The Grey Swan Guild News Wrap — The Week That Was April 23, 2021.
Grey Swan Guild — News Wrap Edition: #14 of Vol. 1
These are a series of stories and headlines we are tracking in the
Grey Swan Guild’s Global League of Sensemakers Newsroom.
Here is The Great, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of what we observed this week.
This week was Earth Day 2021…: This year’s theme focuses on natural processes, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems.
With yesterdays Q&A between Elon Mush and Peter Diamandis, (and today’s launch to space) this particular year got us looking up the stars and aiming for the Moon, to jump to Mars. We are accelerating the process of searching alternate realities. This is just me connecting the dots this week. (Agustin)
Our Guild had its 1st year anniversary past April 15th and proudly displayed its plumage and colours on a 24 hour round- the-clock experience crafted as The Day of the Swan.
A warm thanks and call of congrats to all those who organized, spoke at and attended the event.
Here is the first recap teaser clip and the Spanish session.
Join us Sunday April 25 at 11am (EST) on Clubhouse to engage with your favorite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors, including this week’s Lead Editor, Global Futurist, Agustín Borrazás.
The Great 😇
1.Mars Helicopter makes historical flight — for the first time, we are the UFOs.
Ingenuity executed a pre-programmed flight using an autopilot mechanism and a navigation system. The flight maneuver needed to be pre-programmed, as it takes 15 minutes for signals to travel from Earth to Mars. Ingenuity traveled to the red planet strapped to the Perseverance rover, which touched down on February 18 to begin a mission searching for signs of life on Mars.
For now, the goal of the Ingenuity is to demonstrate that its flight technology works, which could pave the way for faster exploration of extraterrestrial surfaces.
2. France is offering the owners of old, exhaust-belching cars the opportunity to hand over their vehicles for scrap in return for a 2,500 euro ($2,975.00) grant to buy an electric bicycle.
In France, you could soon swap your old car for an electric bike.
“For the first time it is recognised that the solution is not to make cars greener, but simply to reduce their number.”
If adopted, France will become the first country in the world to offer people the chance to trade in an ageing vehicle for an electric or folding bicycle
3. Aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover, MOXIE creates oxygen on Mars thanks to an MIT-designed instrument. A NASA mission has produced oxygen on another planet for the first time.
MOXIE’s first oxygen run produced 5.4 grams of oxygen in an hour.
The power supply limits potential production to 12 g/hr — about the same amount that a large tree would produce. For both rockets and astronauts, oxygen is crucial.
MOXIE is sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. It is a joint venture between NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), MIT Haystack Observatory, and MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
The Good 😀
1.Guilty. George Floyd’s killer has been convicted on all three counts.
Where things stand now.
- Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin has been convicted on all charges in the death of George Floyd.
- Chauvin faces up to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder and up to 10 years for second-degree manslaughter.
- Floyd died in May 2020 after Chauvin placed his knee on Floyd’s neck while he pleaded, “I can’t breathe.”
Derek Chauvin has been transferred to the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Oak Park Heights, according to Minnesota Department of Corrections.
2. Damage to a protective shield around the brain may lead to Alzheimer’s. The blood-brain barrier deteriorates with aging, but animal studies indicate repairs can make old brains look young again.
The blood-brain barrier deteriorates with aging, but animal studies indicate repairs can make old brains look young again.
Unless, however, the barrier was not intact. We wondered whether the physical and mental stress of combat might somehow trigger leaks in the shield.
A quarter of a century later we can say that looking at these blue brains turned out to be a defining moment for both our careers, as well as the beginning of a lifelong friendship and scientific collaboration.
3. A massive new gene editing project could help end Alzheimer’s. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is corralling Alzheimer’s and stem cell researchers to come together in the largest genome editing project ever conceived.
Decades of research have found certain genes that seem to increase the chance of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. The numbers range over hundreds. Figuring out how each connects or influences another — if at all — takes years of research in individual labs. What if scientists unite, tap into a shared resource, and collectively solve the case of why Alzheimer’s occurs in the first place?
In plain language? Let’s throw all of our new biotech superstars — with CRISPR at the forefront — into a concerted effort against Alzheimer’s, to finally gain the upper hand. It’s an “Avengers, assemble” moment towards one of our toughest foes — one that seeks to destroy our own minds from within.
The Bad 😬
1. Billions and Billions or propaganda or guerrilla IT Warfare … Who really knows… Umm Let’s See. Facebook & Google probably… Interesting to see it there will be information sanctions that roll out to that constrain the activities. Will it make North Korea an Island?
The country’s cyber forces have raked in billions of dollars for the regime by pulling off schemes ranging from A.T.M. heists to cryptocurrency thefts. Can they be stopped?
In satellite images of East Asia at night, lights blare almost everywhere, except in one inky patch between the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, and between the thirty-eighth and the forty-third parallels: North Korea. Only Pyongyang, the capital, emits a recognizably modern glow. The dark country is one of the last nominally Communist nations in the world
Thirty-one states have introduced bills that ban transgender athletes from participating in sports consistent with their gender identities.
Three states — Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee — have already signed these bills into law this year.
Advocates hope that potential economic and political consequences could deter governors from enacting this year’s wave of legislation.
In 2016, North Carolina passed its so-called “bathroom bill,” which meant that people at government-run facilities must use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to the sexes on their birth certificates. In practice, the law meant that many transgender and nonbinary people were unable to use restrooms in government buildings and felt unsafe to do so elsewhere in public.
3. The pandemic proved that our toilets are crap.
The core technologies were developed more than a hundred years ago — at a time when people couldn’t conceive of many of the challenges that we face today.
Much of the hardware in the ground is reaching the end of its lifespan and crumbling due to a lack of investment in its maintenance and upkeep.
This year, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave US wastewater infrastructure a D+ in its annual report card.
For those without access to private toilets, lockdowns also made publicly available restrooms even scarcer than they normally are. This was particularly hard on the unhoused population, as well as those with intestinal and other disorders.
The Ugly 😱
1.This is not a grey swan. Early indication of invasion? Enormous implications in stability. EU estimates that 150,000 Russian troops have amassed near Ukraine’s borders.
More than 14,000 people have died in seven years of fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that erupted after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. The EU has steadfastly opposed the annexation but has been unable to do anything about it.
Update.
After weeks of tension over a build-up of Russian troops close to Ukraine’s border, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has ordered a number of units in the area back to their bases.
2. Surges, waves, wipe out. Strict Lockdowns are the wipeouts of the pandemic after a of year experience. #delhi #toronto #manaus
The spike is so steep that the increase looks almost vertical — infecting entire families and overwhelming hospitals.
Deaths per day are at record highs and climbing. In some cities, crematoriums are running their furnaces around-the-clock.
In Delhi, India’s worst-affected city, the health care system has “reached its limit” and could collapse if action is not taken.
3. Let the introspection continue… All countries will be taking a hard look inward, especial as waves and variant occur as predicted by epidemiologists predicted. Opinion: A very German way of handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
German authorities have similarly issued an abundance of overly detailed lockdown laws. In a piece for Spiegel Online, journalist Sascha Lobo cites Hamburg’s mask regulations and the provisions surrounding when and where they are mandatory: “On Alma Wartenberg square, including on Bahrenfelder street from house numbers 135 to 146.”
The rules are far more detailed than this.
A smart virologist recently said the coronavirus spreads throughout society like water, always finding ways to infect others. Sticking to this metaphor, Germans have been trying to manage the outbreak by building canals and pipes.
It’s simply the wrong approach.
Term of the Week: Elongate
Elon Musk’s March Joke Is Now a Cryptocurrency.
Elon Musk had joked about Elongate in March, and it’s here as a cryptocurrency.
Fast-rising cryptocurrency token that launched 3 weeks ago, has pledged a total of more than US$1,000,000 in monetary donations to various charities. Built on the Binance Smart Chain, Elongate is a crypto token that was born from an Elon Musk tweet and has since been determined to wield the power and capital of memes and internet culture to change the face of charitable giving.
Meme of the Week — Snickers Doge
4.20 came and left us this. #DogeDay hashtag.
And Snickers bars got that quickly.
Dogecoin (DOGE) has now received support from the candy bar world, with Snickers and Milky Way promoting the meme-centric cryptocurrency ahead of Tuesday, April 20, which some Dogecoin fans have declared
as the “Doge Day.”
Chart of the Week:
What does vaccine inequality look like.
"There are a few other nations out there who are with us.”
Globally, just 2.3% of the world’s population is fully vaccinated. In Africa it’s less than 1%.
“It you look at the data globally,” Katz says, “you’ll see that about 75% of the vaccines have gone to only 10 countries globally. There’s massive, massive inequality.”
Term of the Week
Seaspiracy is a 2021 documentary film about the environmental impact of fishing directed by and starring Ali Tabrizi, a British filmmaker.
The film premiered on Netflix globally in March 2021 and garnered immediate attention in several countries. The film received praise for bringing attention to its subject matter and controversy over its scientific accuracy.[ Some organisations and individuals interviewed or negatively portrayed in the film have disputed its assertions and have accused the film of misrepresenting them.
Photo of the Week — Cira-03
Mahmoud el-Komy, who designed the robot, called Cira-03, says it can help limit exposure to infection and prevent the transmission of Covid-19. The robot can take blood tests, perform echocardiograms and X-rays, and display the results to patients on a screen attached to its chest.
Video of the Week
1,500 Drones Create QR Codes in China For Players Who Want to Download ‘Princess Connect Re: Dive’
This time around, players could scan QR codes made by 1,500 drones. This is to celebrate the anniversary of “Princess Connect: Re Drive,” a Japanese role-playing game that debuted on Feb.15, 2018. Its video game developer is Cygames, the same studio which created “Fate/Grand Order” and “‘Honkai Impact 3rd.”
That’s the Wrap! What’s Your Idea?
See you next week for Edition #15
We will also be having Grey Swan Atelier #1 this week Wednesday April 28th at 4pm ET.
We meet as a full guild around a common theme and make sense of the world together.
The GSG Medium is The Message
Visit our Medium channel every Friday for a weekly wrap on the world’s biggest challenges and other fresh articles and points of view The Guild is sharing. Please drop by our Grey Swan Guild website (greyswanguild.org) for more publications and articles about how we make sense of the world ongoing and also the raft of possibilities to participate as a Sensemaker.
This Week’s Grey Swan News Wrap Editor: Agustín Borrazás core member and collaborator at the guild and this week’s news wrap editor with help from @sylvia, @rob, @ben, @sean and @doyle .
Grey Swan Guild — Making Sense of What’s Next
Every 2nd and last Wednesday of every month we onboard new members with the co-founders of the guild.
We call these sessions Regattas and Bank & Wedge sessions. Why don’t you come find out what it is all about and perhaps join our movement? This March & April represent our biggest growth phase in the Guild ever so ride our wave and come alongside our 2nd thousand of members who flock in.
Regatta Onboardings (second Wednesday of every month)
Bank and Wedge Onboardings (last Wednesday of every month)
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