Anchor

Another sad anecdote: A bank in Finland suspended an account for a text in free-form message field of a bank transfer. The message was for a vet visit of a dog named Ira. When you say "Ira's payment" in Finnish, you add suffix -n, so the text field said Iran, which of course must indicate money transfer to a sanctioned country. It is comforting to know that the bank system catches all the illegal activity that the sanction-busting criminals helpfully announce.

This is quite interesting, the researchers describe the inhibitor working like a biological mask for your nose. In mice the protection lasted for 8 hours, and human trials are pending approvals.

> unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries

It is already here. Google LFP batteries.

Makes sense. Changed from "Elements of AI course soon free for all EU citizens" to "Elements of AI course soon available in all EU languages".

We can also cut them to make room for new trees. If we don't burn the C in them to CO2, but use them as raw materials (buildings, alternative to plastics, etc.) there is even more potential for carbon capture in this way.

Of course, the long term solution is to grow as many new trees per year as we emit CO2, so there is an upper limit for our CO2 budget, but this should give use time to convert to carbon neutral energy production and consumption without hampering the the GDP growth too much. In fact, it has been estimated that world GDP can actually grow even during the transition, due to, for example, positive effects of improved environment (health improvements lead to productivity improvements and so on).

From the release notes: "Parchment and vellum are made from animal skin so change material composition and color for spellbooks with those descriptions from paper to leather; eating those books now breaks vegetarian conduct" (emphasis mine)

There is something heartwarming about the attention to detail in some games. NetHack, Dwarf Fortress, ... I wish more games would be made with this mindset. Many modern games seem to overemphasize the "gaming" aspect, and sometimes forget the "playing" with all its joyful intricacies.

Same thing has happened in Sweden. There's a cohort of elderly people who arrived to the country as children during WW2, e.g., from Finland. Many were under 10 when they arrived, and now that they have gotten old, some of them have lost most of their ability to speak Swedish, and are only able to speak in their native language from early childhood.