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Feb 9, 2019

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson sets date of first trip into space

Posted by in category: space travel

British billionaire plans to make a suborbital flight on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Sir Richard Branson stands beside the Virgin Galactic spacecraft at the Farnborough International Airshow on Nov. 7, 2012 in Hampshire, England. Steve Parsons / PA Images via Getty Images file.

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Feb 9, 2019

Using Black Holes As A Particle Accelerator

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

Particle physics needs a larger particle accelerator. Perhaps even one using black holes.

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Feb 9, 2019

The US Army’s Strange Inspiration for Its Next Rifle: The iPhone

Posted by in category: mobile phones

Basically, it sounds like the Army is looking to build a stable platform, like iOS, that it can build increasingly sophisticated weapon technologies on top of.

“Imagine that Steve Jobs and his engineers were trying to convert the iPod Touch to the first 3G iPhone,” Caggins told Task & Purpose. “There were a thousand technologies they could have put in the first iPhone but they were looking to mature the platform before they could actually go onto the system.”

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Feb 9, 2019

Everyone is Talking About our Post-Human Future. It’s a Fairytale

Posted by in category: transhumanism

Talking about fairytales, this article embodies a fairytale of its own — the fairytale that we have to accept human nature as a given. That kind of fatalism will lead society to disaster in the decades ahead. Instead, we can, and must, do better, to secure a “Humanity+ future” ~ David Wood.


The idea that new technologies can liberate us from the human condition is a fantasy. In reality, the 21st-century will be all too human.

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Feb 9, 2019

The Book of Gates

Posted by in categories: life extension, robotics/AI, space

God” according to Rev Benek is working thru people like me who are pioneers in the AI and uploading field — and I am developing a Zenet interface for artificial death simulating the Khemetic afterlife — not a Judeo-Christian version. Osiris is a key deity in Zenet, and has a special place in Mormonism btw. There are good technical reasons for using Zenet. Objectives for the dead are slightly different than play strategy for the living in Zenet (having already passed over the dangerous waters). It is the Bridge between Worlds perfect for artificial-death, no biblical or koranic account exists how to communicate between living and deceased. “The betterment of mankind” imo involves the Restoration of Ma’at. And the Egyptian afterlife is available to all races (not just chosen people) — “Hour Five is one of the most complex hours within the composition. In the upper registers, the gods are portrayed with a surveying cord, because the deceased are allotted space (in the form of fields) within this hour. The deceased are also allotted time, and hence the gods also carry the body of a serpent and the hieroglyphs meaning “lifetime” in the lower register. In order to accomplish this, the Apophis fiend, known as “the Retreater, must once again be battled and fettered. Behind Apophis we notice the ba-souls of the blessed dead, and at the beginning of the lower register are found the four ”races” of mankind, including Egyptians, Asiatics, Nubians and Libyans. Each race is represented by four individual figures, who are assured existence in the afterlife. They are placed in the care of Horus and Sakhmet. It should be noted that the Great Hymn of Akhenaten, Aten is said to care even for foreign people, and hence, they are sheltered in the realm of the dead, according to Even if the uploading doesn’t take, this belt and braces offering still offers (conventional religious) Immortality with Horus, Amen, Isis, Thoth and the gang. Why does it matter which ”God(s)” — so long as we make it to the (1st) afterlife with the bonus of communication with the living?


Funerary Text from Egypt’s New Kingdom.

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Feb 9, 2019

We are so insignificant…

Posted by in category: futurism

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Feb 9, 2019

Scientists Want to Build a Space Station Inside an Asteroid

Posted by in category: space

Plus, it’d make a good evil lair.


Plus it’d make a good evil lair.

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Feb 9, 2019

Data Driven Investor

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, government, mobile phones

How competing software, hardware and political ideology could accelerate existing divisions in humanity into the future

It’s been great to get people’s thoughts and feedback on the last article on “The iPhone 20”. Some of your responses considered that given Apple’s business model is effectively a walled garden, this makes any integration with the human body very unlikely in the future.

That’s why in this article, rather than focusing on Apple, I’ll look to explore some of the ways tech companies and organisations (including government bodies) will compete on software, hardware and protocols that will shape humanity’s journey to 2029, which may accelerate our existing divisions that stifle collaboration and splinters our future societies.

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Feb 9, 2019

Inside China’s High-Tech Dystopia

Posted by in categories: business, government, mobile phones, robotics/AI

In part three of Hello World Shenzhen, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance heads out into a city where you can’t use cash or credit cards, only your smartphone, where AI facial-recognition software instantly spots and tickets jaywalkers, and where at least one factory barely needs people. This is the society that China’s government and leading tech companies are racing to make a reality, with little time to question which advancements are net positives for the rest of us.

Part One — Inside China’s Future Factory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmaIbb13GM

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Feb 8, 2019

Cesarean Section — A Brief History

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food

While Barry applied Western surgical techniques, nineteenth-century travelers in Africa reported instances of indigenous people successfully carrying out the procedure with their own medical practices. In 1879, for example, one British traveller, R.W. Felkin, witnessed cesarean section performed by Ugandans. The healer used banana wine to semi-intoxicate the woman and to cleanse his hands and her abdomen prior to surgery. He used a midline incision and applied cautery to minimize hemorrhaging. He massaged the uterus to make it contract but did not suture it; the abdominal wound was pinned with iron needles and dressed with a paste prepared from roots. The patient recovered well, and Felkin concluded that this technique was well-developed and had clearly been employed for a long time. Similar reports come from Rwanda, where botanical preparations were also used to anesthetize the patient and promote wound healing.


In Western society women for the most part were barred from carrying out cesarean sections until the late nineteenth century, because they were largely denied admission to medical schools. The first recorded successful cesarean in the British Empire, however, was conducted by a woman. Sometime between 1815 and 1821, James Miranda Stuart Barry performed the operation while masquerading as a man and serving as a physician to the British army in South Africa.

A naked, pregnant woman lies on an angled bed inside a building. Three naked men attend her childbirth. The man on the left stands holding her belly on both sides with his hands. The man in the center is on the opposite side of the bed, with his left hand on her right hip and the right hand upraised holding a knife. The man on the right is crouching at the woman's feet holding them down with both hands.

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