Paper or Plastic?

…High concentrations of floating neustonic life in the plastic-rich North Pacific Garbage Patch

Our data suggest higher concentrations of floating life and plastic inside than outside the NPGP, and positive correlations between the logs of neuston concentrations and the log of plastic concentration for 3 out of 5 neuston taxa, Velella, Porpita, and Janthina. The obligate neustonic taxa Velella, Porpita, and Janthina may be concentrated by the same physical forces that concentrate plastic within the region and these concentrations may be important for the ecology of these species.

…A study published in mid-April offers some clues as to which traveling species could pose a problem. Researchers at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center examined 105 pieces of plastic debris they had obtained in frozen form from TOC. They found traces of species normally found in coastal waters that had used floating plastic as rafts and ended up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—in particular nets, ropes, buoys, boxes, and cylindrical eel traps from the fishing industry. Some species also appeared to reproduce in their new offshore home. For example, some shrimp-like amphipods were carrying eggs in their brood pouches.

…Helm has not shied away from publicly criticizing TOC, pointing out that the nets it uses to collect plastic could inadvertently trap neuston. Many species are not capable of swimming. By-the-wind sailors, for example, have a small stiff sail that sticks out of the water to catch the wind, while blue buttons and violet snails rely on currents to drift through the ocean. They are small creatures, but so are the meshes in the nets. And if neustonic species were killed in large numbers, it could have an impact on the turtles, fish, seabirds, and other animals that eat them.

The potential for a plastic recycling facility to release microplastic pollution and possible filtration remediation effectiveness

…Now, an alarming new study has found that even when plastic makes it to a recycling center, it can still end up splintering into smaller bits that contaminate the air and water. This pilot study focused on a single new facility where plastics are sorted, shredded, and melted down into pellets. Along the way, the plastic is washed several times, sloughing off microplastic particles—fragments smaller than 5 millimeters—into the plant’s wastewater.

PAPER IS HIGHLY RECYCLED AND NATURALLY SUSTAINABL

Paper is based on wood, a natural and renewable material. Paper is one of the most recycled products in the world and epitomises the circular economy model of make, use, recycle and reuse.

…The paper industry uses respected forestry certification schemes to ensure that virgin fibre originates from sustainable sources. The two most recognised certification schemes are Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification™ (PEFC™). For more information on sustainable forestry,

…There’s a misconception, he says, that paper companies in the US cut down old-growth forests. “But most, if not all, paper companies harvest their wood in a sustainable fashion so that there is no net loss of forest land,” he says. The American Forest and Paper Association wrote in their 2020 annual report that 99 percent of their members get wood fiber from certified sustainable suppliers that take measures to replant trees and reduce the risk of wildfire. Some countries like Canada even have strict forest sustainability laws.

Scammers use AI to enhance their family emergency schemes

…A scammer could use AI to clone the voice of your loved one. All he needs is a short audio clip of your family member's voice — which he could get from content posted online — and a voice-cloning program. When the scammer calls you, he’ll sound just like your loved one.

So how can you tell if a family member is in trouble or if it’s a scammer using a cloned voice?

Don’t trust the voice. Call the person who supposedly contacted you and verify the story. Use a phone number you know is theirs. If you can’t reach your loved one, try to get in touch with them through another family member or their friends.

Scammers ask you to pay or send money in ways that make it hard to get your money back. If the caller says to wire money, send cryptocurrency, or buy gift cards and give them the card numbers and PINs, those could be signs of a scam.

If you spot a scam, report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

do no harm

In 1918 Pandemic, Another Possible Killer: Aspirin

Aspirin packages were produced containing no warnings about toxicity and few instructions about use. In the fall of 1918, facing a widespread deadly disease with no known cure, the surgeon general and the United States Navy recommended aspirin as a symptomatic treatment, and the military bought large quantities of the drug.

The Journal of the American Medical Association suggested a dose of 1,000 milligrams every three hours, the equivalent of almost 25 standard 325-milligram aspirin tablets in 24 hours. This is about twice the daily dosage generally considered safe today.

Aspirin Advertisements in August 1918 and a Series of Official Recommendations for Aspirin in September and Early October Preceded the Death Spike of October 1918

In May 1918, usual but highly contagious influenza was publicized in Spain (hence, “Spanish influenza”). In June, after 6 weeks of usual influenza in Europe, serious pulmonary lesions and deaths increased in those “admitted to the special inf luenza centres,” especially those with an “old-standing renal lesion”. In July, increased mortality of young Londoners was documented.

In summary, just before the 1918 death spike, aspirin was recommended in regimens now known to be potentially toxic and to cause pulmonary edema and may therefore have contributed to overall pandemic mortality and several of its mysteries. Young adult mortality may be explained by willingness to use the new, recommended therapy and the presence of youth in regimented treatment settings (military).

Aspirin usually is not recommended during pregnancy unless you have certain medical conditions.

Aspirin use during pregnancy and the risk of bleeding complications: a Swedish population-based cohort study

Conclusion: Using aspirin during pregnancy is associated with increased postpartum bleeding and postpartum hematoma. It may also be associated with neonatal intracranial hemorrhage. When offering aspirin during pregnancy, these risks need to be weighed against the potential benefits.

The Effects of the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic on Infant and Child Health in Derbyshire

The well-established increased risk to pregnant women is likely to have been heightened during 1918–19 due to the unusual age structure of influenza in this particular epidemic, and there is evidence that influenza infection may also have precipitated foetal loss. In England and Wales the death rate from spontaneous abortion in 1917 was 0.16 per thousand (one in 6,302 pregnancies), whereas during the epidemic the death rate from only those miscarriages linked to influenza was ten times greater at 1.60 per thousand (one in 624 pregnancies). If influenza could provoke this level of increase in such deaths, it is likely that it was responsible for a great many more non-fatal spontaneous abortions. In the USA, pregnancy was interrupted in 26 per cent of uncomplicated cases of influenza and in 52 per cent of cases complicated by pneumonia. Foetal loss and premature delivery may also have generated a higher number of stillbirths and premature live infants during or shortly after the pandemic. This is corroborated by evidence that higher rates of early neonatal mortality after four of the five influenza epidemics between 1948 and 1971 were due to an increase in the prematurity rate, probably as a result of infection to mothers in the first or second trimesters. However there has been little other evidence to support the effect of influenza on the premature termination of pregnancy or stillbirth.

Salicylates and Pandemic Influenza Mortality, 1918–1919 Pharmacology, Pathology, and Historic Evidence

A confluence of events created a “perfect storm” for widespread salicylate toxicity. The loss of Bayer's patent on aspirin in February 1917 allowed many manufacturers into the lucrative aspirin market. Official recommendations for aspirin therapy at toxic doses were preceded by ignorance of the unusual nonlinear kinetics of salicylate (unknown until the 1960s), which predispose to accumulation and toxicity; tins and bottles that contained no warnings and few instructions; and fear of “Spanish” influenza, an illness that had been spreading like wildfire.

The high case-fatality rate—especially among young adults—during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic is incompletely understood. Although late deaths showed bacterial pneumonia, early deaths exhibited extremely “wet,” sometimes hemorrhagic lungs. The hypothesis presented herein is that aspirin contributed to the incidence and severity of viral pathology, bacterial infection, and death, because physicians of the day were unaware that the regimens (8.0–31.2 g per day) produce levels associated with hyperventilation and pulmonary edema in 33% and 3% of recipients, respectively. Recently, pulmonary edema was found at autopsy in 46% of 26 salicylate-intoxicated adults. Experimentally, salicylates increase lung fluid and protein levels and impair mucociliary clearance. In 1918, the US Surgeon General, the US Navy, and the Journal of the American Medical Association recommended use of aspirin just before the October death spike. If these recommendations were followed, and if pulmonary edema occurred in 3% of persons, a significant proportion of the deaths may be attributable to aspirin.

6 months to flatten the curve

We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.

AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research[1] and acknowledged by top AI labs.[2] As stated in the widely-endorsed Asilomar AI Principles, Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.

Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,[3] and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. This confidence must be well justified and increase with the magnitude of a system's potential effects. OpenAI's recent statement regarding artificial general intelligence, states that "At some point, it may be important to get independent review before starting to train future systems, and for the most advanced efforts to agree to limit the rate of growth of compute used for creating new models." We agree. That point is now.

Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.

AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts. These protocols should ensure that systems adhering to them are safe beyond a reasonable doubt.[4] This does not mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.

AI research and development should be refocused on making today's powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal.

In parallel, AI developers must work with policymakers to dramatically accelerate development of robust AI governance systems. These should at a minimum include: new and capable regulatory authorities dedicated to AI; oversight and tracking of highly capable AI systems and large pools of computational capability; provenance and watermarking systems to help distinguish real from synthetic and to track model leaks; a robust auditing and certification ecosystem; liability for AI-caused harm; robust public funding for technical AI safety research; and well-resourced institutions for coping with the dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy) that AI will cause.

Humanity can enjoy a flourishing future with AI. Having succeeded in creating powerful AI systems, we can now enjoy an "AI summer" in which we reap the rewards, engineer these systems for the clear benefit of all, and give society a chance to adapt. Society has hit pause on other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on society.[5]  We can do so here. Let's enjoy a long AI summer, not rush unprepared into a fall.

Signatories list paused due to high demand

Due to high demand we are still collecting signatures but pausing their appearance on the letter so that our vetting processes can catch up. Note also that the signatures near the top of the list are all independently and directly verified. [presumably by humans.]

The surgical mask is a bad fit for risk reduction (circa 2016)

Beck writes of the “symptoms and symbols of risks” that combine in populations to create a “cosmetics of risk.” He suggests that people living in the present moment conceive of risk in terms of the physical tools used to mitigate risk while still “maintaining the source of the filth.” Beck critiques the cosmetics of risk as measures that are not preventive but rather act as a “symbolic industry and policy of eliminating the increase in risks.” I propose that the surgical mask is a symbol that protects from the perception of risk by offering nonprotection to the public while causing behaviours that project risk into the future.

…The birth of the mask came from the realization that surgical wounds need protection from the droplets released in the breath of surgeons.

In the 1919 influenza pandemic, masks were available and weredispensed to populations, but they had no impact on the epidemic curve.3At the time, it was unknown that the influenza organism is nanoscopic and can theoretically penetrate the surgical mask barrier. As recently as 2010, the US National Academy of Sciences declared that, in the community setting, “face masks are not designed or certified to protect the wearer from exposure to respiratory hazards.”

…A number of studies have shown the inefficacy of the surgical mask in household settings to prevent transmission of the influenza virus

…Thus we have the means for a self-perpetuating system: the mask symbolically protects against infection just as it represents fear of that infection.

…We act out our collective anxiety about pandemics by wearing masks even when there isn’t a pandemic,1but wearing masks reinforces the idea of a possible future of pandemic. The problem of affect in political terms is a contagious one: fear spreads among the public, leading to intensification of risk management.

circa 2016

Mucosal Immunity in COVID-19: A Neglected but Critical Aspect of SARS-CoV-2 Infection

The mucosal immune system is the largest component of the entire immune system, having evolved to provide protection at the main sites of infectious threat: the mucosae. As SARS-CoV-2 initially infects the upper respiratory tract, its first interactions with the immune system must occur predominantly at the respiratory mucosal surfaces, during both inductive and effector phases of the response. However, almost all studies of the immune response in COVID-19 have focused exclusively on serum antibodies and systemic cell-mediated immunity including innate responses…