ONE SHOW. TWO MEN. NO RULES..

In the movies, time travelers typically step inside a machine and—poof—disappear. They then reappear instantaneously among cowboys, knights or dinosaurs. What these films show is basically time teleportation.

Scientists don’t think this conception is likely in the real world, but they also don’t relegate time travel to the crackpot realm. In fact, the laws of physics might allow chronological hopping, but the devil is in the details.

Time traveling to the near future is easy: you’re doing it right now at a rate of one second per second, and physicists say that rate can change. According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, time’s flow depends on how fast you’re moving. The quicker you travel, the slower seconds pass. And according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravity also affects clocks: the more forceful the gravity nearby, the slower time goes.

“Near massive bodies—near the surface of neutron stars or even at the surface of the Earth, although it’s a tiny effect—time runs slower than it does far away,” says Dave Goldberg, a cosmologist at Drexel University.

If a person were to hang out near the edge of a black hole, where gravity is prodigious, Goldberg says, only a few hours might pass for them while 1,000 years went by for someone on Earth. If the person who was near the black hole returned to this planet, they would have effectively traveled to the future. “That is a real effect,” he says. “That is completely uncontroversial.”

Going backward in time gets thorny, though (thornier than getting ripped to shreds inside a black hole). Scientists have come up with a few ways it might be possible, and they have been aware of time travel paradoxes in general relativity for decades. Fabio Costa, a physicist at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, notes that an early solution with time travel began with a scenario written in the 1920s. That idea involved massive long cylinder that spun fast in the manner of straw rolled between your palms and that twisted spacetime along with it. The understanding that this object could act as a time machine allowing one to travel to the past only happened in the 1970s, a few decades after scientists had discovered a phenomenon called “closed timelike curves.”

“A closed timelike curve describes the trajectory of a hypothetical observer that, while always traveling forward in time from their own perspective, at some point finds themselves at the same place and time where they started, creating a loop,” Costa says. “This is possible in a region of spacetime that, warped by gravity, loops into itself.”

“Einstein read [about closed timelike curves] and was very disturbed by this idea,” he adds. The phenomenon nevertheless spurred later research.

Science began to take time travel seriously in the 1980s. In 1990, for instance, Russian physicist Igor Novikov and American physicist Kip Thorne collaborated on a research paper about closed time-like curves. “They started to study not only how one could try to build a time machine but also how it would work,” Costa says.

Just as importantly, though, they investigated the problems with time travel. What if, for instance, you tossed a billiard ball into a time machine, and it traveled to the past and then collided with its past self in a way that meant its present self could never enter the time machine? “That looks like a paradox,” Costa says.

Since the 1990s, he says, there’s been on-and-off interest in the topic yet no big breakthrough. The field isn’t very active today, in part because every proposed model of a time machine has problems. “It has some attractive features, possibly some potential, but then when one starts to sort of unravel the details, there ends up being some kind of a roadblock,” says Gaurav Khanna of the University of Rhode Island.

For instance, most time travel models require negative mass—and hence negative energy because, as Albert Einstein revealed when he discovered E = mc2, mass and energy are one and the same. In theory, at least, just as an electric charge can be positive or negative, so can mass—though no one’s ever found an example of negative mass. Why does time travel depend on such exotic matter? In many cases, it is needed to hold open a wormhole—a tunnel in spacetime predicted by general relativity that connects one point in the cosmos to another.

Disinformation Specialists at Their Very Best

Social Media:  Vessels of Misinformation

The entire globe is facing information wars of an unprecedented nature. Social media is the transporter of misinformation and disinformation. Big Tech has been under fire for not implementing enough measures to uphold the democratic process and increase transparency. These platforms are the primary sources of (fake)news across the globe, and even with efficient fact-checkers, they cannot filter out the untruths, which travel further and faster than facts.

Summary of Perils

The Coronavirus pandemic suffered at the hand of misinformation spread via social media as well. Our leaders failed us, media outlets failed us, and misinformation on social media platforms became the nail in the coffin. Some examples of misinformation were bogus treatments and cures, conspiracy theories about the origins of the virus, and inaccurate information on testing facilities.

What Next?

Preserve our Empathy

Good meetings tend to happen when the person who organizes the meeting has a specific request with a specific deadline. Someone is asking for help.

Telling traits of a good meeting is clear objectives, open lines of question, honest debate about underlying assumptions, opposing (and evidenced) points of view, moments of (thinking) silence, collectively-made decisions ending with the exacting delegation of concrete tasks. Including the possibility of a collective decision to abandon the work with no further tasks. Good meetings are invaluable.

Bad meetings actually have many of the same traits as good meetings, but lack the clear decisions and follow-up tasks. Someone is still asking for help. Honest debate happens but do not progress the work very far. Smart things are said but without committed next steps. Bad meetings are frustrating, but often still have value because they stem from good faith effort.

Bullshit meetings are when everyone shows up already confused.

They show up for the sake of showing up.

Someone isn't asking for help.

Written, Presented & Compiled by Joe Ramoni

https://twitter.com/joeramoni

https://facebook.com/hatsoffjoe

Please consider supporting me on Patreon:

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Chapters:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:28 - Character Creation & Early Success

00:07:16 - The Pee-wee Herman Show (1981)

00:10:12 - Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)

00:14:38 - Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986)

00:18:14 - Big Top Pee-wee (1988)

00:21:05 - Retirement of Pee-wee

00:24:38 - Comeback

6/1/2024 

Some hyper-realistic face masks are more believable than human faces. Some silicone masks are now so realistic that they can easily be mistaken for real faces. Hyper-realistic masks may allow the key characteristics of a persons’ appearance to be incorrectly identified according to Dr Jet G. Sanders.

In this study, led by Jet G. Sanders while at University of York  and published in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, one-in-five people incorrectly guessed which was a real face and which was a hyper-realistic face mask when asked to compare two photographs side-by-side.

 Being able to do so makes police investigations and identifications much harder. According to Dr Sanders: “Failure to detect synthetic faces may have important implications for security and crime prevention as hyper-realistic masks may allow the key characteristics of a persons' appearance to be incorrectly identified.

Hyper-realistic face masks are made from a flexible silicone material and are designed to imitate real human features all the way down to a tiny freckle and fine wrinkles.

In this study by the Universities of York and Kyoto, researchers asked participants to look at pairs of photographs; one of a normal face and one of a person wearing a hyper-realistic face mask. Participants were asked to indicate which of the two they thought to be the mask, with easily-detectable low-realism masks used as controls.  

Surprisingly, participants got it wrong in one in five cases.

In studies such as these, limiting viewing duration is standard practice when a task may otherwise be too simple. To assess whether this may have been a limiting factor, the authors repeated the experiment with a new cohort and no time limit. For high-realism masks, responses were slower and one in five participants incorrectly judged the real face to be the mask.

Data were collected from participants from both the UK and Japan to establish any differences according to race. When asked to choose between photographs depicting faces of a different race to the trial participant, response times were approximately 400 times slower and selections were 5% less accurate.    

According to the researchers, this error rate likely underestimates the extent to which people may struggle to discern the difference when tested outside a lab setting, in everyday situations.

Author Dr Rob Jenkins said:

"We made it clear to viewers that their task was to identify the mask in each pair of images. Example masks were shown before the test began. In a real-life situation, the error rate would likely be much higher than in our study as hyper-realistic masks are extremely rare and many people may not know they exist."

Hyper-realistic face masks have most notably been used in criminal cases, with some criminals able to pass as a different age, gender or race. Being able to do so makes police invesitgations and identifications much harder.

According to Dr Sanders:

“Failure to detect synthetic faces may have important implications for security and crime prevention as hyper-realistic masks may allow the key characteristics of a persons’ appearance to be incorrectly identified.

“These masks currently cost around $100 to $500  each and we expect them to become more widely used as advances in manufacturing make them more affordable.”

The authors suggest that further research should assess difficulties in identification between real faces and partial masks used to distort particular features and whether this may also be influenced by race.  

The research is published in the open access journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications.

Took a trip to Philadelphia's and had the chance to fly the enchanting nighttime skyline in 4K. Met some really friendly people in the "City of Brotherly Love"

📍 Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

🌟 #Philadelphia #PhiladelphiaSkyline #NighttimeSkyline #4KDrone #NighttimeDrone

🎵 Music: Raz Burg - To the Moon and Back

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#Philadelphia #Cityscape #NightSkyline #DroneFootage #4KVideo

deep·​fake ˈdēp-ˌfāk. plural deepfakes. : an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.

Deepfakes were originally defined as synthetic media that have been digitally manipulated to replace one person's likeness convincingly with that of another. The term was coined in 2017 by a Reddit user, and has later been expanded to cover any videos, pictures, or audio made with artificial intelligence to appear real, for example realistic-looking images of people who do not exist. 

While the act of creating fake content is not new, deepfakes leverage tools and techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence, including facial recognition algorithms and artificial neural networks such as variational autoencoders (VAEs) and generative adversarial networks (GANs). In turn the field of image forensics develops techniques to detect manipulated images. Deepfakes have garnered widespread attention for their potential use in creating child sexual abuse material, celebrity pornographic videos, revenge porn, fake news, hoaxes, bullying, and financial fraud.

The spreading of disinformation and hate speech through deepfakes has the potential to undermine the key core functions and norms of democratic systems by interfering with people's ability to participate in decisions that affect them, determine collective agendas and express political will through informed decision-making. Both the information technology industry and government have responded with recommendations to detect and limit their use

From traditional entertainment to gaming, deepfake technology has evolved to be increasingly convincing and available to the public, allowing the disruption of the entertainment and media industries

Doppelganger Meaning

Someone who looks eerily like you, but isn't a twin, is a doppelganger. Originally, this was a type of ghost. The word doppelganger is German and literally means double walker — as in a ghost or shadow of yourself.

When famous celebrities die suddenly, it is natural for human curiosity to wonder what truly happened. In 1959, George Reeves, who became a star as the original Clark Kent/Superman on television, passed away. It was said that he died by suicide but many people still believe that he was murdered. Although the entire story remains a mystery, let’s go over the facts that we do know about his strange death.

Just a year after the television series Adventures of Superman ended, Phyllis Coates (who played Lois Lane in the series) received a very strange call. It was from a woman named Toni Mannix (whom Reeves had been having an affair with as she was the wife of MGM general manager Eddie Mannix) and she said, “The boy is dead. He’s been murdered.” Turns out, she was referring to Reeves, who had been found dead in his bedroom with a gunshot wound to the head. There was a party going on at the time, and some say that he committed suicide because of depression and his inability to find another gig after playing Superman.

After his death was ruled a suicide, his mother could not accept it and asked for the case to be reinvestigated as a homicide. They found no additional evidence that would support his death being a murder and she withdrew her request. Even so, some still believe that he was murdered.

Some people believe that it could have been Eddie Mannix who had him killed as he was rumored to have connections with the Mob. However, he was also having affairs and by the time Reeves died, he had been dating another woman named Leonore Lemmon, who was there that night. She reportedly began telling party guests that her lover was going to shoot himself and when they heard a gunshot, she said, “I told you, he’s shot himself.” She later said she was “only kidding.”

Film Career

Reeves's film career began in 1939 when he was cast as Stuart Tarleton (incorrectly listed in the film's credits as Brent Tarleton), one of Scarlett O'Hara's suitors in Gone with the Wind.  

It was a minor role, but he and Fred Crane were in the film's opening scene. (Reeves and Crane both dyed their hair red to portray the Tarleton twins.) After Gone with the Wind was filmed, Reeves returned to the Pasadena Playhouse and was given the lead role in the play Pancho. 

This part directly led to his being contracted to Warner Brothers. Warner had him change his professional name to George Reeves. His Gone with the Wind screen credit reflects the change. 

Between the start of production on Gone With the Wind and its release 12 months later, several films on his Warner contract were made and released, making Gone With the Wind his first film role, but his fifth film release.

Deep Fake Meaning

deep·​fake ˈdēp-ˌfāk. plural deepfakes. : an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.

Deepfakes were originally defined as synthetic media that have been digitally manipulated to replace one person's likeness convincingly with that of another. The term was coined in 2017 by a Reddit user, and has later been expanded to cover any videos, pictures, or audio made with artificial intelligence to appear real, for example realistic-looking images of people who do not exist. 

While the act of creating fake content is not new, deepfakes leverage tools and techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence, including facial recognition algorithms and artificial neural networks such as variational autoencoders (VAEs) and generative adversarial networks (GANs). In turn the field of image forensics develops techniques to detect manipulated images. Deepfakes have garnered widespread attention for their potential use in creating child sexual abuse material, celebrity pornographic videos, revenge porn, fake news, hoaxes, bullying, and financial fraud.

The spreading of disinformation and hate speech through deepfakes has the potential to undermine the key core functions and norms of democratic systems by interfering with people's ability to participate in decisions that affect them, determine collective agendas and express political will through informed decision-making. Both the information technology industry and government have responded with recommendations to detect and limit their use

From traditional entertainment to gaming, deepfake technology has evolved to be increasingly convincing and available to the public, allowing the disruption of the entertainment and media industries