July 2018 – Page 2 – Amalgamated Contemplation

The American Democratic Republic

Source: The American Democratic Republic | Amalgamated Contemplation

How the American Democratic Republic works, and sustaining the American Experiment:

There are real boundaries beyond which our society and system of government can and will break down. There is a minimum level of solidarity required for a nation to survive with citizens rather than subjects, and a minimum level of social stability required for it to function. We can fall too far and merely avoiding disintegrating society is not enough. We must do far better, for ourselves, for the world, and for the future.

The Entire History of Steel | Popular Mechanics

Source: The Entire History of Steel | Popular Mechanics, by Jonathan Schifman

From hunks of iron streaking through the sky, to the construction of skyscrapers and megastructures, this is the history of the world’s greatest alloy.

The Earth’s carrying capacity for human life is not fixed | Aeon Ideas

Source: The Earth’s carrying capacity for human life is not fixed | Aeon Ideas, by Ted Nordhaus

Ultimately, one need not advocate the imposition of pseudo-scientific limits on human societies to believe that many of us would be better off consuming less. Nor must one posit the collapse of human societies to worry deeply that growing human consumption might have terrible consequences for the rest of creation.

But threats of societal collapse, claims that carrying capacity is fixed, and demands for sweeping restrictions on human aspiration are neither scientific nor just. We are not fruit flies, programmed to reproduce until our population collapses. Nor are we cattle, whose numbers must be managed. To understand the human experience on the planet is to understand that we have remade the planet again and again to serve our needs and our dreams. Today, the aspirations of billions depend upon continuing to do just that. May it be so.

NLP’s ImageNet moment has arrived | The Gradient

Source: NLP’s ImageNet moment has arrived | The Gradient, by Sebastian Ruder

The time is ripe for practical transfer learning to make inroads into NLP (Natural Language Processing).

Dingoes Have Changed the Actual Shape of the Australian Desert – The Atlantic

Source: Dingoes Have Changed the Actual Shape of the Australian Desert – The Atlantic, by Emma Marris

By keeping dingoes out of the southeastern part of the country, it has created two versions of the same landscape—a world with top predators and one without. … dunes on the dingo-free side of the fence are on average 66 centimeters higher. The presence or absence of dingoes, it seemed, was changing the very shape of the land.