🔗 Articles: Sat 09.Mar.2024
The Atlantic: Biden’s candy-bar crusade
Sesame Street characters have had their fuzzy fingers on the pulse of American life lately. First, Elmo triggered an avalanche of despair when he asked on X how everyone was doing. Then his castmate the Cookie Monster proclaimed earlier this week, “Me hate shrinkflation!”
In his punchy, confrontational State of the Union speech last night, Biden conveyed a similar feeling. After outlining his accomplishments and his plans for the economy, the president denounced the way snack-food makers have been putting fewer chips in each bag. “No, I’m not joking,” he said, as the audience laughed. “It’s called shrinkflation.”
The Atlantic: Everything Can Be Meat
Recently, a photo of rice left me confused. The rice itself looked tasty enough–fluffy, well formed–but its oddly fleshy hue gave me the creeps. According to the scientists who’d developed it, each pink-tinged grain was seeded with muscle and fat cells from a cow, imparting a nutty, umami flavor.
In one sense, this “beef rice” was just another example of lab-grown meat, touted as a way to eat animals without the ethical and environmental impacts. Though not yet commercially available, the rice was developed by researchers in Korea as a nutrition-dense food that can be produced sustainably, at least more so than beef itself. Although it has a more brittle texture than normal rice, it can be cooked and served in the same way. Yet in another sense, this rice was entirely different. Lab-grown meat aims to replicate conventional meat in every dimension, including taste, nutrition, and appearance. Beef rice doesn’t even try.
â‹®
The basic science of lab-grown meat can be used for more than just succulent chicken breasts and medium-rare steaks. Cells grown in a tank function essentially like ground meat, imparting a meaty flavor and mouthfeel to whatever they are added to, behaving more like an ingredient or a seasoning than a food product. Hybrid meat products, made by mixing a small amount of cultivated-meat cells with other ingredients, are promising because they would be more cost-effective than entire lab-grown steaks or chicken breasts but meatier than purely plant-based meat.
Undecided with Matt Ferrell (YouTube): Why This NASA Battery May Be The Future of Energy Storage
Is this the perfect battery? What do you do if a satellite runs out of batteries? It’s prohibitively expensive to send a team into orbit and pop in some new AAs, and as a result many satellites use very efficient, reliable and long-lived nickel-hydrogen batteries. We’re talking about batteries that last decades. That sounds like the sort of battery that could revolutionize grid-scale energy storage and really help out renewables back here on Earth, which is why EnerVenue is backing nickel hydrogen batteries as the next step forward! But if batteries rugged and powerful enough for spacecraft already exist, then why haven’t we used it back here on Earth until now?
And they’re very close to production for grid-scale storage!
Note the coupon for a discount on a ticket to the Everything Electric Canada exposition in Vancouver Sep 6-8, 2024
It is the first Monday of March and Kowalkiewicz is hours from launching The Economy of Algorithms: AI and the Rise of the Digital Minions. In his debut book, the QueenslandUniversity of Technology professor argues that a new age powered, in part, by non-human agents has been gradually reshaping our economy and society for years — in ways that are not always visible and little understood.
Until recently, Kowalkiewicz admits that even he — the founding director of QUT’s Research Centre for the Digital Economy — could not see it for what it was. Algorithms, he then believed, could not be thought of as agents in our world, simply pieces of code following human instruction.
“I was wrong,” he admits in the book.
A now-former forensic scientist with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) manipulated or omitted DNA test results in hundreds of cases, an internal affairs investigation found, which prompted a full review of her work during her nearly 30-year career at the agency.
The CBI released the findings of the investigation into Yvonne “Missy” Woods Friday, which concluded Woods’ handling of DNA testing data affected 652 cases between 2008 and 2023, including posting incomplete results in some cases. A review of her work from 1994 to 2008 is also underway, according to the CBI.
â‹®
The CBI internal investigation, which was conducted in collaboration with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, did not find Woods falsified DNA matches or fabricated data. It revealed Woods had omitted material facts in official criminal justice records, thus tampering with DNA testing results, and violating agency policies ranging from data retention to quality control measures, the agency said.
CBC: B.C. springs forward, more than 4 years after move to adopt daylight time
Premier David Eby has said change will be enacted once Washington state, Oregon, California also make the move.
Last Updated: 09.Mar.2024 22:59 EST