All wildlife populations are in a severe decline [1][2]. More should be done about this, but I guess as a species we will have to learn the hard way.
A small way to help is to replace some or all of your lawn with native species. A lawn should be a throw rug, not wall to wall carpet that is functionally a desert. If you won't get fined for doing so.
There's also been a 30% decline in US birds in the last ~50 years. I think people underestimate how bad it is and it's not a good sign that research funding into wildlife has been cut a lot in the US recently.
Life on this planet will be OK. Throughout geologic time countless species have gone extinct. The Anthropocene might be tragic for the natural world but not terminal.
But: what are we trading it for? Higher living standards for more people is a noble and good but I don't think there's evidence it requires this rate of ecological destruction. Have we ever seriously tried to decouple growth from extraction?
I'm not convinced a solar punk future exists where technology will eventually close that gap in time. Maybe it will. So far it seems that every efficiency gain gets swallowed by expanded consumption. What seems most probable now is that we don't get a better world but the same dirty one plus a Starbucks on Mars.
For humans it does not really matter whether some kind of life will still continue to exist on this planet. That is a too weak consolation for unrecoverable losses.
Ignoring any ethical or esthetic arguments, every species of living beings that disappears today, regardless if it is a beetle or a whale, is a definitive loss of very important information, whose value we are not yet able to assess. It is equivalent to the burning of a library containing very valuable research papers containing results obtained after many years of work, for which there are no copies elsewhere.
Despite the huge progress of technology during the last few centuries, there are still a lot of essential things that living beings can do, but which we have not learned yet how to do. An example is the energy-efficient capture of the diluted carbon dioxide from air and a huge number of other chemical processes that would be very useful, if mastered by humans.
Every species that is lost might be the one who could save us a lot of work in the future, when we will become able to determine in much more detail how a living being works, which could provide solutions to important technical problems, some of which are actually critical for the survival of humanity, because our current technologies cannot sustain human life without help from a great number of different kinds of living beings.
For some species that have disappeared or that are disappearing we have DNA sequences. However that is not the complete information about a living being, which would allow its reconstruction.
We are still unable to read the complete information about a living cell, because there is a lot of necessary information besides that stored in nucleic acid sequences. It is likely that we will become able to read the entire information in less than a century from now, but by then it may be too late and a very large number of species will be already lost, and even the survival of the human species is not certain, due to its great median stupidity.
Even for the species where you see claims that the DNA has been sequenced, that is only very seldom true.
Especially for the eukaryotic species, where the structure of the genome is much more complex, with many chromosomes and epigenetic information, for a very small fraction of the "sequenced" genomes we have complete information, e.g. including the actual composition of the chromosomes and the locations of the genes on them, which may be important for gene regulation. For most of the existing sequenced genomes, we only have the sequences of a great number of random fragments of the genomes, from which we can make an estimation of the full genome, by examining the overlaps between the known fragments and hoping that they cover most of the genome.
There are only relatively few genomes that are known with great accuracy. Even the human genome, whose study had priority, has features that were finally discovered only decades after the first announcement claiming (falsely) that the sequencing of the human genome has been finished. Determining the sequence of the last unknown 1% of a genome can take more than the sequencing of the first 99% of the genome.
> Anthropic has also been in ongoing discussions with US government officials about Claude Mythos Preview and its offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. [...] We are ready to work with local, state, and federal representatives to assist in these tasks.
As Iran engages in a cyber attack campaign [1] today the timing of this release seems poignant. A direct challenge to their supply chain risk designation.
A truly post-modern form of anti-authority: I refuse to inject things the government recommends but willingly inject things strangers on the internet write about and which originate from random Chinese laboratories.
There's a mind-boggling market of un[der]studied and un[der]regulated substances for people who desire peak health and performance, many of whom refuse to engage in regular physical activity or a regular diet.
They don't seem to be any happier for it. If anything, they live at a higher and more diffused state of anxiety. I think it is rather sad.
Is there any evidence supporting the claim there is a significant overlap between the group of people who "refuse injections the government recommends" and the group of people who take "peptides"? The article is carefully crafted to evoke this impression without clearly stating it, listing only anecdotal evidence.
“Blue dye stuff” meaning methylene blue? Ironically that is one of the most extensively studied compounds in medicine, with hundreds of clinical trials over 100 years…
He means the COVID vaccine but knows people will make fun of him if he says what he actually believes so he's playing pretend like there is some plague of untested vaccines being used instead of there being one fast tracked vaccine deployed in response to a massive pandemic
Indeed, but that’s not the point: many anti-vaxxers are against all vaccines, irrespective of how they were tested. (And will argue against e.g. the FRA approvals.)
Okay; noting that the argument has moved from "untested" to "relatively untested".
To clarify, is your concern the inadequacy of the approval process FDA uses for (all) vaccines (noting that many vaccines --e.g. influenza-- are refreshed on a fairly regular basis to account for new strains of viruses) or something specific to approval of the MRNA vaccines?
Or is it that MRNA vaccines were a new approach for vaccines more generally, and so there wasn't/isn't the same long-term data that there was/is for multiple generations of vaccines based on older technologies (viral vector, toxoid, etc.)?
I disagree; "untested" is a very definitive statement. Not tested. Especially when it's in a thread discussing people using all manner of less tested or sometimes literally untested peptides. (Hence my initial thought that maybe you were aware of people taking a DIY route that I wasn't.)
Anyway, when discussing a subject so popularly controversial as vaccines, it's probably better to be precise.
It has a certain logic to it, and I think US tipping culture basically follows the same rules.
Even if you almost always end up paying the bill + 20% tip, Americans like the idea that they could not pay the tip if the service was bad.
The appearance of free action is appealing and preferable to being forced to pay the extra amount, even if you almost always pay the amount willingly anyway.
In my experience, everyone who defends tipping culture is defending not paying the tip. I don't buy this idea that someone likes tipping culture and still pays it. After all, you're free to tip anyone you want regardless of culture.
The problem is it is so ingrained in US culture that switching to tip-free has generally failed where tried, even in pro-labor lefty hoods in blue cities.
Numerous restaurants in NYC tried and flipped back over the last 10 years. Restauranteurs reported illogical / innumerate behavior where sales went down when they switched to untipped higher prices.
Well sure, it has to be mandated through law or underpaying workers will inevitably outcompete those that pay workers. I don't think that's an argument that anyone likes tipping culture (except wait staff in bougie cities).
I remember when Uber first came to Austin, one of the big draws was that a tip wasn't expected. The app didn't even allow it IIRC and Uber sort of advertised this as a feature. 15 years later, back to it, tips seem expected again?
Oddly enough, the fact that I was initially sold a product where a tip wasn't expected has made me continue to not tip Uber drivers. Not sure what that says about me.
I actually like tipping culture because it makes me feel generous and charitable, not because there's some kind of weird master/servant relationship. I even make it a point to passive aggressively tip well when service sucks because who gives a shit?
The world is full of people that confuse contrarianism for intelligence.
HN, in particular, loves anything that allows them to discredit science (like the constant banging on about the replication crisis) and replace it with their own pet theory.
>The world is full of people that confuse contrarianism for intelligence.
I've been shouting this from the roof tops for years now and it's one of the biggest problems we face today. I live in a rural area and 100% of the Joe Rogan-ified men I know are mindless reactionaries. They aren't educated, they don't read books, they don't travel, heck, they barely leave the county. They think they're so smart because they say no to everything anyone else says. They never offer solutions. They never try to fix things. They barely even vote. If you say the sky is blue they will say it's green because they're just oh so smart. It's a massive massive problem.
Is HN particularly drawn to this over other platforms? I gotta say I don’t quite recognize this. In general, I think there’s a good dose of respect for science around these parts, but maybe I’m blind to it.
I see a particular strain more often here and in “rationalist”-adjacent spaces. It’s essentially anti-intellectualism dressed up as intellectual curiosity and debate.
I think it’s also that contrarianism generates an argument they can follow - it’s often much more simplistic along some axis. For example, flat earthers superficially have a really simple model. Throw a ball up, of course it comes down. You look straight ahead and it looks flat. Ask them how GPS works and they can’t follow the math anyways.
I have recently been through the rabbit hole of peptides and most of the people engaged or involved in peptides seem to be healthy individuals. There are some exceptions like lookmaxxers and anti vaxers. The vast majority of people are normal and majority are outside of USA where anti vax sentiment are not in vogue. Some explore peptides for their dogs and cats too.
To assert that people are sad and anxious while not putting the effort to understand the people involved is such an intellectually lazy position to hold.
Extra points for people partying hard on shady synthetic drugs, but being actively anti-vax because government. Case in point, Miguel Bosé, a very well known spanish artist that spent the first 50 years of his life abusing everything except heroin (his own words), but now he is a vaccine negationist, for him and for his two children.
A lot of these peptides are designed to optimize bodies. And a lot of these people suffer from OCD - often a similar type to anorexia. No, it is not normal to intrusively think about your body every few minutes, most people that you see around you do not think about their bodies more than maybe once a day, when they look in the mirror after a shower. And maybe not even that.
"Antivaxxer*" here. I'm not injecting peptides for a similar reason - I'm not convinced the cost/benefit works out. That said, the issue for many is autonomy - if you want to put novel stuff in your body, go ahead. As long as you don't try to compel me to do it.
* Not if we're actually in literate company, but that seemed to be the common consensus after I skipped the jab, having recovered from covid right before the shots became available. Nevermind that my doctor was on board and I've had all the other ones (minus the flu shot). I was still a selfish grandma killing Republican who probably voted for trump to the commentariat.
Your right to swing a fist ends where the other fella's nose begins. That doesn't mean you aren't free, it just means you recognize that the right not to suffer grievous bodily harm trumps the right to swing your fist willy-nilly.
As a fist-swinger you may not always agree, and you may even get hurt one day because you couldn't swing your fist whenever you wanted, but that's just the cost of living in a world filled with other human beings.
I appreciate why you might feel that way. It's reasonable for reasonable people to disagree, but in this case the experts we trust to decide these things decided that you were the one who presented a danger to society. I seriously doubt that you have the sort of medical credentials that would be required to get any serious person to take your word over those of the world class epidemiologists, virologists, etc who said the opposite.
Regardless of correctness though, even if they'd been wrong it's just part of life that sometimes you have to go along to get along. There are a lot of things I disagree with society about, but I depend on society to live. It would childish to try not to participate.
I suspect that people are labeling you an "anti vaxxer" not because of your decision to not receive the vaccine after already having had covid, but because of your rhetoric. "the jab", general and vague criticisms of medical industry, etc.
You can at least draw a somewhat tortured connection between "anti vaccine" and opting out of receiving a specific vaccine (for logical reasons, with your doctors approval, though are they even a real doctor if they approved such a thing?).
But using the word "jab" or criticising the medical industry making you anti vaccine is the kind of thing I was talking about when I mentioned literacy.
The vibe you're getting is that I'm blaspheming. I'm saying things that probably hundreds of millions, possibly even billions of marketing dollars were spent to discourage being said.
All you have to do to make it really clear that you're not an antivaxxer is say that the COVID vaccine is largely safe, most people should get it barring medical exceptions, etc.
Everything else is kind of irrelevant. It just feels like you're dancing around this and talking about how slighted you are for not getting it. It's a really easy "solve".
Don't be pissy when you use the same exact phrasing and talking points as antivaxxers and then people assume you are one. It's trivial to demonstrate that you are not.
No, all I have to do to make it clear is say "I'm not opposed to vaccines as some kind of principle, ideological or otherwise", and then you can either believe me or not.
That's what anti vaccine means, despite all the efforts to redefine it. It doesn't mean "won't recite the marketing materials for a specific pharmaceutical product when prompted".
Generally safe is meaningless in this context. That's not a reasonable way to talk about entire classes of drugs. All that matters is for a given person with a given medical history and context, does the specific drug have a net benefit.
Here's a good test case: have you had the rabies vaccine? If not, does that make you an antivaxxer? How about vaccines that have been pulled off the market? Are those no longer vaccines?
Something reasonable to say would be there are vaccines that have a net benefit, and you should take those if that applies to your situation.
This whole "say the slogan or you're an antivaxxer" is like giving kids the nontoxic glue because you know some of them are going to eat it. The adults in the room don't need this shit.
I don't care what "slogan" you say, I'm just trying to see if you hold the opinions of an antivaxxer and for some reason you refuse to make any claim that would help avail me of that position.
The article frames these supplements as being purely appealing to "anti science" people but I think that's really unfair. You can believe in medication, believe in science, trust government systems, etc, and still feel like you're not being served by the medically approved options.
It can also depend on people's politics vs who is on power. In general British anti-vaxers are left wing (very lefty affluent hippie types - you can see this from the areas with low MMR rates), and even more so during covid when a right wing government was in power. There is evidence for this in a survey KCL did of anti-vaccine beliefs during covid. I personally know of British students who declared they would not have covid vaccines because they "did not trust the Tories"
i mean, to be fair everything everyone is injecting, including prescribed medicines, are largely coming from Chinese (or Indian) factories. We don't manufacture much in the western world ourselves.
I reject this sentiment. Ask anyone that you know who lived through the 1960s in a rich country. Their experience is nearly all the same: The air quality and environmental pollution was appalling. When my mother lived in Manhattan (New York City) in the 1960s, she would return home from work, and wipe her face with a cloth. The cloth had black streaks from all the pollution. Today, it is a different world in rich countries. They have cleaned up.
Finally: Yes, global warming is real, but the threat is different. I predict that we will far exceed the average increase in global average temperature, but we will survive. Yes, we will survive, but with some "scars".
The air in Manhattan got better because people rejected resignation and demanded that we must do better.
By "scars" you mean the permanent destruction of coral reefs, old-growth forests, and the species that depend on them? These cannot be rebuilt on any timescale meaningful to civilization. What exactly are you defending?
We have done a lot better with faster and readily perceptible environmental problems.. from air pollution in China to acid rain killing forests and lakes in Europe. So yes, we should celebrate our successes too.
One of the objectives of the Artemis missions is to prepare for Mars travel, none of the objectives of Artemis are to view Earth as the only planet we have nor to preserve it.
Proving the Earth is flat is not one of the stated goals of the Artemis program which is to establish a permanent base on the moon to prepare for deep space exploration.
Nature's finest achievement. A hyper-efficient "mind" built on a pyre of fossil fuels and rare minerals so it can help us burn the rest faster. Surely the Neanderthals stand envious that millions will be able to confide their unemployment woes to ChatGPT after GPS-navigating to the Dollar General in the nearest bleak strip mall in search of affordable goods.
I love watching magpies. I have seen them tease cats by "foraging" just out of sprint and leap distance. They quickly fly up to a tree when the cat moves, always keeping an eye on it, and resume when the cat resets, as other magpies in the group watch from above. I've seen them harass a hawk try to eat a fresh hunt, six magpies surrounding it, taking turns pecking at the hawk's tail until it leaves.
They have interesting interactions with the hooded crows, tolerant of each other but still competitive over food. If a white tailed eagle enters they area they will together team up and attempt to chase it away.
They have complex social interactions with each. I've seen a younger magpie in a group get pinned down by a dominant one while several in the group pecked at its belly, because it ate out of order. They acknowledge even me, their neighbor, who occasionally leaves some winter food out for them.
Anyone who is fortunate to spend real time in or at the edge of nature, and takes the time to observe, should be humbled by the complexity and intelligence of the world around us. Some species stand out, of course, like the magpies.
Most of what we have created as the human race is best characterized as complication rather than complexity, when compared to the utter complexity of the natural world. In the era of AI I find it amusing that we believe we're approaching being able to construct a kind of real intelligence when so many can barely recognize, let alone understand, the "lesser" forms of intelligence around us.
So much of society's intellectual talent has been allocated toward software. Many of our smartest are working on ad-tech, surveillance, or squeezing as much attention out of our neighbors as possible.
Maybe the current allocation of technical talent is a market failure and disruption to coding could be a forcing function for reallocation.
I am increasingly feeling okay with the idea of being left out. The worst parts of working professionally in a software development team have been amplified by LLMs. Ridiculously large PRs, strong opinions doubled down due to being LLM-"confirmed", bigger expectations coming from above, exceptionally unwarranted confidence in the change or approach the LLM has come up with.
I am dying inside when I make a comment and receive a response that has clearly been prompted toward my comment and possibly filtered in the voice of the responder if not copied and pasted directly. Particularly when it's wrong. And it often is wrong because the human using them doesn't know how to ask the right questions.
Fortunately, most of the fundamental technological infrastructure is well in place at this point (networking, operating systems, ...). Low skilled engineers vibe coding features for some fundamentally pointless SaaS is OK with me.
A small way to help is to replace some or all of your lawn with native species. A lawn should be a throw rug, not wall to wall carpet that is functionally a desert. If you won't get fined for doing so.
[1] https://www.worldwildlife.org/news/press-releases/catastroph...
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...