The turning point in this mouse utopia, Calhoun observed, occurred on Day 315 when the first signs appeared of a breakdown in social norms and structure. Aberrations included the following: females abandoning their young; males no longer defending their territory; and both sexes becoming more violent and aggressive. Deviant behavior, sexual and social, mounted with each passing day. The last thousand mice to be born tended to avoid stressful activity and focused their attention increasingly on themselves

They never involved themselves with others, engaged in sex, nor would they fight. All appeared [outwardly] as a beautiful exhibit of the species with keen, alert eyes and a healthy, well-kept body. These mice, however, could not cope with unusual stimuli. Though they looked inquisitive, they were in fact, very stupid.

By relieving individuals of challenges, which then deprives them of purpose, the welfare state is an utterly unnatural and anti-social contrivance. In the mouse experiment, the individuals ultimately lost interest in the things that perpetuate the species.

My two rat terriers get free food and free health care, though I am not only their provider, but I am also their “master” too.

One of the more famous ethologists in recent decades was John B. Calhoun, best known for his mouse experiments in the 1960s when he worked for the National Institute for Mental Health.

At my first company, Ksplice, I fell into the trap of working nonstop. In the early days of the company, our official policy was literally twelve hour days, six days a week, with Saturday as the day off. (Side note: in retrospect, this was an awful official policy.)

To maintain my sanity, I have one rule: Either be working or be actively not working. The case you most need to avoid is “trying to work, but just staring at your screen or mindlessly scrolling through LinkedIn.”

A sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles is pushing pro-China narratives and attempting to discredit those seen as opponents of China's government, according to a new study.

Other controversial figures featured in the cartoons included "whistleblower" scientist Li-Meng Yan, and Steve Bannon, former political strategist for Donald Trump.

"The aim of the network appears to be to delegitimise the West by amplifying pro-Chinese narratives," said Benjamin Strick, the author of the CIR report.

Any neural network, from simple perceptrons to enormous corporate AI-systems, consists of nodes that imitate the neurons in the human brain. These cells are tightly interconnected. So are the nodes.

A huge neural network like that demands a lot of resources but even then remains prone to overfitting because the large number of parameters enable it to just memorize the dataset.

CNNs use parameter sharing. All neurons in a particular feature map share weights which makes the whole system less computationally intense.

The social media giant announced in a blog post on Wednesday that it had banned the accounts, apps, and pages related to the NYU Ad Observatory, a project by Cybersecurity of Democracy.

Over the last several years, we’ve used this access to uncover systemic flaws in the Facebook Ad Library, identify misinformation in political ads including many sowing distrust in our election system, and to study Facebook’s apparent amplification of partisan misinformation.”

Facebook has also effectively cut off access to more than two dozen other researchers and journalists who get access to Facebook data through our project, including our work measuring vaccine misinformation with the Virality Project and many other partners who rely on our data.

Furthermore, the media is closely linked to government, and there is a lot of flow in and out of people with a lot of influence - meaning the same people making decisions may be the same people broadcasting the narrative about them

This is a serious problem because with advertising there is no neutral system in which the final buyer choice decides decides, it’s the advertisers’ choices which influence which media companies prosper and which burn

The bottom line with advertisers is that they want to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the “buying mood”. Just think, why do we have so much mass entertainment that serves little to no purpose apart from passing the time?

What this means is that mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest - they need a steady beat of information at regular times

Certain organisations are created ONLY for the purpose of eliciting flak2. However we see this everywhere now, not just in organisations - just look at your average Twitter or Facebook newsfeed, social media has become a powerful tool of polarisation where rhetoric is militant rather than compassionate.

Now, we may dismiss some of this as conspiracy but the truth about media is that it is controlled by a specific few, and their interests often do not lie with telling the objective truth as much as we’d like to think. In this article we will dive into the premises of Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s Manufacturing Consent.

to amuse, entertain and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.

n capitalist societies, however, this fact is concealed, since the media “actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest.”

Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, these e-vouchers will only be valid for the services they are designated for by the government which could include healthcare, education, and an array of services in the future.

NPCI had issued the guidelines for the UPI platform, stating that e-vouchers can be issued to mobile phone holders without any app or bank account.

For instance, to farmers for fertilisers and seeds before the farming season, or to students in universities to purchase books and other university resources, or to employees to spend on designated services, say leisure, or restaurants, or medical checkups, or travel, and so forth.

The e-RUPI is a person- and purpose-specific digital payment mechanism, intended to help people across different economic spectrums with easier access to better services.

The e-RUPI has been envisioned as a cashless and contactless online payment system that will use a QR code or an SMS string-based e-voucher that will be delivered to the beneficiaries.

The beneficiaries will be able to use this voucher without any card, internet banking access, or internet-enabled mobile app when they wish to access the services at the designated provider for those services.

Not surprisingly, I have already encountered a number of displeased patients who would have preferred hearing about, for example, a new lung nodule found on a CT scan, from their doctor rather than seeing it pop up on their electronic patient portal and being left to wonder what it might mean.

potential to create confusion and misunderstanding — particularly for those who don’t speak medicalese.

The Cures Act also resulted in the immediate availability of clinician notes to patients

Didi’s listing in the U.S. last week came just as Xi is looking for ways to control the vast reams of data held by China’s tech giants, in part to ensure the Communist Party spreads the wealth beyond a small circle of billionaires.

Yet six years later it clearly shows the risk that an outside party—and perhaps foreign spies—could glean valuable intelligence from Didi about some of the country’s most important officials.

The government’s desire to assert control over the economy and one of its most valuable resources lies at the heart of recent regulatory clampdowns on online industries.

Devised and overseen by a dedicated branch set up just last month to regulate the industry, the rules unveiled Saturday were couched in general terms that could be applied broadly to common practices throughout the industry

To me, the highest form of wealth is controlling your time.

But if you're trying to communicate, especially to groups of people, or if you're playing the role of a mentor or teacher, then complexity is your enemy.

I've spent a lot of time in professional contexts telling people to delete content, remove words from slide decks and generally prioritize what they're trying to communicate.

The mystery is where to find it in future.

To explain his air of liberation, then, his sense of ease, he cites culture, not law. What Dubai withholds in rights it also lacks in the informal pressures of “identity”.

But the chance to forget oneself, to disappear in plain sight, is a freedom too.

Sign-ups in North America have ground to a halt in the past six months. From April through June, 430,000 people cancelled their Netflix subscriptions in the US and Canada.

Alright so let's create a simple contentEditable that also listens to the Paste event. I'll be doing this in ClojureScript as it is my favourite language, using Reagent for the React goodness as this is a React app, but all of this also applies for good ol' regular JS and React.j

Archaeological evidence from earlier eras, however, has long implied that as few as 1 percent of pre-industrial residents of the island suffered from the devastating disease.

Other peoples, including most Africans, survived, and have thrown off European domination but remain behind in wealth and power. Still other peoples, including the original inhabitants of Australia, the Americas, and southern Africa, are no longer even masters of their own lands but have been decimated, subjugated, or exterminated by European colonialists. Why did history turn out that way, instead of the opposite way?