Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Iceman]

Fabulous! Thanks for posting that Higgy! The end draws closer with each breathing day. Nice tomatoes too!

[Higgenbotham]

Gates is optimistic about the overall benefits AI can provide to humanity, like “breakthrough treatments for deadly diseases, innovative solutions for climate change, and high-quality education for everyone,” he wrote last year.

Talking to Fallon, Gates reaffirmed his belief that certain types of jobs will likely never be replaced by AI, noting that people probably don’t want to see machines playing baseball, for example.

“There will be some things we reserve for ourselves. But in terms of making things and moving things and growing food, over time those will be basically solved problems,” Gates said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/26/bill-ga ... hings.html

I ran across this a few days ago.

Which reminded me, several weeks ago, I had thrown out a couple ideas for how the tech bros could be self-sufficient in food in their walled off planned communities (not that I'm saying Bill Gates is one of the "tech bros"). After commenting about that, I realized I had forgotten an obvious go-to that the tech bros might consider. Several years ago, I had read about how Driscoll's was going to or was growing strawberries in a multi-story building in Virginia. That kind of thing would seem very attractive to the tech bros, I'm guessing.

Driscoll’s heads to Virginia to grow strawberries in world’s largest indoor vertical farm

Plenty Unlimited Inc., the city of Richmond, VA and Driscoll’s team up to deliver vertically farmed strawberries in vertical farming campus behemoth in late 2023.

Kristin Leigh Lore • September 16, 2022 08:30 AM

‌Indoor vertical-farming‌ ‌company‌ ‌Plenty‌ ‌Unlimited‌ ‌Inc.‌ confirmed plans with the city of Richmond to build the world’s largest indoor vertical farming campus in Virginia with a $300 million investment in Chesterfield County’s Meadowville Technology Park.

Plenty recently secured $400 million in financing, the largest investment to date for an indoor farming company, according to a news release. Plenty plans to complete its Richmond Farm Campus over the next six years, utilizing its 200 patent assets to grow produce year-round in grow towers that will be more than 30 feet tall.

What’s more, the first farming site slated for the expansive, 120-acre campus will be a Driscoll’s berry farm that will grow the first indoor, vertically farmed strawberries at scale. Driscoll’s farm will be completed by winter 2023-2024.

https://www.thepacker.com/news/packer-t ... tical-farm

But what actually got me to come around to putting this whole agglomeration of stuff together in this post was glancing at a headline similar to this today:

Western diet accelerates endometriosis growth and disrupts gut health

By Dr. Liji Thomas, MD
Reviewed by Benedette Cuffari, M.Sc.

Nov 12 2024

Accelerated lesion growth and key gut bacteria loss link the Western diet to heightened endometriosis risk, opening new discussions on diet as a potential intervention.

A recent study in the journal BMC Medicine examines the effects of a Western diet on the development of endometriotic lesions in mice.

Endometriosis and the gut microbiome

The Western diet (WD) not only promotes lesion growth but also activates specific macrophage markers (CD80 and CD206), enhancing inflammation and potentially accelerating endometriotic lesion progression.

Despite being a benign condition, endometriosis causes significant morbidity in affected women, 10% of whom are of reproductive age. Endometriosis is characterized by the abnormal growth of tissues resembling that of the uterine lining or endometrium outside of the uterine cavity.

Women with advanced endometriosis exhibit gut microbial changes. Previous studies have reported that anti-inflammatory diets may relieve endometriosis-associated pain, which may be achieved by altering bacterial and gut metabolism.

This wasn't the exact headline I saw, but it was similar. What I recall is the headline I saw was more along the lines of poor gut heath aggravates or contributes to endometriosis.

The first thing that came to mind when seeing that headline today was to think that eating strawberries grown inside a building is probably not beneficial for gut health. Going into all the reasons why would make this post too long.

Which made me wonder why Bill Gates thinks growing food will over time be basically a solved problem. It's probably not because he thinks growing food inside a building is the solution or he wouldn't be the largest farmland owner in the United States. So before looking for some of the reasons, I tried to think about why he might have made that statement. One is that I believe AI, instead of dousing a field with a uniform coverage of pesticides, can "look" for insects and only use pesticides where it determines they are needed, avoiding waste. Same type of thing for other inputs.

Apparently, that wasn't the right answer. What seemed to come up in search is that Bill Gates sees AI as being able to accelerate the development of heat tolerant crops, as well as drought and flood tolerant crops. This seems like a reasonable goal, though probably better achieved by doing something other than screwing with plant genomes. But I'm not sure that that alone will make growing food, over time, a basically solved problem.

[Higgenbotham]

Which reminded me, several weeks ago, I had thrown out a couple ideas for how the tech bros could be self-sufficient in food in their walled off planned communities (not that I'm saying Bill Gates is one of the "tech bros"). After commenting about that, I realized I had forgotten an obvious go-to that the tech bros might consider. Several years ago, I had read about how Driscoll's was going to or was growing strawberries in a multi-story building in Virginia. That kind of thing would seem very attractive to the tech bros, I'm guessing.

I guess it did seem very attractive to some of the tech bros, including none other than the founder of Amazon and former CEO of Google. It would have been more interesting to see the tech bros build several of these in their walled off planned communities before reality presented itself.

Bloomberg
Bezos-Backed Farm Startup in Talks for More Than 90% Value Cut

Saijel Kishan and Kate Clark
January 3, 2025 3 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Plenty Unlimited Inc., a pioneer of vertical farming that’s drawn backing from billionaires including Jeff Bezos, is in talks for a new funding round that will virtually wipe out existing stockholders, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Plenty, which has brought in almost $1 billion from investors like Eric Schmidt and SoftBank Group Corp., is in talks to raise another $125 million as part of the recapitalization, according to people familiar with the matter. The new deal would value the company’s existing shares at less than $15 million, one person said. Previously, investors had valued Plenty at $1.9 billion, according to PitchBook.

The company declined to comment on the deal.

In recent weeks, Plenty has installed an interim chief executive officer after the exit of Arama Kukutai, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The new acting CEO is Daniel Malech, previously the company’s senior vice president of strategy and general counsel.

At the same time, the company is undergoing a broader strategy shift. Instead of growing a variety of fruits and vegetables, Plenty will focus on strawberries, which yield higher profits.

Kukutai and Malech did not respond to requests for comment.

New York investment firm One Madison Group is expected to lead the new financing. SoftBank’s Vision Fund, a longtime Plenty investor that’s funneled over $400 million into the company, is also in talks to participate, said the people, as is Walmart Inc. The financing is not yet completed and could still fall apart, they added.

SoftBank and Walmart declined to comment. One Madison Group did not respond to requests for comment.

Plenty’s shifting strategy reflects larger struggles for the once-promising indoor farming industry. The news comes just months after Bowery Farming, previously valued at $2.3 billion, halted operations, according to reports. Before that, companies including AeroFarms, Kalera and AppHarvest all filed for bankruptcy.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/farming- ... 00471.html

[Higgenbotham]

The generational cycle could have a biological basis.

But plenty of studies show that anxiety is heritable, meaning that trauma felt by a parent can create a biological imprint in offspring. There’s an evolutionary argument for it—if mom experiences tough times, she’ll pass down that information via subtle genetic changes so that her child is better prepared for the outside world. Some of these changes happen in the womb if the mother goes through a stressful or traumatic event during pregnancy, but what about trauma that occurs before fertilization?

Here’s Virginia Hughes, reporting for National Geographic.

Traumatic experiences can actually work themselves into the germ line. When a male mouse becomes afraid of a specific smell, this fear is somehow transmitted into his sperm, the study found. His pups will also be afraid of the odor, and will pass that fear down to their pups.

Hughes learned of the study, which has yet to be published, in a talk at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. There, two Emory University researchers, Brian Dias, Ph.D., and Kerry Ressler, M.D., Ph.D., presented their findings. Dias and Ressler taught mice to be afraid of a certain fragrance, acetophenone, by shocking them every time they caught a whiff. Over time, the mice experienced small changes in their brains and even a rearrangement of the neurons in their noses to cope with this new stress in the environment.

Then, 10 days after the “startle” response was fully ingrained, the researchers allowed one group of the mice to mate while the another was artificially inseminated. In both groups, the offspring were startled by the smell, even without the shock training. The epigenetic changes appeared to occur before fertilization.

These results haven’t been without controversy. After Hughes’s article was published, other scientists weighed in on Twitter. She put together an excellent summary of the virtual conversation.

It’s still unclear how changes in the brain could lead to changes in the sperm.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/a ... eneration/

[FullMoon]

The generational cycle could have a biological basis.

It's a worthy investigation for the connection between the individual and society. Our current society is obviously not healthy overall. In many aspects. We see the push to return to health but it's hard to break away from the machine...

[Higgenbotham]

It's been noted that a lot of serial killers were born around World War II.

Search

"serial killer year of birth" gives these results from google AI:

AI Overview
The birth years of several notable serial killers include: Ted Bundy (1946), Samuel Little (1940), Randall Woodfield (1950), Gary Ridgway (1949), Joel Rifkin (1959), Richard Cottingham (1946), Keith Hunter Jesperson (1955), John Wayne Gacy (1942), Dennis Rader (1945), Danny Rolling (1954), Rodney Alcala (1943), David Berkowitz (1953), and Richard Ramirez (1960).

"prominent serial killers born around world war 2"

AI Overview
Several prominent serial killers were born around the time of World War II (roughly 1939-1945), and their crimes often came to light in the decades that followed.
Here are some notable examples:

Born in the late 1930s:
Dean Corll (born 1939): Known as the "Candy Man," he operated in Texas during the 1970s, torturing and killing at least 28 teenage boys.
Robert Hansen (born 1939): "The Butcher Baker," he kidnapped, raped, and murdered at least 17 women in Alaska between 1971 and 1983.

Born in the early to mid-1940s:
John Wayne Gacy (born 1942): "The Killer Clown," he sexually assaulted and murdered at least 33 young men and boys in Illinois between 1972 and 1978.
Rodney Alcala (born 1943): "The Dating Game Killer," he is believed to have murdered as many as 130 women, although he was convicted of only a handful of killings in California.
Dennis Rader (born 1945): "The BTK Killer" (Bind, Torture, Kill), he terrorized Wichita, Kansas, for three decades, murdering ten people between 1974 and 1991.
Ted Bundy (born 1946): One of the most infamous serial killers, Bundy is believed to have murdered dozens of women across several states in the 1970s.

Born in the later 1940s:
Edmund Kemper (born 1948): Known as the "Co-ed Killer," he murdered his grandparents as a teenager and then later killed several female college students in California in the early 1970s.
Gary Ridgway (born 1949): "The Green River Killer," he murdered at least 49 women in Washington State, primarily in the 1980s and 1990s.

Important Considerations:
"Golden Age" of Serial Killers: Some criminologists have noted a surge in serial killer activity in the latter half of the 20th century, a period sometimes referred to as the "golden age" of serial killers.
Causes and Influences: Various factors are hypothesized to have contributed to this phenomenon, including the social and psychological impacts of the Great Depression and World War II, alongside other societal shifts.
Complex Motivations: Serial killers' motivations are diverse and complex, often rooted in psychological disturbances and violent tendencies.
Ongoing Debate: The reasons behind the rise of serial killings and the motivations of individual perpetrators remain areas of ongoing research and debate within the fields of criminology and psychology.

[Higgenbotham]

The Great Depression and World War II may have caused enough stress to make more sperm go haywire. Think what a new dark age might do.

[FullMoon]

Psychopaths are created in youth by traumatic events/environments is what I read when looking it up because the leaders of that era (Mao,Hitler, Stalin) were called psychopaths and reference to childhood trauma was cited. There's plenty of places with starvation and war so maybe they'll have a higher than average psychopath population?

[Higgenbotham]

Interesting. The political leaders involved in killing millions were born on average around 1885 while most of the notorious serial killers were born on average around 1945. If that's an 80 year cycle, the next wave of political leaders who will be involved in killing millions were born on average around 1965.

Also, the ones born around 1885 were early 40s when the real 1929 stock market panic and depression hit, while the serial killers were also early 40s when the false 1987 stock market panic hit.

[Higgenbotham]

Back to this.

I've mentioned in these pages that somewhere around 1971, give or take a few years, and it would vary from sector to sector with probably the more complex sectors coming first, that the US entered the maintenance phase of a declining civilization. There was a slow recognition and response to that turning point.

The mix of jobs begins to change and women are able to better do many of the jobs that become prominent during the maintenance and decline phase (like health care and education, which really just serve to milk out the surplus of the civilization before it collapses).

WTF Happened In 1971?
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

While many of the graphs on this site are pertinent and interesting, I want to highlight this one:



Since 1971, the percentage of women who are sole bread winners has more than tripled, from 2 percent to 7 percent. We also know that many, many women now make more than their husbands.

Now Google AI has added its 2 cents.

AI Overview

In the context of the study of societal collapse, the "maintenance phase of a declining civilization" is a concept that describes a stage where a civilization is struggling to sustain its existence and address accumulating problems but is not yet in full collapse.

Key aspects of a maintenance phase in a declining civilization:

Focus on Preservation: Instead of growth and expansion, the primary focus shifts to maintaining existing systems and infrastructure, sometimes to the detriment of needed innovation or adaptation.
Declining Returns on Investment: According to theories like those of Joseph Tainter, as societies become more complex, the benefits derived from increasing complexity may diminish, leading to a state where the costs of maintaining that complexity outweigh the benefits.
Vulnerability to Collapse: At this stage, a society becomes increasingly susceptible to collapse, as the resources and energy required for maintenance may become unsustainable, leaving it vulnerable to internal or external shocks.

Examples from History:

The Mayan Civilization: Some scholars argue that the Classic Maya, while often presented as an example of collapse, experienced a period of reorganization where the political system of Divine Kingship was removed in certain areas, but their culture and language persisted.
The Greenland Norse: These colonists invested heavily in inner-fjord pastures and oversized stone churches, a focus on maintaining their current way of life that, according to some interpretations, hampered their ability to adapt to changing conditions and potentially survive.
The Khmer Empire: This empire, which flourished for centuries, was eventually affected by drought and violent monsoon rains, against a backdrop of a changing climate.

Theories of Societal Collapse:

Complexity Theory (Joseph Tainter): Suggests that societies collapse due to the unsustainable costs of increasing internal complexity.
Five Stages of Empire Model (David Murrin): Describes the stages of empire, including a "decline and legacy" stage where the spending required for maintenance decreases dramatically.
Jared Diamond's Factors: Identifies factors like environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, and withdrawal of support from friendly neighbors as contributing to societal collapse.
General Systems Collapse Theory: Posits that societal collapse results from societal complexity exceeding a sustainable level.
Malthusian Theory: Suggests that population growth can outpace food production, leading to resource scarcity and societal instability.

In essence, the maintenance phase signifies a crucial point in a civilization's trajectory where the balance between maintenance and sustainability becomes a key factor in its future.

AI responses may include mistakes.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22main ... nt=gws-wiz

That's a big change from where google was a year ago:

Recently, I searched on google for "maintenance phase of a declining civilization" - you know I've used that phrase numerous times.

Today's results are different: