astroboy's posterior

The risk of fatality was 1.2 times higher when the crash involved a station wagon and 1.6 times higher when it involved a utility vehicle, relative to sedans and hatchbacks.

capping vehicle weight and/or height at their median levels corresponds to approximately 9% fewer predicted pedestrian fatalities within the observed crash sample.

The Australian vehicle fleet has progressively upsized, with light-vehicle footprint increasing by ∼7% (and pick-ups by ∼18%) over the past two decades. Our analysis also revealed a 9% rise in average vehicle weight and a 3% rise in height among passenger vehicles involved in Victorian pedestrian crashes.

The influence of vehicle size also depends on operating speed. Effects are evident in less than or equal to 60 km/h speed-limit environments but not at higher speeds, supporting the interpretation that the fatality outcome is more sensitive to vehicle size in survivable low-speed crashes, showing a decreasing marginal effect of vehicle size at higher speeds.

Every additional 100 kg of vehicle weight increased pedestrian fatality odds by 6%.

• Every additional 10 cm of vehicle height increased pedestrian fatality odds by 11%.

•Reducing size to typical passenger car was estimated to prevent ∼9% of fatalities.

•Equivalent percentage increases in vehicle height had a greater effect on fatality odds than weight increases.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670726006633?via%3Dihub#sec0013

Our research suggests that evolution took two existing neural systems and pushed them together spatially.

The human brain consists of two ancient nervous systems cleverly packaged together — a more primitive part that regulates our hearts’ beating, our breathing and other functions, and another that makes us distinctly human, capable of poetry, mathematics and wondering about our own origins.

We’ve shown for the first time that the front of the brain arises from a totally different progenitor cell than the back of the brain.

The adult brain has three main regions: the forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain. The forebrain handles higher-level thinking — language, consciousness and abstract reasoning. In contrast, the hindbrain, located at the back of the skull and often called the brain stem, controls essential, automatic functions that keep us alive: breathing, sleeping, and regulating our heartbeat and hunger urges. The hindbrain neurons also control the muscles of the face, tongue and throat, which affect speech and swallowing.

Even 500 million years ago, there were these separate neural systems, which now almost operate as one, which is very cool.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2026/09/two-separate-brains.html

Wittiness is a trait that provides an excellent platform for replacing physical aggression with verbal behaviour and cognitive contest

It could never have been anticipated that the power to charm the female has been in some few instances more important than the power to conquer the other males in battle.

Selection for physical fitness, and selection for friendliness/groupishness, while both relevant for human evolution to some extent, do not begin to capture the essence of what it means to be human, specifically in relation to language. We may appreciate physical strength in our mates, and we may appreciate their friendly demeanor, but these are not necessarily traits that have to do with language directly, nor are these traits unique to humans.

The view of human evolution as the “survival of the wittiest” offers more explanatory power and a more comprehensive approach than does the “survival of the friendliest.”

The crucial milestone in human evolution, both linguistic and cognitive, was the emergence and entrenchment of the earliest forms of grammar, which unleashed a host of attributes that will turn out to be uniquely human, including increasingly more complex grammars and vast vocabularies, largely enabled by metaphorical extension, the flair for humor and quick-wittedness, and the means to replace physical aggression with cognitive contest.

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/3/pgag052/8559600

Cycling levels in NYC, London, Paris, and Berlin increased over the three decades prior to COVID (1990–2019). As a percentage of daily trips, bike mode share rose from 0.6% to 2.2% in New York, from 1.2% to 3.7% in London, from 0.4% to 5% in Paris, and from 7% to 18% in Berlin. Cycling rates have continued to increase since COVID. By 2023, bike mode shares had risen further to 3% in NYC, 4.5% in London, 11% in Paris, and 19% in Berlin.

Cycling became safer in all four cities over the period 2005 to 2023, with declining per-trip fatality and injury rates. More and better cycling infrastructure has been a cornerstone of pro-cycling efforts, especially cycleways separated from motor vehicle traffic (protected bike lanes).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15568318.2026.2649315#abstract

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.

Executives at their customers were saying absurd things about achieving 100x productivity, and this meant that if any executive at the vendor said that these gains were not plausible, it would undermine the credibility of the customer’s executive, be perceived as an attack (or heresy), and possibly result in an enterprise contract cancellation.

If they could all admit the truth at once there might be some hope, but there is no way to coordinate that event.

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making

Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence.

The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

It’s so brave to feel your feelings; some people live their whole lives without being able to do that.
I’m proud of you.

the Pope is the ultimate character witness for seriousness of moral purpose. The message of the visit was simple. We know this technology is consequential. We know there are moral questions here we cannot answer with code. We are taking it seriously enough to seek counsel from the institution that has thought about human dignity longer than any other. We are not reckless. We are humble.

That is the confessional cosplay elevated to its highest theatrical register.

Every significant deployment of mythos shares the same features. It operates in a domain where evidence is unavailable or inconvenient. It names things so the answer is already inside the word. Manifest. Divine. Destiny. Mythos. It requires an inside and an outside, the trusted and the untrusted, the believers and the skeptics. That is not a security policy. That is a priesthood.

https://om.co/2026/06/07/the-myth-the-mythos-and-the-man/

“I thought of the resistless passion which drives men to undertake terrific scrambles. No example can deter them . . . a peak can exercise the same irresistible power of attraction as an abyss.”

– Théophile Gautier, 1868