1,141 karma · joined June 15, 2015
> China implemented retaliatory tariffs equivalent to the $34 billion tariff imposed on it by the U.S. In July 2018, the Trump administration announced it would use a Great Depression-era program, the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), to pay farmers up to $12 billion, increasing the transfers to farmers to $ 28 billion in May 2019. The USDA estimated that aid payments constituted more than one-third of total farm income in 2019 and 2020.
> Maybe here’s another way to put it. Up until 2020, from 2012 to 2020, it was the age of research. Now, from 2020 to 2025, it was the age of scaling—maybe plus or minus, let’s add error bars to those years—because people say, “This is amazing. You’ve got to scale more. Keep scaling.” The one word: scaling.
> But now the scale is so big. Is the belief really, “Oh, it’s so big, but if you had 100x more, everything would be so different?” It would be different, for sure. But is the belief that if you just 100x the scale, everything would be transformed? I don’t think that’s true. So it’s back to the age of research again, just with big computers.
> Dr Haddrell said: “This relationship sheds important light on why super spreader events may occur under certain conditions. The high pH of exhaled droplets containing the SARS-CoV-2 virus is likely a major driver of the loss of infectiousness. CO2 behaves as an acid when it interacts with droplets. This causes the pH of the droplets to become less alkaline, resulting in the virus within them being inactivated at a slower rate.
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/news/2024/virus.html
Ambient carbon dioxide concentration correlates with SARS-CoV-2 aerostability and infection risk
> Beginning in 2009, the NYPD, in partnership with Microsoft, built a powerful counterterrorism and policing tool called the Domain Awareness System (DAS). The DAS is a central platform used to aggregate data from internal and external closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV), license plate readers (LPRs), and environmental sensors, as well as 911 calls and other NYPD databases. The DAS uses an interactive dashboard interface to display real-time alerts whenever a 911 call is received or a sensor is triggered. The DAS also in- cludes mapping features that make it possible to survey and track targets. The DAS was originally built to support the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative (LMSI) – a public-private partnership – but has since expanded to cover the entire city, giving NYPD personnel direct access to thousands of cameras owned and operated by private orga- nizations. Until the development of the mobility platform and the mobile DAS system described below, the full capabilities of DAS have only been available to the Counterterrorism Bureau and a few other specially trained officers on desktop computers. As the NYPD upgrades its network, access to all DAS capabilities and resources will be expanded to all NYPD’s commands.
https://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/home/POA/pdf/Technology.p...