#31: The Ghost of Christmas Future

‍"What you actively spend time on, and (far more difficult) what you choose not to do, who you choose not to spend time with, and who and what you decide to say no to — what you choose, then — is how you mark time. And that is all there is." - Liz Danzico

How will you spend the next four years?

On to the news!


1. This is me attempting to me optimistic: all of the bullshit Trump has to deal with to cancel out Obama's climate gains. - Vox

"Jody Freeman, a Harvard law school professor and former climate adviser to Obama, has been looking at this question extensively. Her view is that this won’t actually be easy for Trump — at least not without substantial help from Congress. (Republicans will control Congress next year, and they’d certainly like to dismantle Obama’s climate rules; yet Senate Democrats have also vowed to filibuster any major changes to the Clean Air Act, the source of the EPA’s authority over greenhouse gas emissions.)

(Vox) talked with Freeman about the mechanics of a potential Trump administration: how agency rulemaking works, what it would take to revamp Obama’s EPA regulations, why some environmental rules are much more vulnerable than others, and why Trump may not be able to undo everything Obama has done on climate. It’s a little weedy, but these topics are likely to come up again and again in 2017 and beyond."

+ MY NOTES: We won't get out of this unscathed, but we should be doing everything we can to frustrate these bastards.



2. Nerd Oscars > Regular Oscars - New Scientist

"At the fifth annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony last night, 12 scientists received a total of $25 million in science prizes for fundamental contributions to human knowledge.

The ceremony, held at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, featured all the glitz and glam of the Oscars: a red carpet, musical guests such as Alicia Keys and will.i.am, and Morgan Freeman as host.

“This project is really mostly about public outreach,” says billionaire internet investor Yuri Milner, who co-founded the prize. “That’s why we have a televised ceremony and everything around it, because the founders want to send a signal that fundamental science is important.”
The Breakthrough Prize was founded in 2012 and is financed by Silicon Valley billionaires such as Milner, Google’s Sergey Brin and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg."

+ MY NOTES: I mean is this guy a baller or what: Yoshinori Ohsumi at Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan received a prize for his discovery of the mechanisms behind autophagy, a fundamental process in which cells degrade, recycle and repair themselves. Ohsumi also received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.



3. Scientists are frantically copying climate data for fear of Trump, which is a great reminder that you should have redundant backups of your data, too - Washington Post

"Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference.

The efforts include a “guerrilla archiving” event in Toronto, where experts will copy irreplaceable public data, meetings at the University of Pennsylvania focused on how to download as much federal data as possible in the coming weeks, and a collaboration of scientists and database experts who are compiling an online site to harbor scientific information."

+ MY NOTES: What have we wrought?



4. In 10 years when your toddler is sick (again) and you pull our tricorder out of the medicine cabinet and immediately diagnose her, remember this moment. - Space.com

"This week, Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE officials announced that two teams of finalists have made it to the last round of the competition, having designed tricorder-style medical devices that are actually pretty space-age in look and function. Weighing in at less that five pounds each, the devices can diagnose and interpret 13 different health conditions within minutes, while continuously monitoring five different vital sign metrics."

+ MY NOTES: COME ON PEOPLE A TRICORDER LET'S DO THIS



5. Old ass Jerry Brown pleads with Obama to permanently ban offshore drilling in California, insert "Get off my lawn" jokes here - AP

""California is blessed with hundreds of miles of spectacular coastline, home to scenic state parks, beautiful beaches, abundant wildlife and thriving communities," Brown wrote to Obama. "Clearly, large new oil and gas reserves would be inconsistent with our overriding imperative to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and combat the devastating impacts of climate change."

Working to lock in environmental protections as the clock runs out on his presidency, Obama last month released a plan that bans any new oil drilling off the coasts of California, Oregon or Washington state until 2022."

+ MY NOTES: Hell yeah, Jerry. Hell yeah.



SHIT I RAN OUT OF ROOM FOR BUT YOU SHOULD READ BECAUSE OMG

The Great AI Awakening (I still hesitate to call this "true" AI but this Google Translate shit means we're inching our way there, for sure)

There's another contender in personal genome sequencing, will pay you for contributing to science

Curiosity is fairly certain that Mars is covered in organic material, probably was super habitable for a long time, until it the climate went to shit...

Juno study shows 60% of lymphoma patients in remission after immunotherapy treatment

Biotech "trial of the century" may determine who owns CRISPR, ability to profit off mutant humans I'm kidding - or am I?