Todd Hoff

"But we should not underestimate our tendencies to rely on confidence, our own and others’, as a cue for what information deserves the most attention (independent of the validity of that information). One of the most insidious side effects of group decision making is that people believe in wrong group decisions more than they believe in incorrect individual decisions. The social proof resulting from cascades and (conformity more generally) amplifies everyone’s trust in the incorrect outcome. And inputs into the decision process from highly confident or dominant personalities have more impact and increase the esteem accorded to those individuals, regardless of the quality of their contributions." - Todd Hoff

"Designed by Estonian artist and sculptor Mati Karmin, this furniture collection rises to the challenge of recycling and reusing Russian sea mine shells. The deserted Soviet submarine base in Estonian town of Paldiski experienced lots of empty naval mines shells that seemed unsightly prior to the designer turned them into distinctive furniture that reminds from the Soviet period." - Todd Hoff

Wow! - DS

No. But I suspect that is just the past shitting on the future. - Todd Hoff

For me, no. Part of the terror in the first film (and subsequent sequels) lie in not knowing what he looked like under that mask. You couldn't see any expression, any emotion. This is pretty scary, but in a different way. - Jennifer Dittrich

Great point. Not knowing heightens fear. - Todd Hoff

"After close to four years of ongoing construction, plus three years of planning and permitting, the $2.4 billion, 550-megawatt Topaz Solar Farm — the first of this size in operation — is finally finished, and primed to sell power to California utility PG&E. The project is owned and operated by MidAmerican Energy, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway." - Todd Hoff

"A recent study found those judgments mirror judgments we make about something else—other people. “The patterns of activity involved in judging corporations were almost the same as those involved in judging people. In other words, corporations are represented by the brain as social beings rather than inanimate objects.” In even simpler terms, we see brands as people. What happens when they don’t talk like a person?" - Todd Hoff

"These findings indicated that removing the dental plaque biofilm with a toothbrush and dental floss by a hygienist before scaling with an ultrasonic device was more effective in reducing the working time of the dental hygienist." - Todd Hoff

"A kaleidoscope of swirling, colorful shapes move up, down and around the windows of The 100 Room at Shoreditch’s Ace Hotel. The shapes come together and float apart, creating bubbles and cascading color explosions that look like fungi and haemoglobin, fireworks and underwater flowers. All the while, a suggestive, dreamlike soundtrack sets the mood for the ever-changing color display designed by the Joshua Light Show, the CH favorites who we’ve previously visited in their studio." - Todd Hoff

"Nietzsche, nearly a century ago, already named our period the Age of Comparisons. There were formerly horizons within which people lived and thought and mythologized. There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. - Todd Hoff

powerful stuff - Todd Hoff

I'll rev up the sled dogs. - Todd Hoff

"In Silicon Valley's youth-obsessed culture, 40-year-olds get plastic surgery to fit in. But IDEO, the firm that famously developed the first mouse for Apple, has a 90-year-old designer on staff. Barbara Beskind says her age is an advantage. "Everybody who ages is going to be their own problem-solver," she says. And designers are problem-solvers. Beskind speaks while sitting on a couch at the open office space of IDEO in San Francisco. She commutes to the office once a week from a community for older adults where falling is a problem." - Todd Hoff

"Photographer Levi Bettweiser is the man behind the Rescued Film Project, an effort to find and rescue old and undeveloped rolls of film from the far corners of the world. He recently came across one of his biggest finds so far: 31 undeveloped rolls of film shot by a single soldier during World War II. Bettweiser tells us he found the film rolls in late 2014 at an auction in Ohio. About half the rolls were labeled with various location names (i.e. Boston Harbor, Lucky Strike Beach, LaHavre Harbor)." - Todd Hoff

What a great idea, the Rescued Film Project, it's like treasure hunting - Todd Hoff

"This last finding was another surprise. Emotion-reading mattered just as much for the online teams whose members could not see one another as for the teams that worked face to face. What makes teams smart must be not just the ability to read facial expressions, but a more general ability, known as “Theory of Mind,” to consider and keep track of what other people feel, know and believe." - Todd Hoff

" was created in Antwerp at a time of religious tension between Catholics and Protestants. It is rich in detail but Bruegel is notoriously difficult to interpret. His art seems to reject the preoccupations of the Italian Renaissance, drawing instead on techniques associated with the new technology of the 16th century, print. Did Bruegel use his art to comment on the controversies of his day? Melvyn Bragg is joined by Louise Milne, Lecturer in Visual Culture in the School of Art at the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Napier University; Jeanne Nuechterlein, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art, University of York and Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History and Head of the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London." - Todd Hoff

"The spatial distribution of people exhibits clustering across a wide range of scales, from household (∼ 10−2 km) to continental (∼ 104 km) scales. Empirical data indicates simple power-law scalings for the size distribution of cities (known as Zipf’s law1 ), the geographic distribution of friends2 , and the population density fluctuations as a function of scale. We derive a simple statistical model that explains all of these scaling laws based on a single unifying principle involving the random spatial growth of clusters of people on all scales. The model makes important new predictions for the spread of diseases and other social phenomena. - Todd Hoff

"Conclusion. From all of this I am forced to conclude both that mathematics is unreasonably effective and that all of the explanations I have given when added together simply are not enough to explain what I set out to account for. I think that we-meaning you, mainly-must continue to try to explain why the logical side of science-meaning mathematics, mainly-is the proper tool for exploring the universe as we perceive it at present. I suspect that my explanations are hardly as good as those of the early Greeks, who said for the material side of the question that the nature of the universe is earth, fire, water, and air. The logical side of the nature of the universe requires further exploration." - Todd Hoff

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Software in Human Society - Todd Hoff

"A group of playful elephants take turns sliding down a muddy hill on a rainy day at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand. While the elephants are playing here, it’s good practice for when they need to make their way across a muddy river." - Todd Hoff

What I find fascinating about the article is that it can be for fun, the elephants must be following some darwinian programming, thus they are lower than humans. - Todd Hoff

"In general, the partnerships will allow researchers to quickly run queries on more than 1,000 diseases, conditions, and traits so that they can identify new associations between genetic markers using the 23andMe data. Partners like Genentech and Pfizer will access 23andMe research services through a new Research Portal." - Todd Hoff

"Eight out of the top 10 countries considered most at-risk from climate change by the index are located in Africa. Hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts and flooding are all real dangers for some of these areas, and this is compounded by a lack of national strategy to counteract the effects. Chad ranked lowest in the index, suggesting it will be the country hardest hit by climate change." - Todd Hoff

Fantastiche! - Verguenza

I'm worried about an arms race. - Todd Hoff

"The new year has only just begun, but we’ve already recorded our first days with average carbon dioxide levels above 400 parts per million, potentially leading to many months in a row above this threshold, experts say." - Todd Hoff

"9.  Besides the fresh smell of dry grass hay, your hay can also smell, well… like it’s cooking.  Which it can be!  If hay is baled too wet, it begins to decompose, like a compost pile.  Heat is generated.  Sometimes, combustion takes place and your entire haystack can be on fire.  If you’ve stacked it in a barn, there goes your barn!  Haystacks can at least not take any buildings with it should it catch on fire.  For a couple of years, we grew sudan, which is a sorghum.  It really looks like corn stalks to me.  It was hard to get it to dry, and you could walk by it and smell it “cooking”.  The cows loved it.  I imagine it was slightly sweet…" - Todd Hoff

"To battle blockage, Dyson engineered rubber tips that sit at the end of the 32 cyclones. These tips, made from a proprietary material that is flexible yet stiff enough to not collapse under suction, vibrate 350 times per second. “That’s very, very fast,” says Rob Green, one of Dyson’s senior engineers. Green compares the oscillating tips to sifting flour through a sieve. Sitting on top of the sieve, the powder clumps together, but as soon as you start shaking, it breaks up and floats to the bottom. The tips are effectively a filterless filter." - Todd Hoff

I have an unnatural attraction to these things. - Todd Hoff

Wow, 0.5 microns... that's almost HEPA territory. - Ken Morley

Dyson sucks - Mike Nencetti

I'm doing the usual tomatos, cucs, zucs, spinach and lettuce, but thought I'd add some blackberry canes and start a vermiculture bin this year. - Ken Morley

The Whole Seed Catalog on the newsstand is interesting. http://www.rareseeds.com/store... - Thomas Page