Florida is swamped by disease outbreaks as quackery replaces science
“The surgeon general is Ron DeSantis’s lapdog, and says whatever DeSantis wants him to say,” said Dr Robert Speth, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at south Florida’s Nova Southeastern University with more than four decades of research experience.
“His statements are more political than medical and that’s a horrible disservice to the citizens of Florida.
He’s somebody whose job is to protect public …
Rewired - complete series 🧠🔮🚀
Dramatized scifi series | Total listening time: 15h 28m
Total Psychology: the exact science of opinion and behavior molding. The promise of complete economic and political predictability, direct-to-cortex. But an audacious team of scientists offers a deterrent: Rewiring, a detour in neural pathw...
Persistent Homology generalizations for Social Media Network Analysis
Isabela Rocha
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.19257 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.19257
arXiv:2404.19257v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This study details an approach for the analysis of social media collected political data through the lens of Topological Data Analysis, with a specific focus on Persistent Homology and the political processes they represent by proposing a set of mathematical generalizations using Gaussian functions to define and analyze these Persistent Homology categories. Three distinct types of Persistent Homologies were recurrent across datasets that had been plotted through retweeting patterns and analyzed through the k-Nearest-Neighbor filtrations. As these Persistent Homologies continued to appear, they were then categorized and dubbed Nuclear, Bipolar, and Multipolar Constellations. Upon investigating the content of these plotted tweets, specific patterns of interaction and political information dissemination were identified, namely Political Personalism and Political Polarization. Through clustering and application of Gaussian density functions, I have mathematically characterized each category, encapsulating their distinctive topological features. The mathematical generalizations of Bipolar, Nuclear, and Multipolar Constellations developed in this study are designed to inspire other political science digital media researchers to utilize these categories as to identify Persistent Homology in datasets derived from various social media platforms, suggesting the broader hypothesis that such structures are bound to be present on political scraped data regardless of the social media it's derived from. This method aims to offer a new perspective in Network Analysis as it allows for an exploration of the underlying shape of the networks formed by retweeting patterns, enhancing the understanding of digital interactions within the sphere of Computational Social Sciences.
"As it stands today, the primary direction-setter for new advances in science and technology is “what do folks like Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel and Gary Tan and Sam Altman find exciting?”
The problem isn’t just that these guys are ideological fellow-travelers, hell bent on a shared political project that socializes all risk while privatizing all gain. (though, I mean… that would kinda be enough of a problem on its own.)
It’s also that their eye for science, technology, a…
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1. The speed with which the climate is now changing is faster than (almost) all scientists thought possible.
2. There is now zero prospect of holding the average temperature increase this century to below 1.5°C; even 2°C is beginning to slip out of reach. The vast majority of climate scientists know this, but rarely if ever give voice to this critically important reality.
3. At the same time, the vast majority of people still haven’t a clue about what’s going on – and what this means for them and everything they hold dear.
4. The current backlash against existing (already wholly inadequate) climate measures is also accelerating – and will cause considerable political damage in 2024. Those driving this backlash represent the same old climate denial that has been so damaging over so many years.
5. The science-based institutions on which we depend to address this crisis have comprehensively failed us. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is incapable of telling the whole truth about accelerating climate change; the Conference of the Parties (under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) has been co-opted by the fossil fuel lobby to the point of total corruption.
6. By not calling out these incontrovertible realities, mainstream scientists are at risk of becoming the new climate deniers."
#ClimateCrisis
What does Alexei Navalny’s death tell us? That Putin seems to be devising his most ominous scheme yet
A bold move such as getting rid of a key political opponent might not make sense if Putin simply wanted to continue with business as usual after an election whose outcome is already guaranteed.
It makes more sense if Putin is preparing to take a new, more politically fraught course.
In that case, he would want to leave nothing to chance. Whatever he has planned, with Nav…
SD: science is important for progress, but can also point out things not beneficial to economy (c.f. climate change). political environment now incl. decreased research funding, denial of science, misinformation, changing legal protections,… #ecsa2024
"'I don't know what motivated participation here, whether it was negligence — gross negligence — utter stupidity, or what,' he said. Braun said there is 'no reasonable justification' for it..."
#LdnOnt city council: great job everyone, here's $672 million! Sorry, can't give a penny of that to help prevent homelessness.
Opinion models, data, and politics
Matthias Gs\"angerInstitute of Political Science and Sociology, Julius-Maximilians-University, Volker H\"oselDepartment of Mathematics, School for Computation, Information and Technology, TU M\"unchen, Christoph Mohamad-KlotzbachInstitute of Political Science and Sociology, Julius-Maximilians-University, Johannes M\"uller1 and3
The timespan of these projects is inspiring.
"It takes three months for the molten glass to cool. Over the next four years, the mirror will be mounted, ground and slowly polished to a precision of around one millionth of an inch. The [Giant Magellan Telescope's] first mirror was cast in [2005]; its seventh will be finished sometime in [2027].
[…] big telescopes require […] the world’s most patient risk capital."
AI uncovers climate change denial hotspots across the US
Scientists at the University of Michigan, have profiled climate change denialism across the United States using artificial intelligence and network analysis. They find that a large proportion of Americans do not believe in climate change.
Twitter data analysis revealed that about 14.8% of Americans do not believe in climate change. The highest prevalence of denialism was noticed in the Central and Southern US. In contrast, …
Who is driving the conversation? Analysing the nodality of British MPs and journalists on Twitter
Leonardo Castro-Gonzalez, Sukankana Chakraborty, Helen Margetts, Hardik Rajpal, Daniele Guariso, Jonathan Bright
https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.08765
During his first time in the White House, Trump made no secret that he wanted people in powerful positions based on "central casting"—a showbusiness term that essentially means that he hired people based on their appearance, behavior, or nature, rather than expertise.
"That proved to be a disaster in many instances," Carl Cavalli a professor of political science at the University of North Georgia, told Newsweek. "This time it will be 'All Loyalty, All The T…
@cdarwin@c.im
