Pigeon

Describing subjective art with numbers means it’s objectively good now! No. >.<

Math, and even merely counting, as applied to the real world always has a human element intangled with it, even though people like to pretend otherwise. Like, you can’t count apples without first deciding what an apple is, where the boundaries of that category are, and declaring them all to be equivalent for your purposes (e.g. one fresh apple = one barely still edible apple). The abstraction of it adds subjectivity.

Anyway the relationship of math with music is interesting nonetheless. It just doesn’t have to be about making art objective somehow.

The article does say that, but the source paper the article links to says this in the Abstract:

Thus, we set out to mechanically render cerebral hemodynamics fully regulable to replicate or modify native pig brain perfusion. To this end, blood flow to the head was surgically separated from the systemic circulation and full extracorporeal pulsatile circulatory control (EPCC) was delivered via a modified aorta or brachiocephalic artery. This control relied on a computerized algorithm that maintained, for several hours, blood pressure, flow and pulsatility at near-native values individually measured before EPCC. Continuous electrocorticography and brain depth electrode recordings were used to evaluate brain activity relative to the standard offered by awake human electrocorticography. Under EPCC, this activity remained unaltered or minimally perturbed compared to the native circulation state, as did cerebral oxygenation, pressure, temperature and microscopic structure. Thus, our approach enables the study of neural activity and its circulatory manipulation in independence of most of the rest of the organism.

And nothing whatsoever about physically removing the brain from the body. It’s teeechnically separated from the body’s circulatory system - with the experimental, artificial connection replacing the natural one between tthe body’s circulatory system and the brain’s blood flow - but that really seems to be it.

The article is extremely misleading and only barely connected to the actual study, in short.

I’m personally gonna add Popular Mechanics to my internal list of pop sci rags that can’t be trusted.

You read about her because that’s a heck of a lot rarer and more interesting as a headline than “woman dies in car crash” or “woman dies of heart attack”.

Also sometimes trees fall on cars or houses when people are in them, too.

Edit: I am probably taking your comment far too seriously, admittedly.

Not to mention these peer review processes rely on unpaid labor from professionals who are heavily incentivized to use their time for basically anything else. They skim.

The replication crisis does not at all exclude highly regarded journals, unfortunately.

I found the abstract of the (mostly paywalled) nature paper more helpful.

This seems interesting, though so early days it’s hard to tell how practical it’ll end up being, especially since it sounds like it relies on the stressed state of the metal. If I understand right, they’re causing more cracks and in the process that’s cold welding other parts of the metal back together at the same time. And cold welding needs a vacuum, so it could be impractical in that sense too, I’d think.

Bearing in mind also this is a single study, so it remains to be seen whether the findings are replicable.

I’m interested to see where this goes.

I’ve found it notable that a lot of people have latched onto the idea of humans as endurance/persistence hunters, tracking their prey down slowly until it’s exhausted… While also entirely ignoring that women tend to do better than men in ultra-marathons (and more so the longer the ultra-marathon is).

And also how some people latch onto the idea of teamwork and communication being essential for hunting, and also decide that women are better at communication and cooperation, then fail to consider that maybe such a communication advantage might outweigh a physical advantage.

Also there can be advantages to being small in some situations, too, like for stealth, or for climbing trees, or making their way through dense brush. Or for surviving with less food and water on long journeys.

Also literally anyone in a society like that, even the least built of them, would be in better shape than the vast majority of humans from modern sedentary cultures. Including gym bros, I’d argue, because building a physique by active lifestyle (vs a few hours of targeted exercise within an overwhelmingly sedentary lifestyle) optimizes for that lifestyle in a balanced way and won’t leave you with odd weak spots (no forgetting leg day, or forgetting to work out your core, then ending up with weird aches and pains).