LET’S BE FWENDS ISSUE #45:

SLEEP TO REPAIR YOUR BRAIN

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.”

~ Homer

Sleep is a brain-repair mechanism

These are some very scientific-looking images that obviously conclusively show one thing or the other.

Theodore Roosevelt famously said: “We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.”

And it looks like your brain takes that “wearing out” part pretty seriously. Wakefulness damages the DNA of your neurons, and your chromosomes are constantly shifting to allow repair mechanisms to fix that damage. But you’re creating damage quicker than it can be repaired.

Researchers found out that during sleep, your chromosomes move twice as fast as when you’re awake,effectively doubling the repair rateof your neurons, while not incurring any new damage.

They theorise that maybe this is the real reason why we need sleep: To completely remove the damage thinking does to our brain.

But “catching up” on the weekend doesn’t work

Are you one of those people who don’t sleep enough during the work week and sleep in on weekends? You might want to reconsider this strategy, because it doesn’t work.

Who owns the lifelines of the Internet

Source: New York Times

The role of Telecommunications companies in digital technology is radically diminishing: One of the last roles they still had was being the infrastructure backbone, the “bit pipe” through which companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft would funnel their digital services to consumers.

And now the content providers are taking over the infrastructure as well.According to this New York Times report, they already own or lease more than half of all transcontinental underwater cables that move digital signals around the globe.

Meta-Pwnage

Source:MIT Technology Review

A man complains that an image of him is used without his permission in an article that says all Hipsters look alike - just to find out that it actually isn’t an image of him, but of a different Hipster wo just looks like him.

You don’t have the right to believe everything

Flat-earthers, climate-change deniers and other people who happily swipe away hundreds or thousands of years of scientific progress with a “well, I don’t think that is true”.

It’s pretty hard to debate this kind of people, not only because their world-view is pretty inconsistent (like using GPS while denying the world is a sphere), but also because this is actually pretty good advice:

“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

(This is attributed to Mark Twain, but he probably never said it. The most reliable source for it is the bible - See?I check my sources!)

And if you want to be polite, you can always invoke Hitchen’s Razor:

“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”

But even when you’re not considering arguing with someone who believes something without providing sufficient evidence for it, are they entitled to their opinion? Are you free to believe anything you want?

Probably not.

“Beliefs shape attitudes and motives, guide choices and actions. Believing and knowing are formed within an epistemic community, which also bears their effects. There is an ethic of believing, of acquiring, sustaining, and relinquishing beliefs – and that ethic both generates and limits our right to believe. If some beliefs are false, or morally repugnant, or irresponsible, some beliefs are also dangerous. And to those, we have no right.”

Daniel DeNicola

There’s malware that is specifically targeting safety systems - and it’s spreading

A new kind of cyber-attack targets and disables safety equipment of industrial plants - shutting down important safety mechanisms that can prevent catastrophic failures. Why is everyones guess, but it could be used as a stage-1 attack on a multistage attack that would ultimately destroy the targeted plant: First, remove the safety systems, then create a malfunction in the plant software itself. Boom.

And who’s responsible for the software? Most likely it’s a state-sponsored group backed by … Russia (who would have thought?)

I know you’re thinking I’m obsessed with sleep because I’m not getting enough, but I swear it’s just a coincidence! High fives for happy coincidences! 🙌