😈 Angry Optimist - 📰 Editor-in-chief of Warp News - Founder @WarpInstitute 🚀 🌏 Author of The Fifth Acceleration/Den femte accelerationen 📚
Brussels, Belgium
Joined May 2008
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AI is fast, knows an enormous amount and never gets tired. It can also pour a ton of work into an expensive detour.
Seeing that it is a detour takes common sense. That is the human half of the centaur.
theangryoptimist.org/p/ai-la…
Mathias Sundin retweeted
George W. and Laura Bush are backing James Talarico against Trump's terrible candidate Ken Paxton
Mathias Sundin retweeted
AI doomers don’t mention Y2K so much because it can be used as an example of humanities ability to mitigate tech risk without top down control.
In 1999 @ESYudkowsky weighed in on Y2K bug, predicting “major catastrophe” (also: the singularity by 2025!) diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/extropi…
Mathias Sundin retweeted
In 1999 @ESYudkowsky weighed in on Y2K bug, predicting “major catastrophe” (also: the singularity by 2025!) diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/extropi…
Vaccines work, bitches!
From 2000 to 2024, the measles vaccine saved nearly 59 million lives and measles deaths fell 88 percent, the WHO reports.
theangryoptimist.org/p/measl…
Mathias Sundin retweeted
The Aral Sea was once the fourth-largest lake on Earth. Then the Soviet Union diverted its two rivers to grow cotton.
By the mid-2010s, the lake had lost about 90 percent of its water.
In the north, it has turned around. A dam built in 2005 and a water-sharing agreement between four Central Asian countries have grown the North Aral Sea's area by 36 percent. The water level is 50 percent above its lowest point, and 20 fish species have returned.
Environmental damage this big can be undone.
theangryoptimist.org/p/the-s…
Since 1974, the WHO's vaccination program has cost $937 billion. In that time, vaccines have prevented 154 million deaths, 95 percent of them among children under five.
A study in The Lancet Global Health estimates that the program has saved $15,050 billion in productivity that would otherwise have been lost to early deaths. That is $16.06 back for every dollar invested.
The measles vaccine alone returned almost $74 per dollar.
The program paid for itself in all 194 countries studied.
theangryoptimist.org/p/937-b…
Mathias Sundin retweeted
154 million lives saved for $937 billion.
That is the result of the WHO's Expanded Programme on Immunization from 1974 to 2024, according to the first full calculation of its costs and returns, published in The Lancet Global Health.
Measured in productivity that would otherwise have been lost, every dollar invested has returned $16.06. In low-income countries, the return is $23.63.
Vaccination also accounts for 40 percent of the global decline in infant mortality during the period.
theangryoptimist.org/p/937-b…
Jonas Birgersson is building the internet of energy.
A new grid using the same logic as the internet.
I've followed the project from the start. Here is the latest update. – at Tervuren, België
In the mid-1990s, South Korea recycled 2 percent of its food waste. Today it recycles about 95 percent.
It started when people living near landfills protested against the smell. Then came a ban on sending food waste to city landfills, separate collection and fees by weight. In Seoul, smart bins weigh the waste and charge each household. The city's food waste fell 23.9 percent.
The waste now becomes compost, animal feed and biogas instead of methane in a landfill.
theangryoptimist.org/p/south…
Freedom House needs to stop calling the Democratic Republic of the Congo a not free country! – at Tervuren, België
Mathias Sundin retweeted
Child mortality worldwide has fallen by about 60 percent since 1990, according to the UN. Among newborns, it has fallen 45 percent.
Millions of children are alive because of vaccines, basic health care and better nutrition. That deserves more headlines.
theangryoptimist.org/p/globa…
The Soviet Union drained the Aral Sea to grow cotton. By the mid-2010s, it had lost about 90 percent of its water.
The northern part is now filling up again. Its area has grown 36 percent in 20 years. Even this could be reversed.
theangryoptimist.org/p/the-s…
Would be fun if she wins the Nobel Prize instead.
Breaking News: Melania Trump said she brokered a “localized cease-fire” between Ukraine and Russia in Oleshky, a Ukrainian city. She said the cease-fire would allow residents of the frontline city to leave “through a designated safe passageway.” nyti.ms/4sitk6A
Mathias Sundin retweeted
You misspelled “Russia”.
Mathias Sundin retweeted
Vaccines work, bitches!
From 2020 to 2024, not a single woman aged 20 to 24 died of cervical cancer in England. Based on earlier death rates, 23 deaths were expected.
About 9 in 10 women in that age group got the HPV vaccine at 12 or 13.
theangryoptimist.org/p/no-yo…
In the late 1970s, only about 300 numbats were left. Today there are 2,000 to 3,000, and the species is no longer classified as endangered.
We hear a lot about species disappearing. We hear much less about the ones that come back.
theangryoptimist.org/p/the-n…
