We’ve had some really good press the past week, the first I’d like to share with you comes from Aimee Groth writing for Quartz: The makers of WordPress.com learned years ago that the ultimate office perk is not having an office. The funny thing is I’m writing this from the once-a-year Automattic Grand Meetup, which is in Utah this year, there are over 250 of my colleagues here and it’s great fun meeting and hanging out with everybody.
“We were going to wait until he learned to talk to question him,” Secret Service Agent Edwin Donovan said in a statement, “but in lieu of that he got a timeout and was sent on [his] way with [his] parents.”
Pretty funny article from White House Goes On Lockdown After Sneaky Toddler Breaches Fence.
Logical Conclusion of AI
There’s been some great threads going around inspired by the book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, including Elon Musk hoping we’re not just a biological bootloader. Via Automattician Matt Mazur I came across this fantastic review of the book on Amazon that gives a great counter-balance and lots of additional information you wouldn’t get from the book itself, and also summarizes it quite well.
We’ve talked about the Fermi Paradox here and here before, my long-time friend David Galbraith, ever the architect, tackles the Fermi Paradox from the point of view of the natural limits of communication in Minimum & Maximum Viable Civilizations.
As reported by the Boston Globe, four-star Admiral Samuel Locklear, Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, provided an “unexpected answer” when recently asked “what is the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region?”
I usually don’t do this, but check out the link to see what the United States Navy admiral who currently serves as the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command said. Hat tip: Jim Meyer.
Brentin Mock from Grist looks for evidence that Hip Hop is not down with Monsanto.
Ants Are Amazing
[A]ll of California’s Argentine ants belong to only four colonies. The largest, euphemistically named the Very Large Colony, contains hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of ants, and extends from the Mexican border to San Francisco. In the largest battles ever recorded, millions of ants die each month along this colony’s border with its rivals in San Diego County.
That’s from this article by Mark W Moffett that describes his book Adventures Among Ants.
In 2010 Wired took a cool look at Looting, Cannibalism and Death Blows: The ‘Shock and Awe’ of Ant Warfare.
Finally as a 2013 update, there’s a new boss in town, the Asian needle ant which is literally eating Argentine ants for lunch:
All ants essentially hibernate when wintertime hits, but the Asian needle ants “wake up before other ant species wake up,” Spicer-Rice explained.
This head start allows them to build nests, find sources of food, and start reproducing before the other ants get going.
Amazing ant photo by János Csongor Kerekes and CC-licensed.