the murder of George Floyd was mysterious and not what it seemed, that social distancing was perhaps a pretext to halt grand juries so that President Obama couldnt be investigated for spying on the Trump campaign, and, of course, that violent paramilitary group Antifa had been given free rein by Democratic mayors to wreak havoc on city streets.

COVID-19 is being sold as a natural event, Joe M. intoned, over grim violin music and a shot of Nancy Pelosi taking a knee in kente cloth. But we see now it is an attempt by enemies of humanity to hold onto power. After November, they stand to lose it all. But they will do everything to keep the crisis alive, and the people in fear.

The last minute of the clip features shots of news reports about a feared second wave of coronavirus. The implication is that that, too, is part of the program to keep us afraid, and shouldnt be acknowledged or believed.

People contain multitudes, and our ability to believe in several conspiracy theories at once is nothing new. Weve seen hints of a conspiracy singularity before, most memorably in the worlds of Milton William Cooper, the author of the dense, chaotic, and totally unreadable conspiracy classic Behold a Pale Horse.

Cooperbefore he died in a shootout with sheriffs deputy trying to arrest him for aggravated assaultwas successful in assembling a broad coalition of anti-government zealots. Behold a Pale Horse claimed to draw on his military service in the Vietnam War to expose a variety of evil deeds perpetrated by those who wanted to bring about a New World Order.

But Cooper also successfully weaved in UFO conspiracy theoriesthat the U.S. military shot down mysterious craft to capture alien technology, for instanceas well as medical ones, including claims that both AIDS and Hepatitis B were bioweapons loosed on the public by the CDC. As Cooper biographer Marc Jacobson noted, some of these theories gained a lot of credence among Black Americans and in the hip-hop community.

Behold a Pale Horse became a surprising mainstay across a lot of different communities, one of the only things youd be just as likely to find in an Afrocentric bookshop in New York as at a militia rally merch table. It showed that UFO researchers and heavily armed self-proclaimed patriots had some kind of common language and view of the world, or at least places where their worlds overlapped. One devoted fan of Coopers radio show was Timothy McVeigh, who went on to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Author and political scientist Michael Barkun notes in his book 2003 A Culture of Conspiracy that McVeigh also developed a fascination with UFOs around the same time, visiting Area 51 a year before he perpetrated the bombing. On death row, Barkun writes, McVeigh obsessively watched the film Contact, about a brave government scientist chosen to make contact with extraterrestrials.

Conspiracy theories that the government is hiding what it knows about aliens, or the existence of a secret strawman bank account assigned to each U.S. citizen, live in the same place, theoretically speaking. In his book, Barkun referred to these realms as the domain of stigmatized knowledge.

That domain, as we have seen, he wrote, Is made up of rejected, outdated or ignored knowledge claims, regardless of subject matter. It contains material drawn from revisionist history, pseudoscience, alternative medicine, occultism, new and alternative religions and political sectarianism. Despite these differences of focus, all share certain overarching similarities: the disdain or disinterest of mainstream institutions, along with the common outsider status conferred by that disdain or disinterest, and a consequent suspicion of the institutions that have excluded them.

Barkuns book is broadly about the approaching conspiracy singularity, focused especially on the places where far-right, anti-government, and UFO circles had started to merge. And the same fusions Barkun observed in the late 80s and early 90s, between far-right conspiracy theorists and UFO believers, could also be seen within the 9/11 truth movement. Conspiracy theories about 9/11 brought together the military-industrial complex-critical left and the Alex Jones-tinged right, as well as what Barkun called the prophecies of Nostradmus, UFOs and conspiracy theories about the Illuminati. The bedfellows were strange indeed: As a profile of Alex Jones from 2011 observed, It turns out that the world of paranoia is round, and 9/11, with its billowing smoke and miles of video and a cast of thousands, is the terra incognita where left and right meet, fusing sixties countercultural distrust with the dont-tread-on-me variety.

In other words, alliances and overlaps are common, and not new. Theres always been cross-pollination, Michael Wood told VICE News. Wood has a PhD from the University of Kent and is an expert in conspiracy psychology. Along with his co-authors Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton, he published a 2012 paper exploring the phenomenon of people who simultaneously believe in conflicting conspiracy theories: that Princess Diana is alive and was killed by MI6, for example, or that Osama Bin Laden both died before the U.S. military raided his compound and is still alive after those same military forces supposedly killed him.

The ability to believe two things at onceeven completely contradictory thingsis based on an underlying level of "higher order thinking, the paper argued, an overriding belief that can make even conflicting ideas make sense. Simply put, it's the centralized belief that conspiracies and hidden deceptions underpin the world and guide human events.

The idea that authorities are engaged in motivated deception of the public would be a cornerstone of conspiracist thinking due to its centrality in conspiracy theories, the authors wrote. Someone who believes in a significant number of conspiracy theories would naturally begin to see authorities as fundamentally deceptive, and new conspiracy theories would seem more plausible in light of that belief.

This being so, it's still true that conspiracy communities used to have some degree of separation. Their conventions were held in different hotel ballrooms, and targeted different audiences geographically and socially. Conspiracy theories were spread in newsletters and in-person meetings; they were narrowly targeted and often somewhat underground, part of a legitimately fringe and countercultural narrative.

But now the internet is the largest hotel ballroom of them all, and the novel coronavirus pandemic has forced a lot of people into a set of universalizing life circumstances. Were all trying to make sense of the same massive global event, which seems to drive an urge towards a grand unified theory of suspicion. And with everyone using the same global platforms, conspiracy communities seem to influence and inflect each other far more rapidly. What we have today is more of a mass, a merge of conspiracy theories combining in ways that make their individual contours harder to make out.

For some people invested in multiple conspiratorial beliefs or communities, Wood said, the evidence youve based your beliefs on is more like a negative argument, what you believe didnt happen. The actual conspiracy theories themselves arent that important, he added; they are really just manifestations of this underlying suspicion and mistrust.

That can take on some odd forms. In a 1954 study cited by Wood, Theodor Adorno found that German anti-Semites tended to believe that Jews were both too withdrawn from mainstream society and overly eager to participate in it. The higher order thinking at work was anti-Semitism and every negative belief derived from that, even when they didnt logically cohere.

Similarly, Wood wrote, in more modern conspiracy theories, distrust of official narratives may be so strong that many alternative theories are simultaneously endorsed in spite of any contractions between them.

Today, alternative theories abound: that the coronavirus pandemic is both a hoax and a dangerous bioweapon unleashed by China; that Tom Hanks is deadexecuted for being part of the pedophile Deep Stateand alive in witness protection; that he is dead and replaced by a body double. All these theories have been promoted by the same guy, a QAnon fan named Tommy G.

At the same time that the conspiracy singularity starts to take shape, were seeing a distinct collapse between the fringe and the center. Nowhere is that more visible than in the increasing prominence of QAnon in relatively mainstream Republican politics. As of July, the left-leaning organization Media Matters has found 63 current and former Congressional candidates who are open and enthusiastic Q fans, some of whom, like Mary Joe Rae Perkins in Oregon and Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia, have already won their primaries. (To make it to Congress, Greene still has to defeat the second-place winner, John Cowan, in an August 11 runoff election, and is facing significant condemnation from the state GOP.)

Another useful idea referred to by Barkun, the author of Culture of Conspiracy, is the cultic milieu, a term coined in the 1970s by the British sociologist Colin Campbell, a sort of cultural underground, Barkun wrote, thats made up of a variety of rejected knowledge disdained by the mainstream. The cultic milieu, Barkun wrote, is wary of all claims to authoritative judgment, and receptive to all forms of revisionism, whether in history, religion, science or politics.

Its not a stretch to see how that domain of stigmatized knowledge extends to how people process current and ongoing events, how groups of people with seemingly nothing to bind them together on the surface might find themselves seeking explanation, order and meaning in the same places.

In fact, theres been language for this phenomenon for a long time. People deeply embedded in the overlapping worlds of conspiracy theory tend to refer to themselves as being part of the truth community. And as its members come to a new and mutually reinforcing view of just what that truth is, the rest of us would do well to pay attention to just what it is.

Follow Anna Merlan on Twitter.

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The Conspiracy Singularity Has Arrived - VICE

The sequencing of the human genome was one of the greatest scientific feats of the past century, but its a little-known fact that its still a work in progress with considerable gaps. New research suggests we could be just months away from finally finishing the job.

Nearly two decades after the Human Genome Project released the first map of our DNA, there are still large sections that are a mystery to us. Scientists have been slowly filling in the gaps, but certain portions that feature repetitive sequences going on for millions of base pairs have long been seen as intractable.

Thats because most common gene sequencing technologies create short snippets of DNA that then have to be stitched together. When applied to these highly repetitive sections it becomes almost impossible to distinguish the pieces, so putting them back together in the right order is extremely difficult.

Imagine having to reconstruct a jigsaw puzzle, senior author Adam Phillippy, from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), said in a press release. If you are working with smaller pieces, each contains less context for figuring out where it came from, especially in parts of the puzzle without any unique clues, like a blue sky. The same is true for sequencing the human genome. Until now, the pieces were too small, and there was no way to put the hardest parts of the genome puzzle together.

But that is now changing. In a paper published last week in Nature, the researchers describe how they used a cutting-edge approach known as nanopore sequencing to tackle some of the previously inscrutable sections of the genome and produce the first-ever gapless sequence of the X chromosome.

Nanopore sequencing works by passing DNA molecules through a tiny hole and measuring the change in an electric current running across the holes surface to work out the sequence of base pairs in the molecules. Unlike previous approaches, its able to create ultra-long DNA sequences.

That was enough to fill many of the gaps in the genome, but a region known as the centromere that encompasses roughly 3.1 million base pairs of highly repetitive sequences still presented a problem. Fortunately, the team was able to find idiosyncratic sequences that could act as markers to link together multiple long reads to span the entire centromere.

To ensure that the X chromosome was as accurate as possible, the researchers combined nanopore sequencing with results from a further two gold-standard sequencing technologies and approaches for mapping the genome. The result is more than 99.9 percent accurate, which is considered enough to call the sequence finished.

Filling the gaps in the human genome could prove invaluable for biomedical research. Were starting to find that some of these regions where there were gaps in the reference sequence are actually among the richest for variation in human populations, so weve been missing a lot of information that could be important to understanding human biology and disease, lead author Karen Miga, from the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, said in a press release.

And while the complete X chromosome is the pice de resistance of this paper, the team reports that they have applied their approach to the full genome and theyve managed to reconstruct several other chromosomes. They are aiming to produce a complete human genome by the end of this year.

What secrets lie in store in these hidden parts of the human genome remains to be seen, but uncovering them will be a major step towards humankind truly mastering our own biology.

Image Credit: vrx/Shutterstock.com

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For the First Time, Scientists Fully Sequenced the Human X Chromosome - Singularity Hub

Chris Cowart, the longtime IDEO product designer, Singularity University faculty member and consultant to a variety of venture firms and tech projects, is joining the food preservation technology developer Treasure8 as its new chief innovation and strategy officer, according to a post on LinkedIn.

In the last three years food has come to the fore as a theme, said Cowart in an interview with TechCrunch. Cowart, who previously spent the majority of his time consulting on healthcare companies, became interested in food through a year spent as an advisor to X, the Alphabet subsidiary that develops technologies and companies focused on sustainability, connectivity and new computing paradigms.

At X, Cowart was looking at projects that would use artificial intelligence to accelerate circular economy projects and it was there that he began to focus on food waste. The gravity of the situation around Americas food waste and food insecurity in the country was driven home through Cowarts research, he said. We overproduce by double and we throw away 30% of our food, said Cowart. And in Santa Clara county one-in-six families are food insecure.

After completing his project at X, Cowart went to Treasure8 and was immediately pulled into strategy conversations, which led to him coming on board in June.

Unlike Apeel Sciences or Hazel Technologies, which have developed new preservative technologies to keep food fresh on store shelves (and raised several hundred million dollars), Treasure8s technology is a new spin on freeze-drying, which lets perishable foods hold their nutritional value while theyre used as ingredients, supplements or powders.

Brands can reform it with rehydration, or put it into their products or reuse pieces of the vegetables and fruits in their products. There are byproducts that you can break down and start to use to pull out their nutrients into probiotics and nutraceuticals, said Cowart.

He also thinks that Treasure8 could use its process to become a provider of biochar that can be applied in more sustainable agriculture techniques.

Treasure8 initially launched with a focus on food preservation, but quickly pivoted into working with hemp companies that wanted to work with the company to use more parts of the hemp plant in products. For now, Treasure8 is operating off of its pilot facility on Treasure Island, the man-made island in the San Francisco Bay which is currently the site of a multi-billion-dollar development project.

With its new innovation officer in tow, Treasure8 is now heading to market to raise a new round of financing, Cowart said. Targeting less than $50 million, the new round could help the company as Cowart starts to think longer term about ways that Treasure8s treatment process could contribute to the development of more functional foods.

Taking food waste streams to make products and ingredients and letting it be something useful rather than something that harms the environment, thats the interesting part, Cowart said of his role at the company. [And] if youre able to go from food security to nutritional security If you can powder vegetables, and make them into bits and food that are stable and affordable All of this nutrition feeds into the food as medicine and functional food. Were going to want to fight immunity and recover from viruses and were going to have to rebuild our food supply.

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Treasure8 adds Chris Cowart to its executive team as it renews pushing its tech to reduce food waste - TechCrunch

This is a guest blogpost by Jason Kingdon, Chairman & CEO of Blue Prism

And its raining RPA[Robotic Process Automation] IBMs announcement that they are acquiring a Brazilian Robotic Process Automation company comes just months after Microsofts acquisition of a Greek RPA vendor, and a period on from SAP acquiring a French RPA capability. If you have not spotted the pattern, you will.

Every single platform provider will need to offer automation out-of-the-box alongside their core offerings, for the simple reason that the product class offers the highest ROI of any business technology ever created. Now, that is not me from Blue Prism saying this, it is the London School of Economics and MIT.

The robotics revolution in manufacturing was said to have increased productivity in the 20th century by something like 50-fold; that is, by the year 2000 one person in manufacturing was achieving the work of 50 people.

Imagine employing 50 people for every one person you currently employ? How does that change your world? How do you think differently about what you do? Could you even imagine assigning that amount of work?

A new way of working

The same automation revolution is well under way in white-collar jobs and the service industry. It will have the same impact as the invention of the Internet; if you dont see that youre already out-of-date. It changes every aspect of the way work will take place in the service industry, the types of services that are offered, and the way technology is consumed. Work life will probably change more in the next 10 years than it has for the last 100 years. What does this look like?

The clich would be that all jobs are wiped out and there is nothing left for humans to do; in other words, Apocalypse Now (and then Brexit).

But, it wont be like that. For the businesses that have made the strategic commitment to Blue Prisms enterprise class automation platform, you see a similar pattern as to the one that occurred in manufacturing: expansion of services, higher rates of service quality, greater flexibility in working (effortless coping with Covid-19 lock-down and remote working) and most of all speed and scalability

The arrival of digital workers

Our Blue Prism Digital Worker is software that attempts to get as close to a human worker as we can. In other words it is a software robot an autonomous processing unit. It is not a script or a bot in fact the digital worker runs multiple scripts or bots marshalling these kinds of capabilities in large scale so as to automate any business processes (which may or may not include routine mundane tasks, and equally, may include sophisticated diagnostics that humans struggle with; like spotting money laundering, KYC [know your customer], or early signs of diabetes in a retina scan).

Like a human worker, the Blue Prism version of this concept is trained by a business user; and so the digital worker makes use of any tools and third-party technologies as it needs.

People ask is this intelligent systems or AI? Of course it is. In a very direct way. Just like a human, this technology aims at versatility at its core, and the abilities to use all technologies as they become available is crucial to its design. And by choice, necessity, or taste, the digital worker makes use of any novel, routine or classic machine learning or AI algorithm as is required for the task in hand. The whole point is that all of these technologies can be clipped together (with no code) according to what they are being trained to do.

A digital singularity

At the heart of this automation revolution is the fact that all systems can be made to interoperate through digital workers. It means that ancient systems from the birth of computing, to technologies just born, are now in scope. This imposes a post-legacy reality; everything that exists is legacy; or in our terms, a component or tool to be made use of.

This offers a form of digital singularity as an echo of technology singularity (the point at which humans can make a machine as smart as a human). The digital singularity refers to the point where all technology can be combined, as through a prism (if you will).

If all software becomes interoperable think how this changes the R&D landscape? And how business will start to consume technology. And the implied pace of change we are about to hit. The acceleration will be rapid and mind altering; propelling winners, in many cases companies you have never heard of, to fame and fortune, because the whole consumption profile is flexing and re-ordering.

Look at technology service businesses (like IBM), and they are akin to a giant form of human middleware, or mechanical Turk. It is like a digital sedan chair, a business carried by humans as it plods its progress this, in the age of the self-driving automobile. These are the areas that will change the fastest, as IBM has noted. The large human powered business service companies also look old fashioned in this new context, and these have only just been invented. They will need to pivot, as do all the main service providers, and this new revolution will make them better. Covid-19 and the current economic crisis will likely accelerate all these changes.

I should say, I already claim that any business processes worthy of the name (i.e. you want it to be repeatable and predictable) can be automated. So, buckle up.

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The automation revolution is happening now - ComputerWeekly.com

A lot of the predictions we hear about the future involve a hot, crowded planet, one where we need some serious science to figure out how to feed everyone and control rising global temperatures. The UNs population forecast of almost 10 billion people by 2050 is widely quoted, and with it has come much conjecture about what such a world will look like. Where will all those people live? What kind of jobs will they have? What will they eat?

But before we invest too much into preparing for an impending population boom, we should consider some factors that, though often overlooked, could have a massive impact on the worlds population 20, 30, and even 80 years from now. A paper published this week in The Lancet explores the impact on population of factors like fertility, mortality, and migration, and details potential deviations from a heavily-populated future Earth.

On top of forecasting the populations of 195 countries, the study looked at age demographics and the impact they could have on national economies and the global power structure.

Continued global population growth through the century is no longer the most likely trajectory for the worlds population, said the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Director Dr. Christopher Murray, who led the research. This study provides governments of all countries an opportunity to start rethinking their policies on migration, workforces, and economic development to address the challenges presented by demographic change.

Here are some of the papers key findings, and what they could mean for the future of our countries, economies, and planet.

The study predicts that the global population will peak at around 9.7 billion, but not until 2064. By the end of the century in 2100, that number will plummet by almost a billion people, to 8.8 billion.

Its a pretty huge fluctuation in 35 years time, especially barring events that would take out a big chunk of people at once, like world wars, natural disasters, or pandemics. According to the research, though, 23 countries will see their populations shrink by more than half, including Japan, Thailand, Italy, and Spain.

The US would reach its projected peak of 364 million people in 2062, then fall to 336 million by 2100. This would make the US the worlds fourth most populous country after India, Nigeria, and China, in that order, followed by Pakistan in fifth place. Chinas population is expected to shrink to 732 million by 2100, while Nigerias is set to explode, more than tripling from its current 206 million to 791 million by 2100. Sub-Saharan Africas total population is also forecast to triple, reaching 3.07 billion by 2100.

The percentage of a countrys population thats of working agedefined by the OECD as 15 to 64has a significant impact on its economy. Its part of why China was able to spur such a massive change in its GDP and poverty rates in just 30 years; high birth rates before the countrys one-child policy meant the opening of Chinas economy coincided perfectly with a huge working-age population. Its also why Japans aging population could be called a demographic time bomb.

The IHME study predicts major shifts in the global age structure, with far more old than young people by 2100; it estimates therell be 2.37 billion people over 65 and only 1.7 billion under 20. Moreover, the countries with the most young people will be those that are currently poorer, and their large working-age populations should accelerate their GDP growth.

IHME Professor Stein Emil Vollset, first author of the paper, said, Our findings suggest that the decline in the numbers of working-age adults alone will reduce GDP growth rates that could result in major shifts in global economic power by the centurys end.

At the moment, tensions between China and the West seem to be mounting, with multiple countries recently moving to ban Chinese companies like Huawei and TikTok; meanwhile, China is steadily advancing in technologies like AI and genetic engineering. The US and China are, in a sense, vying for global dominance, and the international leadership vacuum left by the current US administrations foreign policy isnt helping.

The study predicts China will overtake the US economically by 2035, but if the US maintains a liberal immigration policy, it will go back to having the worlds biggest economy by 2098.

The emphasis on immigration as an economic bolster here is critical. Countries that promote liberal immigration, the paper says, are better able to maintain their population size and support economic growth, even in the face of declining fertility rates.

For high-income countries with below-replacement fertility rates, the best solutions for sustaining current population levels, economic growth, and geopolitical security are open immigration policies and social policies supportive of families having their desired number of children, said Murray.

Its crucial, though, that countries put womens rights, education, and healthcare ahead of population growth; we already saw what happens when a government tries to force women to have as many children as possible, and it wasnt pretty.

According to the paper, the UN uses trends from the past to predict how fertility and mortality will evolve across countries in the future. But it leaves out one huge influencer: the fact that theres not only room for improvement, but improvement is likely.

Though it may not seem like it right nowCovid-19 has thrown a big wrench in all kinds of statistics regarding both the present and the futurehuman well-being has been on a steady upward trajectory for the past couple decades. Infant and maternal mortality are down. Life expectancy is up, and gender equality is progressing. The widespread dissemination of technologies like smartphones, combined with government policies aimed at helping the most vulnerable, are lifting people out of poverty.

These trends are likely to continue and even accelerate, and as further gains are made in gender equality and access to education, one of the biggest knock-on effects well see is fewer babies.

At present, women in poor countries are far more likely than women in rich countries to start having babies young, and to have a lot of them. This is due to cultural factors, like marrying young, as well as lack of education and access to contraceptives. The IHME research accounted for the likelihood that women will continue to have greater access to education and reproductive health services, and as a result will delay childbirth and have fewer kids.

The difference between this studys projections and UN forecasts, then, come mainly from the associated decline in fertility rates. The team predicts that in sub-Saharan Africa there will be 702 million fewer people by 2100 than UN forecasts predict, and over 1 billion fewer in south and southeast Asia.

Despite advances in technology that include bigger agricultural yields, cheaper manufacturing, and closely-linked global supply chains, the resources available to us do have a limit, and fewer people means more resources per person.

Looking again to Chinas example, the country was in part able to achieve its astounding economic growth and decline in extreme poverty due to its one-child policy. The Chinese population grew just 38 percent from 1980 to 2013, while Indias grew by 84 percent and Sub-Saharan Africas by 147 percent in the same time period. Fewer mouths to feed means more food per mouth, more wealth per capita, and more people having their needs met.

This applies on a global scale, too, and the papers authors point out that their forecasts have positive implications for the environment, climate change, and food productionthough they acknowledge the predictions could have negative implications for labor forces, economic growth, and social support systems in the countries with the biggest fertility declines.

Humans are pretty good at adapting, though. Whether learning to stay inside for three months straight to curb the spread of a disease or figuring out how to cope with a smaller working-age population, odds are, well manage. A lot can change between now and the year 2100, but from our current vantage point, having fewer than 10 billion people on Earth doesnt sound too bad.

Image Credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Originally posted here:

This Century Will See Massive Shifts in the Global Population, Economy, and Power Structure - Singularity Hub

You won't regret adding these bras to your life

Adding to the essentials in your wardrobe is never done in singularity. You can never own only one t-shirt or pair of jeans. The same goes with cotton bras. They are worn day in and day out, so it's only natural for you to own them in pairs, triplets or even more. Cotton is a breathable fabric for lingerie and when you find a bra that's comfortable and supportive enough, what should you do? Buy an entire pack of them, of course. That way, you can ensure your lingerie collection is filled with pieces that work well for you.

Grab these cotton bra packs right away - you'll regret it if you don't.

The bras included in this 6-piece set are made of poly cotton material, do not have padding or wires and come in 6 muted solid toned shades of oranges, browns and purples.

The bra pack of 3 pieces are seamless, non-wired and made of stretchable cotton fabric in pink, blue and grey.

The pack of 3 cotton sports bras have a camisole pattern with narrow straps in front and cutout horizontal strap designbehind.

The pack includes 6 bras of hosiery cotton material. They come in a mix of colour blocked shades with a contrasting panel below the cup and S-shaped adjustable straps.

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Grab These Cotton Bra Packs Because Owning One Is Never Enough - NDTV

Published on July 20th, 2020 | by Chanan Bos

Tesla has announced that its earnings call for shareholders will take place on July 22 at 2:30pm PST/5:30pm EST. While it might not be the most important investor call in the history of Tesla for the success of its mission, it for sure could be considered the most important investor call in Teslas history in terms of the stock market, as the outcome could decide whether Tesla enters the S&P 500.

As always, CleanTechnica will be there to stream it live with all the bells and whistles you have come to expect from our previous livestreams, and maybe even some new ones. Here is the link to our livestream, and its also embedded below. Just make sure to click that Set reminder button, and if you havent already subscribed to our channel, we recommend it. We will also be publishing an article tomorrow with all the analysts that might show up on the call, so keep an eye out for that, as its a critical report for anyone who owns shares or is interested in the company, and no one else publishes anything comparable.

Tags: Tesla, Tesla financials, Tesla S&P 500, Tesla stock

Chanan Bos Chanan grew up in a multicultural, multi-lingual environment that often gives him a unique perspective on a variety of topics. He is always in thought about big picture topics like AI, quantum physics, philosophy, Universal Basic Income, climate change, sci-fi concepts like the singularity, misinformation, and the list goes on. Currently, he is studying creative media & technology but already has diplomas in environmental sciences as well as business & management. His goal is to discourage linear thinking, bias, and confirmation bias whilst encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and helping people understand exponential progress. Chanan is very worried about his future and the future of humanity. That is why he has a tremendous admiration for Elon Musk and his companies, foremost because of their missions, philosophy, and intent to help humanity and its future. He sees Tesla as one of the few companies that can help us save ourselves from climate change.

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Tesla Q2 Earnings Call On July 22 Heres The Best Way To Watch It (Not Just Listen) - CleanTechnica

A twig snaps in the dark woods near my camp. In the stillness of a calm night in the wilderness, its as loud as a gunshot. My ears are attuned to the slightest sound.

Something scratches around in the duff near the fire ring. Wavelets gently lap the shore of the lake. A faint whisper of a breeze stirs the spruce tops. Im fully in the moment and appreciate Ed Abbeys Nature Prayer.

Beyond the wall of the unreal city, beyond the security fences topped with barbed wire, beyond the asphalt belting of the superhighways, beyond the cemented backsides of our temporarily stopped and mutilated rivers, beyond the rage of lies that poisons the air

I am there, in Abbeys sacred place, alone and away from it all. I have found what Ed prescribes: the true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it.

Such was my goal in setting off last week from a trail head half an hour drive from my home on a three-day wilderness solo where Abbey set the tone.

May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and slightly uphill. May Gods dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie. May the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the great Bear watch over you by night.

I dont see anyone for three days, yet I have plenty of company with my restive mind. In stillness, the brimming subconscious issues a flood of thoughts that bubble up randomly. Solitude affords communion with something bigger, as Thoreau discovered at Walden Pond: How could I be lonely; is not our planet part of the Milky Way?

John Muir became an accomplished soloist during his thousand-mile walk. Muir exulted while clinging ant-like to the swaying top of a 100-foot tree during a raging storm. He displayed his singularity by dancing a jig before President Teddy Roosevelt on the rim of Yosemite Valley after they had ignited a tall snag into a tower of flame.

Epiphanies of the ages have been instilled in wilderness through Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Elijah. Each had a distinctly personal relationship with solitude in the most profound sense, to which I humbly aspire.

My campfire is the burning bush. My mystic sprites buzz about me in the form of mosquitoes. My animal spirit is in the guise a chattering squirrel scolding this wayward member of the human race.

The rising trout make circles on the lake and remind me of the food chain: Mosquitoes eat me. Trout eat mosquitoes. I eat trout caught with my fly rod. A complete cycle.

I dont fish for fun; I fish for food. As two rainbows simmer in my pan, I give thanks, not to the bounty of nature, but to the fish and game folks who stocked the lake that morning while I ascended the high ridge above the lake. From the tundra, I watched their low-flying plane execute a bombing run with a live slurry of fingerlings.

My ridge hike takes me to a 13,000-foot knob with a 360-view that encompasses one-quarter of Colorados Fourteeners. After a scramble down a couloir to the tundra basin, I rest in the shade of a krummholz stand where I find a wad of wooly white down shed by a mountain goat. I press the soft wool to my nose for an earthy scent of the goat.

That night, I hear the snap of the twig. Within the flimsy shield of my tent I humbly offer myself to whatever night marauder visits my camp. Surrender comes from trusting the benignity of Mother Nature. As her loving son, Im in a place thats far safer than the tumultuous and volatile human world against which Abbey inveighed.

In the bright and sunny morning, I lean back against a log and compose bad poetry. I lift my gaze to watch the lake change complexion and texture as wind/light/shadow alter it from a smooth plate of green glass into corrugations of gray steel.

Im fully in the moment and alive!

Paul Andersens column appears on Mondays. He may be reached at andersen@rof.net.

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Paul Andersen: 'Beyond the wall of the unreal city ' - Aspen Times

Britton Braggin Rights Braggs noticed Darnell, 14, and James, 11, sitting on their bikes in front of Winchester Avenues B&K Grocery.

You heard about these people getting hurt out here with guns? the Newhallville-raised rapper asked the boys. They nodded. Were walking because we want kids like you guys to be safe, Braggs said.

Bragg, 29, was walking Newhallville Monday night along with dozens of other adults issuing a call to stop the violence.

After running in the store for an Arizona to share, Darnell and James joined a crowd on walkers on their bike, mostly sticking by Braggin Rights side. And the quest continued to spark a community response to the rise in gun violence on New Haven streets.

I know what its like. Sometimes these kids just need someone to talk to, Braggin Rights said.

We came because we want the killing and violence to stop, said Darnell.

Black lives matter. We shouldnt be killing each other, said James.

The gathering began around 6 p.m. at Bassett Street Park. Former Alder Carlton Staggers (pictured) issued a call to parents and residents of Newhallville to come together to figure out a strategy for addressing the spike of sometimes deadly shootings in town over the past month.

Fifty people responded to Staggers call.

Staggers came with no script or agenda for the rally besides talking with adults about how to engage the youth.

We dont want the police or mayor involved. This has to be a message coming from the people, our kids need us, Staggers said.

Staggers also has five kids of his own for whom he fears every day. I wanna see my kids. I want my kids to bury me, he said.

We need to get our kids. What do we do? Staggers asked the crowd.

A conversation ensued followed by the group taking to the streets.

One audience member suggested the group collaborate with community organizations in the future to increase their impact.

Reeves said in his experience with todays youth he has learned they are most interested in entrepreneurship. They dont all want to be trained in trades like we were. They want to be entrepreneurs, Reeves said.

Reeves also said Newhallville needs to have a dedicated spot for meeting up as a community.

Newhallville nativeBrother Born stopped by the gathering in passing to share with the crowd that a Saturday breakfast program will start up this week from 10 to 11 a.m at the Newhallville Learning Corridor on the corner of Hazel Street and Shelton Avenue.

Devin Avshalom-Smith founder of the Newhallville Community Action Network, encouraged the crowd to attend the Newhallville Equality and Empowerment Rally on July 26 from 2 p.m to 5 p.m at Lincoln Bassett Community School. Books, groceries, mask, and gloves will be distributed, census and voter registration, blood pressure checks, and Covid-19 testing.

The city has taken away our Covid testing site, so were bringing it right back, Avshalom-Smith said.

In order to rebuild a community village, Reeves said, neighbors must hold each other accountable. I gotta be able to talk to your kid when they doing wrong, he said. We have to get off singularity thinking if were going to save these kids.

Staggers and others agreed.

We need to change the culture of resolving beef, Jahad said.

Before beginning their walk the group chose when and where they would meet next with the goal of walking in every New Haven neighborhood to engage youth directly. West Hills Alder Honda Smith suggested Westville Manor. The group agreed and decided they will walk around Westville Manor on Wednesday at 6 p.m.

So which way are we going? Staggers asked.

About 30 walked through the neighborhood streets stopping at residents sitting on their porches, cars, and bikes.

Were walking out here today to let people know were tired of all these young kids getting killed. Its time to put the guns down, said Staggers to a family hosting a gathering in their backyard. And if you support us were walking Westville Manor on Wednesday, tell friends. Or you could come walk with us right now.

Retired Police Sgt. Jacqueline Jackie Hoyte was amongst the walkers. On Shepard Avenue, Hoyte and neighbor Lakeisha Williams stopped in front of a white two-family house.

On the front porch sat Manualynn King. Come walk with us. Were trying to talk to these kids out here, said Hoyte.

Oh yes. Let me get my shoes, said King who ran inside to get shoes and her mask then joined the crowd.

God put this opportunity in front of me today, said King. These kids dont know love, hope, and peace so we need to help them.

Jahad passed out his card to neighbors during the walk telling people of all ages he can help out anyone from entrepreneurs who need help writing grants or getting funding to youth who just need someone to talk and care about them. If you have some young heads send them my way, I got some jobs for them, Jahad told neighbor as he passed them his card. We need to change the culture of resolving beef, he said.

I feel like Im doing my job especially because I know I have influence and platform, he said. Braggin Rights shared videos of the walk on his Facebook and Instagram where another 12,000 people could follow along.

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Adults Walk The Anti-Violence Talk - New Haven Independent

"The 1619 Project" from The New York Times refers to the year that the first enslaved people were brought to the U.S. and looks at how slavery continues to shape every aspect of American culture.

When it was first published last August, the magazine created a sensation, and this past May, "The 1619 Project" won a Pulitzer Prize. Now, Oprah Winfrey and Lionsgate have teamed up with creator Nikole Hannah-Jones to bring the work to an even wider audience through multiple platforms.

"The 1619 Project" continues to resonate during ongoing Black Lives Matter protests because it contributes to the lexicon of how America reached this current period of racial reckoning, Hannah-Jones says.

"I think it has allowed many Americans, particularly white Americans, to connect dots that they werent connecting before," she says, "that this police violence and inequality, that these arent just unrelated incidents, but have a long and deep legacy that has to be confronted."

The project is also inspiring changes to school history curriculums in Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Buffalo, New York. This marks the latest push for more accuracy in American history textbooks, which have been under scrutiny for being "highly politicized" and embodying a "nationalistic agenda," Hannah-Jones says.

Teaching a history "that speaks to American exceptionalism" downplays the role of slavery, she says, and "all of the other ways that America has not lived up to those ideals of exceptionalism."

"That has robbed Americans of the ability to properly assess their country and why things are like they are," she says.

What many parents have recognized is that "The 1619 Project" offers a counter to that narrative, which Hannah-Jones hopes will prompt people to question other narratives in U.S. history.

"There are many different stories that really need to be told so that we can have a fuller version of the American project," she says, "and not just one that seeks to glorify us, but really one that seeks to challenge us."

On if this period of racial reckoning will lead to reparations

"I dont think that there is enough of an appetite for it right now. I just was looking at some polling on this yesterday and it showed among white Democrats so, you know, the party that the vast majority of Black Americans vote for that only about 30% of white Democrats support the idea of reparations. So clearly, there is a lot of work to do on that. But at the same time, I think, again, its related to the work of 'The 1619 Project.' There is such a visceral response that many of white Americans have to the idea of reparations, and I think thats really based on the fact that they actually have no understanding of this history. They have no understanding of the singularity of Black suffering, of the dragnet of laws and policies that have created the generational disadvantage that Black Americans face. And part of what I try to do with my piece on 'What Is Owed' is really lay that history out and really show that there is nothing that Black Americans can do on our own to erase a 350-year system of racial segregation and economic exploitation.

"So no, were not ready for that yet. But part of the work that Im doing and that so many others are doing is trying to move that conversation forward so that we can maybe get to the point where we can be serious about addressing that. And we have seen movement. So when you look at the fact that in ... the Democratic primary debates, reparations was treated as a serious question by journalists and by people on that stage. Five years ago, you wouldnt have seen that. When you look at H.R.40, which is the bill to study the issue of reparations, its been introduced every year for 30 years and has never made it out of committee. But a few years ago, it had just three co-sponsors. Now it has well over 100 co-sponsors. So we are seeing some traction, and like many things, when it comes to racial justice, its a decades long struggle, not a months, a years-long struggle."

On the racial reckoning also happening in newsrooms

"Yeah, I think there is a reckoning happening right now. And of course, when you are a Black journalist, youve never bought into this idea that your identity is unrelated to your coverage. And weve known that thats not true for ourselves, and weve certainly known that thats not true for white journalists either. Of course, white journalists identity in a white-dominated society plays a role in how they cover stories, what they choose to cover and what they dont.

"So its always been interesting to me that our role as journalists is to explain the world to itself. And so here we are reporting on these national reckonings a racial reckoning is happening across all of these different institutions and all of these different organizations and private companies yet we dont fully understand this ourselves, and we have not dealt with these issues ourselves. So how can we explain to the world that which we dont fully understand? So I think this is a very interesting time that were in where Black journalists are speaking out and are really pushing our news organizations in a public way, which is more unusual. And I hope that the only reckoning that comes out of this time of protests, that it also comes to our industry as well. If we see ourselves as really the linchpin, the free press as a lynchpin of democracy, then we have to democratize our own institutions."

On if she is optimistic that this moment will lead to change

"No. No, Im not. I think Im realistic, and realistically, if you study history, then you know that massive transformation is very rare and only comes after very sustained periods of resistance, and then it never fully transforms society and is often faced by a backlash and a retrenchment. So Im already looking at how little news coverage the protests are getting, how little coverage were seeing in media around if theres actually going to be police reforms or not. Were already seeing this narrative because of a rise in shootings that, you know, we cant defund police because look at all this violence in these communities. So I think that what were fighting against is so deeply entrenched that its hard to be hopeful that were going to see that real necessary transformation. With that said, I am hopeful that people will keep fighting, because even if we dont think that were going to see that, we are, I think, obligated to fight for it."

Emiko Tamagawa produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Tinku Ray. Samantha Raphelson adapted it for the web.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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Bringing The Pulitzer Prize-Winning '1619 Project' To A Wider Audience - WFAE