Filed under "What could possibly go wrong?"

New proposals to cut bills with community batteries

• Families and businesses could benefit from cheaper energy through the use of community batteries.Families could save on bills by storing cheaper renewable able electricity and using it when demand is highest
• Call for evidence launched to explore how community batteries can be rolled out at to support working people, including renters or those living in flats, to save money
• Part of the biggest investment in community energy in UK history, giving people a stake in local clean power projects and reducing reliance on volatile fossil fuels

A call for evidence launched today (Thursday 4 June) will seek to unlock barriers so shared battery storage can be rolled out across the UK, helping communities store locally generated renewable energy and pass on the savings to households.

Pumping heat into the debate

This $1,000,000,000 AI data centre could dump 23 nuclear bombs worth of energy per day

What could be one of the world’s largest data centres – the warehouses that power AI – could dump 23 atomic bombs’ worth of energy per day.

The 40,000-acre Stratos Project Area, which would be kept ticking by a gas power plant, was approved by Box Elder County in Utah this month.

It will eventually gobble up about 9GW of power every single day – the UK generated 22.7GW of power yesterday, according to the National Grid...

If you need more analogies, it’s the equivalent of: ‘40,000 Walmart Supercenters, 2-3 New York Cities and 13 Back To The Future DeLorean time machines.’

According to... er... AI -

Location and Size

The Stratos Project Area spans approximately 40,000 acres in western Box Elder County, Utah, primarily in Hansel Valley and Locomotive Valley, divided by a small mountain range. The site is remote, about 15–20 miles from the nearest town, and includes unincorporated land, private property, and areas near Hill Air Force Base and Utah National Guard facilities

Not everyone can do monotasking

Scientists have long said we can’t multitask. A new study says we can

Researchers have long said that the human brain is not set up to multitask — but new research is challenging that understanding.

Experts previously explained that when we believe we’re multitasking, we’re actually just quickly switching between tasks. That’s because the area of the brain that manages thinking, the prefrontal cortex, can only really handle one thing at a time.

But another region of the brain involved in memory lends a helping hand over time, new research has shown. When people needed to perform image sorting tests over the course of weeks, the tests initially activated the prefrontal cortex and later activated the temporal cortex.

Over time, the brain is remodeled, Maximilian Riesenhuber, a professor of neuroscience at Georgetown University School of Medicine, explained in a statement. The prefrontal cortex passes responsibility to the temporal cortex and is free for “whatever else you want to do, increasing your capacity.”

 

Ed demonstrates monotasking

Lammy supports Starmer until he doesn't support Starmer

David Lammy defends Keir Starmer after Andy Burnham vows leadership challenge

Sir Keir Starmer will stand up to attempts to oust him, David Lammy has said, after Andy Burnham became the latest rival to publicly confirm he would challenge the Prime Minister in any leadership contest.

The Prime Minister’s deputy was the latest among Sir Keir’s senior allies to row behind him, as he faces increasing pressure from influential figures within Labour seeking to replace him...

“I’ve supported every leader of the Labour Party. They’ve had my full loyalty.

“Keir Starmer has got my loyalty, full loyalty, until the day he no longer wishes to serve.”

We may translate until the day he no longer wishes to serve as until he is ousted, but what the blue blazes does a chap say about UK politics? Should we be grateful that there are no more motorhome rascalities?

No, I'm not betting on it either.

Well, then, do not be angry with them; for are they not as good as a play, trying their hand at paltry reforms such as I was describing; they are always fancying that by legislation they will make an end of frauds in contracts, and the other rascalities which I was mentioning, not knowing that they are in reality cutting off the heads of a hydra?

Plato quoting Socrates in Republic (about 375 BC)

Do you want chips with that?

New AI-designed vaccine could prevent pandemics and save millions of lives, scientists say

The "super-antigen" known as a "universal vaccine" was developed using machine learning at the University of Cambridge - designed to combat a range of viruses as they mutate.

New vaccine technology created with the help of artificial intelligence could provide immunity against entire families of viruses and protect people from any future mutations in a single jab, scientists say.

The method could stop pandemics before they start, saving millions of lives and helping nations avoid lockdowns, according to researchers.


A tongue-in-cheek post title of course, but many of us have become wary of mass medication. Wary in a cynical what could possibly go wrong sense.

Moving Targets

 

Types

 

One of my casual interests is crime novels of the 1920s and 1930s. They were of course written by people who lived through the Great War, often by people who had seen active service or had been engaged in war work of one form or another.

Writers of this era knew the world where my parents, aunts, uncles and many school teachers grew up and in numerous ways their lives were not like ours. For this reader, that is where the main fascination lies, a fascination which is even to be found in cheap second-rate novels sold in railway station bookstalls to alleviate the tedium of long train journeys.

For example, many crime novels of the interwar years relied heavily on stereotypes. There wasn’t much exploration of the nuances of more complex characters, but the stereotypes are still interesting because they had to be recognisable in their era and are still recognisable today.

In novels of the 20s and 30s, middle class characters might refer to certain people as ‘types’, rather than stereotypes. Examples are numerous, such as the well-dressed chancer, the bumbling official, the sturdy down to earth tradesman, the showgirl with a kind heart, the maternal wife, the waspish academic, the bluestocking, the ineffectual vicar, the local drunk and so on.

There are dozens of them and many are still used today. My father once described one of my uncles as 'a local government type’ and I knew just what he meant, why he’d said it and why it was a mild criticism.

The striking aspect of stereotypes both past and present is how they are used to make sense of society. They reinforce social boundaries and thereby knit together an entire culture. Yet at some point, the use of old social stereotypes came under sustained attack by media outfits such as the BBC. Many socially cohesive stereotypes were reclassified as bigotry and those who still used them became stereotypes themselves.

The result has been a gradual shift towards more divisive, politically approved stereotypes as opposed to socially cohesive ones which were largely beyond the reach of government and politics. When this began is impossible to define, but maybe 1960 is a useful marker.

A measure of how far things have deteriorated is that stereotypes now have to be used with care and some can become a matter for the police.