All posts tagged: idea

Jaco Muller, who turned his son’s idea into 197 rhino births, dies

Jaco Muller, who turned his son’s idea into 197 rhino births, dies

Published by Sam Flores

By Rhett Ayers Butler, Mongabay Sept. 29, 2026 5:59 PM PT In 2022, poachers in Namibia had taken 14 white rhinos from private farms in six weeks, so farm owners started removing their horns. That can take away the incentive to hunt the animals, because poachers want the horns. One cow had a horn 34 inches long. Jaco Muller, an antelope breeder, said he was nearly in tears when it was removed. “It is such a magnificent animal,” he said at the time. “But for the animal’s sake, it is for the best.” For Muller, the sight of a dehorned rhino was preferable to finding a dead one. The idea for breeding rhinos came from his son, then 15, as a school project. In 2010, Muller converted the family’s breeding operation into what became the Rhino Momma Project in Namibia’s Kunene region. Muller believed that breeding more white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum), keeping them secure enough to reproduce, and then replenishing populations across Africa could help save the species. So he built a breeding program with …

My Brand-New Tech Idea Turned Out To Be … Socrates!

My Brand-New Tech Idea Turned Out To Be … Socrates!

Published by Jenni Sidey

There is something exciting about exploring ideas at the boundaries of computers, algorithms, and intelligence. Occasionally, you stumble upon something that feels genuinely new. For a brief moment, you get that wonderful feeling: perhaps you have seen something others have missed. There is also something deeply humbling about discovering that your brand-new idea is actually 2,400 years old. Remember the monkey? A few months ago, I wrote an article about the “monkey with a typewriter” argument that random actions can create meaningful information: give a monkey a typewriter, enough time, and enough random keystrokes, and eventually it will type out the works of Shakespeare. My problem with this argument was not, as is often assumed, the probability issue. It was the word find. Imagine that the monkey actually types Hamlet. How would the monkey know? To recognize that something has been found, there must be some criterion by which success can be distinguished from failure. If we search randomly through combinations of letters until something from Shakespeare appears, something must recognize Shakespeare’s work when it …

Roundtables: Inside the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” Idea Shaping US Policy

Roundtables: Inside the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” Idea Shaping US Policy

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Listen to the session or watch below The “censorship-industrial complex” is an idea that a network of government, tech, and research groups is collaborating to suppress conservative online speech. This was fodder for the right-wing information sphere for years—then it began making its way into US policy. Watch a conversation exploring how it started, where it’s going, and what it means for the future of democracy and the internet. Source link

Most People Have No Idea What 'PDF' Stands For, But You're About To Find Out

Most People Have No Idea What 'PDF' Stands For, But You're About To Find Out

Published by Sam Flores

!function(n){if(!window.cnx){window.cnx={},window.cnx.cmd=[];var t=n.createElement(‘iframe’);t.display=’none’,t.onload=function(){var n=t.contentWindow.document,c=n.createElement(‘script’);c.src=”//cd.connatix.com/connatix.player.js”,c.setAttribute(‘async’,’1′),c.setAttribute(‘type’,’text/javascript’),n.body.appendChild(c)},n.head.appendChild(t)}}(document);(new Image()).src=”https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=ff7fdddc-5441-4253-abc4-f12a33fad58b”;cnx.cmd.push(function(){cnx({“playerId”:”ff7fdddc-5441-4253-abc4-f12a33fad58b”,”mediaId”:”95050fa1-9cd6-40c6-9944-2dae856431f2″}).render(“6a6b4283e4b01948ae9a31c2”);}); You’ve probably sent and opened thousands of PDFs over the years. But if someone asked you right now what PDF actually stands for, would you know the answer? You’re not alone if you don’t. The word has become so embedded in everyday language that most people use it the way they use terms like “Wi-Fi” and “pm” ― automatically and without any particular thought about what the letters mean. But it’s never too late to learn the answer to that mystery, as well as the interesting history behind those three letters. (And no, it doesn’t stand for “Please Download Fast” or “Pretty Delightful File.”) “PDF stands for ‘portable document format,’ though I’m not sure anyone knows or cares anymore,” said Lisa Gitelman, a media historian and professor at New York University. “’PDF’ stands as the name of a digital file format on its own.” She has written extensively about the PDF as a cultural and technological artifact, including in her book Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents. “The keyword is ‘portable’ because …

Argentina’s Milei Borrows Warren Buffett’s Idea To Punish Deficit-Spending Politicians

Argentina’s Milei Borrows Warren Buffett’s Idea To Punish Deficit-Spending Politicians

Published by Jenni Sidey

More than two years after campaigning to “blow up” Argentina’s central bank, President Javier Milei has announced his “Fiscal Shackle” bill – a permanent rule aimed at preventing Argentina from approving or maintaining budgets with fiscal deficits that could have consequences for politicians. On Thursday, in a speech recorded at the Casa Rosada and broadcast nationwide, Milei proposed an overhaul that would restore the Central Bank of Argentina’s sole mandate of preserving the currency’s value, stop direct and indirect financing of the Treasury, provinces, and municipalities, and expose officials who violate the rules to criminal charges. “It will be considered fraud and illicit association,” he explained. Milei said this is the “most important set of structural reforms in the last 91 years,” taking the year of the Central Bank’s founding, 1935, as the starting point for that period. He argued that the central bank has functioned as “a tool for theft” and indicated that his reform proposal seeks “to put an end to the scam of counterfeiting money to finance high-level politics, whose most evident …

My 4-Year-Old Called Herself 'Fat' – And I Realised I Had No Idea What To Say

My 4-Year-Old Called Herself 'Fat' – And I Realised I Had No Idea What To Say

Published by Sam Flores

The other morning, while we were cleaning her teeth, my four-year-old declared she was “fat”. It came completely out of the blue and I was taken aback by the comment. Weight or body size isn’t something we tend to talk about in our household. I don’t comment on my body, or other people’s bodies, and we try to keep the focus on helping our become bodies strong and healthy when talking about food and activity. But despite all of that, here we were. She claimed a boy at school had said it to her the day before. All of a sudden, we were rushing to get ready and entering a conversation I felt woefully unprepared for. My mind was racing: What did it mean to her? Had she understood it as an insult? In the space of a few seconds, I realised I wasn’t just answering a question about bodies – I was trying to shape the way she might think about hers for years to come. I’ve always been naturally petite. That doesn’t mean …

Dining across the divide: ‘He mentioned the idea of 100% income tax over £350,000. I think the threshold should be lower’

Dining across the divide: ‘He mentioned the idea of 100% income tax over £350,000. I think the threshold should be lower’

Published by Sam Flores

Anna, ‘in her 40s’, Exeter Occupation Education academic at the University of Exeter Voting record Sometimes Labour, sometimes Green Amuse bouche She’s recently started writing pop songs, and got an email from BBC Introducing saying they’d just played her latest on the radio JJ, 19, Exeter Occupation Full-time medical sciences student, part-time tennis coach Voting record Lib Dem Amuse bouche He runs a free community tennis programme for all ages and abilities to aid social mobility and keep park courts free to access For starters Anna I was really excited because I’m a single parent – I don’t normally go out. It was really easy and natural, not a single awkward moment. JJ We lined up on a few social issues: she high-fived me when I told her I went to a Surfers Against Sewage protest. Anna The squid in particular was absolutely amazing. For my main, I had the Cornish market fish on beans, and for dessert I had Eton mess, which they paired with a dessert wine – and we shared a cheese board. I can’t …

EU membership is ‘worst business idea’ Iceland could have

EU membership is ‘worst business idea’ Iceland could have

Published by Sam Flores

Icelanders have been warned that joining the EU would be a “huge step away from democracy” and the “worst business idea” they could have. A referendum on whether to restart long-abandoned membership negotiations with the European Commission will be held on Aug 29. But Prof Haraldur Ólafsson, the leader of the “no” campaign in Iceland, said that Brexit served as a warning of how difficult it is to leave the EU if a country later regrets joining. He said he believed his countrymen would regret it. Iceland has its own trade and fishing policy, but is already part of the EU’s single market, and therefore a Brussels rule-taker. Further surrendering control of its fisheries, trade policy and currency to Brussels makes no sense for a small country that is dependent on imports and has an economy based on fish and natural resources, said Prof Ólafsson. He told The Telegraph his campaign’s Keep In Control motto was inspired by the Leave campaign’s Take Back Control slogan in the Brexit referendum a decade ago. “The conclusions we …

Should we ditch the idea of three meals a day?

Should we ditch the idea of three meals a day?

Published by Sam Flores

‘One of the stupidest things in an earnest but stupid school of culinary thought is that each of the three daily meals should be ‘balanced’.” So argues American food writer MFK Fisher in her 1942 book How to Cook a Wolf. She goes on: “In the first place not all people need or want three meals each day. Many of them feel better with two or one and one-half, or five.” Fisher wrote her book ostensibly as a guide on how to feed yourself pleasurably and nourishingly during a period of food shortages caused by war, but there is much in her insightful advice to inspire and provoke us today. More than 80 years later, threats to the sacred breakfast-lunch-dinner mode of eating can still make the news: “A nation of snackers: Britons no longer eat three meals a day”, gasped one recent headline in the Times. Deviations from the “standard” model are the subject of research by academics and health professionals, and food retailers commission studies in an attempt to understand (and shape?) when …

why introducing non-native species in rewilding projects can be a good idea

why introducing non-native species in rewilding projects can be a good idea

Published by Miika Tikkanen

White storks (Ciconia ciconia) are a majestic bird with a two-metre wingspan and an enormous circular nest. The recent release of these stunning birds at multiple sites in England, with more releases planned and a public consultation under way has kicked off a debate about whether non-native birds should be part of rewilding projects. The government advising body Natural England says it does not consider white storks to be native birds. But some experts disagree and say it is a native species and was hunted into extinction in the 1400s. What is a native species? In the UK, native species are those which have been present throughout the last 12,000 years. This includes migratory species which breed in or visit the UK. It also includes species which have been eradicated by humans but reintroduced. In England, a license is needed to introduce any species which is not ordinarily resident, or a regular visitor, to England. This is partly because these species could become invasive, a term used when a species cause substantial environmental or socioeconomic …