Who Fakes It Better

aka Fake China vs Fake North Korea

Just when you thought China was King Fake, you realize they aren't the only game in town.

This is pretty much a story about how North Korea does fake even more, but even worse, than China. It's true. Some weapons experts, or historians, or buffs, say that a showcasing parade of North Korea's military has fake weapons meant to look like real weapons that they don't actually have.

This link is to news.com.au, which is hungry for your potential consumerism, i.e., don't go here if you don't have ad-blockers because it will paralyze your browser.

Catch Em All

There's a lot about fake news and viral memes lately. That is exciting over here, because it's been a central theme at Network Address forever.

But wait...as I search the interwebs for a good image to go with this post, I am hit with an opportune eureka moment.

Viruses, memetic infection, etc., I'm looking for a picture of a kid getting vaccinated, or just jabbed with a needle. I knew I would have to contend with tempting distractions from both pro- and anti- vaccination data-bowels (just came up w that one, aka shit-spewing websites). And so, just one, I click on this chart which lists the characteristics of folks who do not vaccinate their kids. And, despite what you would think (unless everyone already knows this), those people tend to be wealthy and educated. I only point this out because it seems counter-intuitive that educated people would do something kinda stupid, like neglect the benefits of lifesaving medical treatment in lieu of the statistically benign chance of getting a totally pathologically-unknown condition of autism.

Anyway, the point is that the whole vaccines-thing is a meme, for sure, and memes are powerful, and they can even kill you. (Dan Dennett so eloquently points out in his talk about Dangerous Memes.) This meme has been spreading among a particular segment of the population. What is it that makes one person susceptible to one meme? How did this thing become a thing? Turns out there are some things happening like this. I want to know about how anti-vaccines became a thing, but in the meantime, we have this --

Researchers test 'social contagion' in laboratory setting

Apr 2017, phys.org

The results don't sound as interesting as the title, but I guess we should be happy nonetheless that these experiments are being done in a lab setting, instead of just observing any available social media data...

***

And here we have a good look at the effects of a viral campaign, what makes them work or not work; they're looking at the ALS ice bucket challenge, you remember that I'm sure --

Viral charity campaigns have a psychological 'recipe' and all-too-brief lifespan
Feb 2017, phys.org

This is just a clip, there's a better explanation in the article:
"Just as a flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long, so a rapid social consensus spike reaches an equally rapid saturation point.

"Once the social tipping point of a campaign has passed, momentum can decay quickly and the purpose can get diluted. Once the ALS campaign had reached peak virality, many people were just pouring cold water over their heads without necessarily referencing the charity."
-Dr Sander van der Linden, from Cambridge's Department of Psychology

image source: link

Liquid Crystals

I'm thinking the shapeshifting liquid nitrogen guy from Terminator, but this time it's made of crystals.

New quantum liquid crystals may play role in future of computers
Apr 2017, phys.org

"Liquid crystals fall somewhere in between a liquid and a solid: they are made up of molecules that flow around freely as if they were a liquid but are all oriented in the same direction, as in a solid. Liquid crystals can be found in nature, such as in biological cell membranes. Alternatively, they can be made artificially—such as those found in the liquid crystal displays commonly used in watches, smartphones, televisions, and other items that have display screens."

Semibotic Semibiotic

It's not often you get to see an article about consciousness on the BBC, but you do, it's Dan Dennett getting mega-memetical. (just kidding, that doesn't even make sense, in this context.)

Is consciousness just an illusion?
Apr 2017, BBC

We're not just are robots", he says. "We're robots, made of robots, made of robots".
-Dan Dennett

More Human Than Human

It's Alive

[This image is of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, illustrated by artist Matt Kish.]

New Zealand river first in the world to be given legal human status
March 2017, BBC

["It's no stranger than family trusts, or companies or incorporated societies." -New Zealand's Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson.]

Yup.

Buildings On Ice

No it's real though.

If there is one thing I learned in architecture school, it's that water is the building's number one enemy. (Insects are number two, by the way.)

High winds turned this New York home into an ice house
the internet, 2017

Smearing the Clock

This image was made by smearing together hundreds of photos; it's by Toronto photographer Matt Molloy, and it's called time-stacking. Source.

I wrote a whole book on approximation and ambiguity. Not really; it was about smells and how the language of smells is imprecise and ambiguous.

But really, we see here how the slowly thawing truth of a quantum science is smearing our sense of reality all over the place:

'Blurred times' in a quantum world
Mar 2017, phys.org

The more precise a given clock is, the more it "blurs" the flow of time measured by neighbouring clocks.