In a live zoom interview I talk with Ninja Everyday guys about martial arts, Ninjutsu, Bujinkan and the Army effect on my practice.

Video

Here’s a link to the original talk

Perpetrators of violence and homicide had something in common: they were young, single and didn’t have access to the kinds of resources with which to win mates. Polygynous societies in which wealthier men have access to multiple women are more violent and less stable because they have a class of young men without the prospect of getting a mate. Monogamy, rather than being the state of nature, may have been an important cultural technology for reducing violence.

Diana Fleischman writes about sex robots and connections between sexual behavior and violence. (link)

1. Widespread belief in Covid conspiracy theories. (link)
2. One quarter of USA young adults contemplated suicide during pandemic. (link)
   

1. After a steady decline from 2007 to 2013 in police registered violent crime among adolescents under the age of 18 in Oslo, the capital of Norway, the number of violent crimes increased from 259 to 499 from 2013 to 2018, an increase of 93% in five years. (Link)

1. Risk assessment is not intuitive. “There were fewer cars on the road last spring during the height of the pandemic, but traffic fatality rates increased 30% in the second quarter as evidence suggests drivers engaged in more risky behavior, federal officials say. A second NHTSA study of trauma centers found seriously injured or fatal crash victims took risks during the pandemic that included speeding, driving impaired, and not using their seat belts. For example, the study revealed a higher prevalence of alcohol, cannabinoids, and opioids in crash victims during the quarter compared to the months prior to the pandemic.” (link)
2. “It is believed to be one of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks at any fitness centre in Canada. More than 50 cases, all identified within a single week, all connected to a small, niche spinning studio in downtown Hamilton.” (link)

• The machine consists of three parts. There’s a “head,” which houses automated surgical tools and brain-scanning cameras and sensors, against which a patient situates their skull. A device first removes a portion of skull to be put back into place post-op. Then, computer vision algorithms guide a needle containing 5-micron-thick bundles of wires and insulation 6 millimeters into the brain, avoiding blood vessels. (Neuralink says the machine is technically capable of drilling to arbitrary lengths.) The wires — which measure a quarter of the diameter of a human hair (4 to 6 μm) — link to a series of electrodes at different locations and depths. At maximum capacity, the machine can insert six threads containing 192 electrodes per minute. (link)

1. chimpanzee muscle exceeds human muscle in maximum dynamic force and power output by ∼1.35 times. This is primarily due to the chimpanzee’s higher fast-twitch fiber content, rather than exceptional maximum isometric force or maximum shortening velocities. (link)
2. Depression and microbiom (link)
3. Robots can guard against humans hurting robots. (link)
   
4. Oumuamua was the first object ever seen flying into our solar system and back out again. That’s opposed to most solar system objects that turn circles around the sun, never leaving the celestial neighborhood. (link)

Very interesting and original paper on the military capabilities of Israel against Sunni and Shiite hegemonies.
As a practitioner of the mainly symbolic discipline I do, it is a good reality check.

Here’s an excerpt,

The study assesses that a Sunni military threat, either with or without Turkey, could rapidly and unexpectedly emerge. The current combined military capability of the Sunni states is relatively limited compared to that of Israel, but over the long term, Israel would likely prove unable to maintain the decisive technological superiority it now possesses versus the current Sunni militaries. In such a scenario, Israel’s current exaggerated emphasis on combat with non-state light infantry, located within urban areas, under counter-insurgency rules of engagement would combine to compromise its long-term ability to cope with a Sunni conventional combined arms threat that could arise in the future.

link (PDF)

1. Violence in New York is up….In the last 28 days (through July 12), compared to last year, shootings have more than tripled (318 vs. 97). (link)
2. How to Tell GPT-3 from a human? “The lesson here is that if you’re a judge in a Turing test, make sure you ask some nonsense questions, and see if the interviewee responds the way a human would.” (link) [not so fast, gwern shows how to circumvent this nonsense (link), also “Tempering Expectations…(link)”
3. TV and radio could command our attention the way the speaker in a classroom would, through people paying attention to what others were attending to. But we use 21st-century media in isolation. (link)
4. The human sperm flagellum rotates the cell to beat equally on all sides in 3D, not an eel-like, side to side motion. (link)
5. Warlords of the air, Sergey Brin’s Revolutionary $19 Airship. (link)

1. Creating a comprehensive (physical-internal) fitness training for the environment of a prison / small room / refugee camp.
2. Music (together with Ran Lev Ari, Yaniv Meisel, Yoni Ben Dor):
   1. Sympathetic music for fighting and practicing katas
   2. Parasympathetic music for Detant Niradin
      (After several years of focusing on the rhythm we are working on in parallel on melody, harmonies and human voice)
3. Writing a video course:
   1. Long stick
   2. Short stick
   3. Short Chain
   4. Traditional sword in the 21st century
4. Writing a full online course, for beginners Ninjutsu.
5. Completing Detant Niradin 49 video lessons for a total of 100 video lessons.
6. Ongoing Detant Niradin development (work in progress with Nir Adin)
   1. Creating an independent training core suitable for seniors using three new kata.
   2. Integration of mudra to the independent training kernel.
   3. Creating a method for personal mind-body recipes.
7. Integrating the music project for morning training
8. Continue collecting current and relevant links in the blog.
9. Editing several hundred techniques we filmed in Athens and have not yet been published
10. A dialogue with the instructors at AKBAN
11. Writing an online Detant course for instructors.
12. Continued improvement of the Akban website for knowledge (akban.org) and the Akban website for online training (akban-online.com)
13. Changing the current Detant workshop (with Micael Keren)
14. Designing and manufacturing new Kusari.
    

And of course, training and teaching. Everything is built on this.