"NO LONGER BEST IN THE WORLD"
UNEP's new Human Development Index includes a new (separate) index: Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI (PHDI). News in Norway is that its position drops from #1 to #16 because of this, while Ireland rises from #2 to #1.
Why?

https://t.co/aVraIEzRfh

The Nature versus Nurture is a debate about scientific doctrine. It is a debate about the correct way of explanation for cognition.

The Representation versus Non-Representation shares the same debate. It is also about the correct way of explanation for cognition.

It is also the difference between thinking in nouns versus thinking in verbs. Nature and Representation have deep roots in Western thinking. It is a functionalist and reductionist way of thinking that meets its limits when analyzing complex adaptive systems.

It is perhaps due to this Western bias that concepts from the study of complex systems have had little traction in modern society. It is of course, more than a Western bias, but a human bias to seek out simple causal explanations of this world.

But the world is complex and messy. Spiral dynamics which is an evolutionary model of individuals and society explains how models of the world shape ourselves and our civilization.

JUST IN: The U.S. National Climate Assessment is now public.

This is the report that the Trump Administration doesn’t want you to see. Years in the making, released on the day after Thanksgiving. #ClimateFriday

Here are some of the main

This report is mandated by Congress and focused on the impacts of climate change in the U.S.

Basically: This is what our best scientists think will happen to us as a result of the actions our government is (not) taking to address the most important problem in human history.
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300 experts in 13 federal agencies volunteered their time to make sure you have this information.

Please share it widely.
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The top finding:

“Climate change is projected to significantly affect human health, the economy, and the environment in the United

To expand on that finding:

“In the absence of more significant global mitigation efforts, climate change is projected to impose substantial damages on the U.S. economy, human health, and the environment. ...”
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Colleagues, we need to talk about the damage that endless zooming can do. Every day I see new opportunities to join in this or that online discussion or conference, and each invitation is becoming a burden 1/... #AcademicTwitter #AcademicChatter

For many of us, online conferencing is the main form of contact we have with others. But it's a stripped down form of contact which demands a particular focus and concentration. Colleagues tell me every day that it's more intense, and thus tiring, than IRL interaction 2/...

Communication is attenuated because many of the usual social and symbolic cues that tell us where we are, what our role is, how to interact and respond, are missing. This is especially awful if our interlocutors have their cameras switched off and we're talking into a void 3/...

But we also lose the rest and reset time between events. Instead of those precious minutes on a train to read, or a brisk walk between venues, even just a chat around the coffee pot, we are increasingly leaving one meeting to log on to another 4/...

We do so with no other backdrop than our own four walls, in one chair, glued to a screen, unable to reach out. Our symbolic and social worlds have shrunk. @PostEurope told me it's a form of torture, but that's literally true: a stress position we maintain for days 5/...

Heres the story of how I volunteered to be infected with 50 parasitic worms (hookworm) for a year as part of a research study. Check out this thread & follow me for more #parasite & marine biology content [t]
#ScienceTwitter
imgs: https://t.co/hH5YsfS0ay https://t.co/kVurE6BbTS

1st some background on the parasites I got. Hookworms are blood-feeding nematodes that live in the intestine of mammals including cats, dogs & humans. ~500 million people are infected with hookworm, mostly in tropical and subtropical areas including the southern USA

Infection with many worms (100+) can cause anemia, which is most problematic in kids, pregnant women, and the elderly. This clinical study was launched to try to develop a vaccine against hookworms to prevent infection

People become infected when baby worms living in the soil penetrate their skin. Baby worms hatch from eggs that infected people poop out. Where plumbing is scarce, poor waste disposal is a common source of heavy infections (100s to 1,000s of worms)

I volunteered to be vaccinated with an experimental hookworm vaccine (I was also paid). After vaccination, the vaccine (or placebo idk) was tested by infecting me with 50 hookworms (Necator americanus) that penetrated my skin from a patch of gauze I wore on my wrist for 1 hour

EXPLANATION OF THE EXISTENCE OF DARK MATTER AND DARK ENERGY !

What Is Dark Energy ?

More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery.

But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.

This diagram reveals changes in the rate of expansion since the universe's birth 15 billion years ago. The more shallow the curve, the faster the rate of expansion. The curve changes noticeably about 7.5 billion years ago, when objects in the universe began flying apart as

a faster rate. Astronomers theorize that the faster expansion rate is due to a mysterious, dark force that is pulling galaxies apart.

WHAT OUR SANATAN DHARMA SAYS IN THIS CONTEXT LET’S TAKE A LOOK

The verses of Taittiriya Aranyaka say that only one pada of the Lord

is this manifested universe and the remaining three padas are outside it.

According to the observations and realizations of ancient seers, nearly eighty percent of this universe is yet of unknown nature which remains inactive during the process of creation (rather, evolution).