There’s endless media stories about how many new and young millionaires the crypto market has created. While crypto isn’t new (it’s been around in some form since 2009 with the advent of Bitcoin), it’s only reached the high level of mainstream appeal since 2020. As such, you can hardly go to a bar and… Continue reading The Similarities Between Crypto and Stock Trading
Draft Text at Climate Talks Pushes Nations to Act Faster
Negotiators at the global climate talks in Scotland tentatively agreed to accelerate the timeline by which countries need to strengthen their promises for carbon reductions, according to a draft of the working text released this morning. The text reflects growing alarm among nations that global goals to slow the pace of climate change are falling… Continue reading Draft Text at Climate Talks Pushes Nations to Act Faster
Hackathon Introduces Undergraduate Students to Public Policy Research
Is there a relationship between historically redlined neighborhoods and COVID-19 vaccination rates? How has the pandemic affected incarcerated people? Why do some communities have less access to health care? Those were among the public policy questions that teams of students from three historically Black colleges and universities tackled as part of Hacking Equity. This virtual… Continue reading Hackathon Introduces Undergraduate Students to Public Policy Research
They Started “Shooting The Generals”
Markets are loudly turmoiling this morning with stocks dumped and pumped, bond yields lower, and crypto hammered as Nomura’s Charlie McElligott warns that mega-tech companies remain the key for the market overall. USTs are again rallying despite the multi-day hawkish parade of Central Banks (well, everybody save the BoJ, lol), as we see a bull-flattening again… Continue reading They Started “Shooting The Generals”
Exorcist Diary: Mentally Tormented by Demons
It is becoming apparent to me that more than a few of those mentally tormented by their sins and failings of the past are actually suffering from demonic obsessions… There is a normal type of real-event OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) where a person obsessively ruminates about a real, or imagined, failing from the past. In the… Continue reading Exorcist Diary: Mentally Tormented by Demons
Qubits Can Be as Safe as Bits, Researchers Show
Over the centuries, we have learned to put information into increasingly durable and useful form, from stone tablets to paper to digital media. Beginning in the 1980s, researchers began theorizing about how to store the information inside a quantum computer, where it is subject to all sorts of atomic-scale errors. By the 1990s they had… Continue reading Qubits Can Be as Safe as Bits, Researchers Show
Temporary Safety-Net Policies Prevented Mass Insurance Loss During the Pandemic
A pandemic is a terrible time to lose health insurance coverage. Yet, for a segment of the 23 million workers who suddenly lost jobs in spring of 2020, that was a fear-inducing possibility. New data from the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (PDF), among others, show that these fears… Continue reading Temporary Safety-Net Policies Prevented Mass Insurance Loss During the Pandemic
Greenwald Exposes The Real Disinformation Agents
Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com, The war on “disinformation” is now one of the highest priorities of the political and media establishment. It has become the foundational justification for imposing a regime of online censorship. Around the world, new laws are being enacted in its name to empower the state to regulate discourse. Exploiting… Continue reading Greenwald Exposes The Real Disinformation Agents
The Baptism of the Lord
On Sunday we celebrated Jesus’ baptism. In Catholicism, the liturgical season of “Christmas” does not even kick off until Christmas Eve, and then continues long after the world has moved on to marketing promotions for Super Bowl snacks, Valentine gifts, and TurboTax. I remember Father Jack, throughout my adolescent and teen years, quizzing the congregation,… Continue reading The Baptism of the Lord
What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
Remember IBM’s Watson, the AI Jeopardy! champion? A 2010 promotion proclaimed, “Watson understands natural language with all its ambiguity and complexity.” However, as we saw when Watson subsequently failed spectacularly in its quest to “revolutionize medicine with artificial intelligence,” a veneer of linguistic facility is not the same as actually comprehending human language. Natural language… Continue reading What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?