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1. |
Rapsode
05:58
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This is Baba Brinkman
Recording live from Long Island, New York
And this record is called "Rapsode"
Want you to check the method people
Of what you think you want be
Oh oh oh oh
A rapsode is like a lyrical technician
We share a common sight and seashore
There's no reason to drown for keeps
Alone oh oh oh
But not a superstar, you know
It's like a service job
Nobody paid me to write this
Only track on the record that wasn’t a paid assignment
And that makes me delighted, major alignment
I say what I like, but the topic, I let the patron decide it
Only proper, when they spent the paper to hype it
Like a private investigator, you can pay me to dive in
But never dictate what I’m writin’, I can claim it as mine then
Rapsode, with the vocational rhymin’
Occasional versification, that’s my livin’
I can’t work a 9-to-5, I’m purpose-driven
Skills never rusty, college credits dusty
But the reach of the music is down to the algorithm
Shout out to the slept-on rappers blazin’ verses
Major wordsmiths workin’ bars and table service
Flow so crazy but never get paid for verses
A vast, unappreciated labor surplus
And yeah they can hustle, embrace that struggle
The pipeline is leaky but they see Drake and covet
21 Savage and Travis Scott make them hungry
Crabs in a bottomless bucket facing upwards
Facin’ math lottery-level-bad, but it’s all for the art
Walk-ons and extras, we all play a part
Workin’ actors hit auditions, it’s tough to get started
But workin’ rappers don’t exist in this market
Just artists decades into the skill-build
Who find the grind still doesn’t pay real bills
Knowin’ the road is rocky and steep uphill
Doesn’t make that feel like less of a raw deal
I can relate, ‘cause I’m another one and the same
Always figured one day I’d Roc-A-Fella my name
But I never been the type to get jealous of fame
Instead I figured a pivot and reinvented the game
And became a Rapsode, embraced the public service
Scientifically informative when I’m bustin’ verses
Something of a rapper and something of a journalist
A cross between Biggie Smalls and Copernicus
Mappin’ a clear path out of a lyrical trap
Rational actor, check the rearview and adapt
Causin’ a misconception near you to collapse
Scientific collabs on peer-reviewed raps
A useful application of a rapper’s abilities
Abilities accumulated by practicing diligently
In the pursuit of celebrity, frustrated eventually
And then applied flexibly to a different niche
Not the niche of the typical music industry
Sex symbols and singles and status signaling
Jingles and jiggling, appetite tickling
In the pursuit of followers and profitability
A lot of songs really speak on the same topics
But I’m not gonna judge, ‘cause yup, the motive is profit
And rappers are good at giving the fans what they wanted
The lowest common denominator path to the top
To get them to stream it and cop it, that aspirational
Motivational music to climb a ladder and chase a goal
Olympic podium music about takin’ gold
And makin’ the competition pay respect to the throne
And that’s dope, but limiting, returns are diminishing
Rapsode life, where status isn’t everything
This art form is capable of encompassing anything
If incentives are disconnected from mass-distributing
So change the incentives, embrace reinvention
Fossil fuel is just one way of crankin’ engines
Imagine a rap game where the rappers make sense of
A thousand diverse topics, and get paid for their efforts
Under the renaissance patronage system, it seems backwards
But it takes a Medici to make a Sistine Chapel
Commission a Michelangelo, pick an issue to tackle
Suggest the back-up sources and leave the rest to the rapper
And watch as the ceiling is painted, that feeling’s amazing
The scene may not go on to become exceedingly famous
But you can always be part of the means of its making
And stories today are better than biblical scenes of creation
I’m talkin’ scientific discoveries that are changing
The way we perceive creatures in nature
Energy generation, DNA, technology and it’s major
And people hang in the balance of each innovation
It needs interpretation, a storytelling medium
Beats, rhymes, and life science to break the tedium
A distribution platform on digital media
And a trained labor force, if we can give the means to them
Three consecutive records of custom raps
Original tracks I got the privilege to craft
Why? ‘Cause I liked the topic, and someone asked
And rap is a business, they budgeted for the task
How fun is that? In the midst of a major disturbance
The pandemic had me in a cage never workin’
At the peak of a labor surplus I made that swerve and
Transformed the rap game into a service
A useful service in which rap pays
A middle class wage, let’s erect that stage
Quit the day jobs, and spit mad flames
And drop whole records that Event Rap made
That’s the album intro, the passion and vision
That’s the manifesto, now it has to deliver
For the Rapsodes, makin’ the raps on commission
So check the method, just play this album and listen
Listen to thirtreen original tracks
All paid commissions
Made on assignment
Want you to check the method people
Of what you think you want be
Oh oh oh oh
Now I get it
If you're Drake, that is not cool
We share a common sight and seashore
There's no reason to drown for keeps
Alone
But then again, if you get paid to do what you love
There's gotta be intermediate definitions of cool
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2. |
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Palindrome in the genome
CRISPR on the beats
With the PAM on the jam
So it knows where to cleave
Protospacer Adjacent Motifs
In the genome
CRISPR on the beats
Palindrome, I REFER to a sequence repeated
From the back to the front: NEVER ODD OR EVEN
Or when ACGTTACC
Matches GGTAACGT
From the back to the front like a mirror
CRISPR is the zipper, Cas-9 is the shearer
With no error, ARE WE NOT DRAWN ONWARD
WE FEW, DRAWN ONWARD TO NEW ERA?
The CRISPR era, yo, I hope it goes well
I know it will now that MADAM Emanuelle
Charpentier is known for genome skills
With Jennifer Doudna, they hold the Nobel
DEIFIED in the SAGAS of the public EYE
On the RADAR of science, they RACECAR drive
And IF I HAD A HIFI, I’d wanna ride
To the vibe of CRISPR Cas-9
‘Cause I, MAN, A GROSS ORGAN AM I
DRAB AS A FOOL, ALOOF AS A BARD
Ready to BORROW OR ROB any rhyme
From a lab to LEVEL up my lines…
Palindrome in the genome
CRISPR on the beats
With the PAM on the jam
So it knows where to cleave
Proto-spacer Adjacent Motifs
With the Cas-9 enzyme
Snip those genes
Palindrome
In the genome, don’t sleep
On the Clustered Regularly
Interspersed Short
Palindromic Repeats
In the genome
CRISPR on the beat
Palindromes on the brain, like WOW and YAY
Every TESTSET gets better STATS every day
My daughter’s name is HANNAH and when she’s my age
We’re gonna treat brain disease with guide RNA
The CRISPR Cas-9 way, that’s the REVIVER
Bacteria first evolved it to fight a virus
But now it’s at the forefront of cutting-edge science
For Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s
When a braincell firing has a protein intervening
You can see the genes involved – CRISPR screening
You can even light them up, it’s not a GAG
Fit the proteins with bioluminescent tags
To make them POP, and you can LOL, cool
But can you make a CRISPR knockout cell pool?
To study Huntington’s disease with repeats
In HTT genes, too many CAGs!
Don’t get annoyed, past generations didn’t get a choice
To grow pluripotent stem cell organoids
But thanks to CRISPR Cas-9 we’re now poised
To shed a little light as we stare into the void
Like an OOZY RAT IN A SANITARY ZOO
WON’T LOVERS REVOLT NOW and get a room?
Get a lab and test whether each TENET’s true
SO MANY DYNAMOS in this field of view
So this goes out to the whole CRISPR Cas-9 crew…
Palindrome in the genome
CRISPR on the beats
With the PAM on the jam
So it knows where to cleave
Proto-spacer Adjacent Motifs
With the Cas-9 enzyme
Snip those genes
Palindrome
In the genome, don’t sleep
On the Clustered Regularly
Interspersed Short
Palindromic Repeats
In the genome
CRISPR on the beat
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3. |
Exponential
03:53
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Exponential evolution of info
Don’t call this intelligence artificial
Algorithmical, just let the tech go
Separate the noise from the signal
The first artificial intelligence movement
Started with billions of years of evolution
Cells reproducing, mutations screw things
Up in interesting ways, mostly useless
Random isn’t usually a path to improvement
Scramble a plan and chance is you ruin it
With one in a million or two fit to boost it
Natural selection infused the flukes in
It seems smart but it’s not
Blind watchmaker fit the parts in a clock
From a poison dart frog to aardvark to hawk
Keep whatever works and discard what does not
And one of its designs was an organ
A navigator and a calculator of fortune
With a hippocampus, a cerebellum and a cortex
Intelligence as a performance
Exponential evolution of info
Don’t call this intelligence artificial
Algorithmical, just let the tech go
Separate the noise from the signal
Exponential evolution of info
Invisible solutions get exposed
Technophobes watch the benefits flow
Noise to the signal, let’s go
Surrounding every organism is affordances
Opportunities and threats you can avoid if you’re quick
Brains evolved to discover and exploit them
That’s how a living thing flourishes
Affordances, discover the better moves
Diamonds in the rough, find the hidden jewels
To get calories spending minimal joules
Game-changing culture, upgrade the tools
Make the rules transcend the person
A fix on a fix, infinite recursion
From a skin to a pen to a tablet surface
To a microchip computational learning
Interconnectable neural networks
Engaging in a vast unsupervised search
Of a dataset, fine-tune in some quirks
Now hit it with a prime and find if it works
Exponential evolution of info,
Don’t call this intelligence artificial
Algorithmical, just let the tech go
Separate the noise from the signal
Exponential evolution of info
Invisible solutions get exposed
Let the benefits flow to the technophobes
Noise from the signal, let’s go
Affordances around us, evolution found some
By stumbling around with its limited powers
And now networks do the same but they’re boundless
Algorithmically extending outwards
Agents endowed with basic drives
Pattern recognition from people to AIs
Chat CPT-3 look me in the eyes
And explain everything human beings can surmise
And eventually, the network’s gonna be
Programmed to read data sets contextually
With any piece of information fetched for me
Cyborg with machines workin’ next to me
Intelligence finds solutions to problems
Clockin’ odds when opportunity’s knockin’
A process, all in the consequences
So bring in the chips to augment us
Exponential evolution of info,
Don’t call this intelligence artificial
Algorithmical, just let the tech go
Separate the noise from the signal
Exponential evolution of info
Invisible solutions get exposed
Let the benefits flow to the technophobes
Noise from the signal, let’s go
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4. |
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I’m human, alive on this planet rock
Chip off the old block, primate, mammal stock
Natural-born chatterbox, lookin’ back at our
Path to the top, it started in Africa
Home of our bonobo and chimpanzee cousins
Where OG fossil hominins keep being discovered
Seven million years is a lean budget
From knuckle-draggin' to supreme niche-construction
But we did it, bipedalism, we leaned in
Naturally-selected the genes in
Increased the cerebrum
Human Accelerated Regions
And yes I confess, some interbreeding
Bringin’ dead hominins back to life
I’m at least 3% Neanderthal, ask my wife
She knows, got the genomes to bring it home
Plus Denisovan from a tooth and a finger bone
And that’s enough to see populations today with
8% Denisovan sequences in their bases
Homo sapiens, the last representatives
No mo’ erectuses or floresiensises
Poor little Hobbits, never made it out the Shire
So why did we thrive while the rest expired?
Was it tools or babysitters or language or fire?
Anthropogeny testify!
How does a human originate?
I mean our form and our shape
And also how we behave
What’s a human?
Just an altered ape
With some new adaptations
A few novel traits
And solutions
We can pass innovations
From brain to brain
We can stand up and say
I’m human…
I’m human, I can run an impala down
Marathon-style, heat stroke stall it out
Home base, lock it down on solid ground
Every time I range I got a new saga to talk about
He said, she said, food up in the creek bed
Ambush, he’s dead, killer had three friends
Reputation in pieces needs redress
Pay the blood price and hit the reset
Every thesis tries to explain it all away
Technological ape, stoned ape, aquatic ape
As if it all came from one small trait
Instead of generations of selection on lots of traits
Controlling fire, shrunken-down molar size
Brain capacity explodes at the same time
Social dynamic leaps, novel calories
Gracilization leaves bones atrophied
No longer fighting for mates like wild horses
Sexually dimorphic in decreasing proportions
Co-evolutionary culture-gene forces
On the walls of a cave, paint a portrait
Of a human
And how we originate
I mean our form and our shape
And also how we behave
What’s a human?
Just an altered ape
With some new adaptations
A few novel traits
And solutions
We can pass innovations
From brain to brain
We can stand up and say
I’m human…
I’m human, prone to teleology
"Everything has a purpose" default psychology
But Anthropogeny is a field, not a faith
So it’s got a base in biology
All you need is mutation and selection
Blind watchmaker-style
Evolution of the only upright ape in town
Scientific method, hypothesize, test it
And if the evidence finds different then take it down
No magic leaps allowed, just different threads
From the genes in our cells to the brain in our heads
From the ways we get fed to the mates in our beds
To the threats that we face, we can make it make sense
Charles Darwin said it: “Light will be thrown"
On human origins and despite what we know
The list of what we don’t is quite formidable
So launch the scientific probes
Into the roots of humans
And how we originate
I mean our form and our shape
And also how we behave
What’s a human?
Just an altered ape
With some new adaptations
A few novel traits
And solutions, we can pass
Innovations from brain to brain
We can stand up and say
I’m human
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5. |
Cards on the Table
04:03
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All right, cards on the table
Let’s go… let’s show
What up bird, how you know how to nest-build?
How to find a mate and food, and when to just chill?
It’s like your brain has evolved to behave
In a way that translates into hatched eggs
And that’s great, pass those genes on
Natural selection, yup, that old theme song
The tune you march to, from tuna to shark tooth
Darwin's tune, beaver to carp to moose
But not you, sitting on a barstool
Coveting a cool car at a liberal arts school?
Not you? Your brain is made of what? Stardust?
Sawdust? No biology in your startup?
Not true? Why? ‘Cause you don’t want it to be true
That the center of the universe is not you
Cards on the tabletop, y’all, it's all true
You have a brain that evolved as a kluge
No plan, no endgame, just a huge
Box of neurological tools, what they all do?!
Call it a “module” a “circuit” or “proclivity"
Every tool makes us behave species-typically
Put your cards on the table if you wanna play
Primates with evolved brains
I put mine on the table all the time
Adapted mind in the spotlight
Put your cards down now show us your hand
Make no claims without evidence
Cards on the table, let’s go!
Place bets on what the next card’s gonna show
Take a jar out of the fridge with rust
On the rim, give the lid a twist… puff
Listen to the hiss, ugh, give it a sniff, bleugh
What you’re feelin’ is commonly known as ‘disgust’
Evolved to prevent the vectors of pathogens
From coming in contact with our skin
In the world that our ancestors inhabited
Disgust was useful and adaptive
So what evokes it? What’s the process?
What’s the neural activation of grossness?
How does a trigger get molded by culture?
And does it predict how political votes work?
Can disgust make you xenophobic?
And only wanna be social with your own kin?
Which genes in developmental growth sets
A human brain up with this emotion?
Put your cards on the table if you wanna play
Primates with evolved brains
I put mine on the table all the time
Adapted mind in the spotlight
Put your cards down now show us your hand
Make no claims without evidence
Cards on the table, let’s go!
Place bets on what the next card’s gonna show
Evolved Psychological Adaptations
Let me just break that down to the basics
Foraging optimization, depression when fruitless
Success brings euphoric moods in
Color vision, hunger, incest avoidance
Nausea after ingesting poisons
Preferences for symmetrical faces
Anti-predator directed gazes
EPAs, wariness around snakes
Willingness to risk physical pain
Males and females having different ways
Of assessing traits when selecting mates
If only there existed a digital space
Where the data sets could collect in one place!
Edited by experts who investigate
Each respective scientific evidence-base
Is it an adaptation? What’s the case against?
Every genetic, theoretic, and brain scan test
Updated and aggregated and then fed
Into a dossier of human nature’s bits
Put your cards on the table if you wanna play
Primates with evolved brains
I put mine on the table all the time
Adapted mind in the spotlight
Put your cards down now show us your hand
Make no claims without evidence
Cards on the table, let’s go!
Place bets on what the next card’s gonna show
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6. |
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Control system design
All the same tricks of the mind
If my furnace and my thermostat is actin’ erratic
I’ma ask a mechanic to fix it, that has understanding
Of the mechanistic interactions of every part in the whole
And the specific system failure that lost me control
And if my mood is erratic and catchin’ the blues is a habit
And minor triggers seem to move me to panic, I'ma do Psychiatric
Assessment, and if they label it a “major depression”
I’ma conversate with clinicians, and maybe take a prescription
To correct that “chemical imbalance” between my ears
But what I really wanna hear is control system engineers
Explain the tradeoffs built into designing race cars
If you want them to go faster, they’re gonna have to break lots
When they fly off the track. What kind of design flaw is that?
Not a flaw, just a compromise between safe and fast
Control system design, identify the central target
The homeostatic optimum the system is benchmarkin'
Every cell in my body’s got a sense of its margins
A hundred thousand mini control systems in every organ
Quick responses, pushin’ the gains out of the pockets
Positive feedback loops, so easy to overshoot
From blood pressure to temperature, glucose to mood
The optimum depends on what’s been poppin’ with you
What did you eat? What did you see? How far did you run? What did you do?
I’ma get back in the groove when the situation improves
Control system design
Keep it all inside the borderlines
You know them by their polar sides
All the same tricks of the mind
Control system design
Keep it all inside the borderlines
You know them by their polar sides
All the same tricks of the mind
I want to talk to the original design engineer
That put my brain and body together, this arrangement is weird
I’m not talkin’ about a non-existent god with a beard
I’m talkin’ Darwinian selection over millions of years
Each organism adapting to environmental stress
Optimizing behavior to its situational best
And not for the purpose of living life healthy and blessed
The ultimate target was always raw genetic success
Threat assessment, anxiety rises, and that’s adaptive
Even if a threat is imagined, false negatives are disasters
The trigger is tracking an average fitness maximum
With redundancies overlapping, robust is better than accurate
Anxiety and depression, are they diseases or symptoms?
Like physical pain, it depends on the day, depends on the triggers
Relationships catching damage, frustrated ambitions
And trauma, and mismatches from ancient to modern living
Some people have a genetic predisposition to mood swings
It’s not surprising that evolution can’t do some things
Like eliminate all the mutations that cause harm
And protect a modern day brain from false alarms
Natural selection made control systems to keep track
That are naturally fragile to swings of positive feedback
From surges of confidence to falling deep in a morass
Find the high spots in the swamp to creep back
Control system design
Keep it all inside the borderlines
You know them by their polar sides
All the same old tricks of the mind
Control system design
Keep it all inside the borderlines
You know them by their polar sides
All the same old tricks of the mind
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7. |
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Social contagion
Somebody wins and somebody fails
We try to make sense of it, hmm, by referencing effort and skills
But what if a company’s future and every benefit that it yields
Depends on effects bigger than anyone’s individual selves
Social contagion!
Like the propagation of pathogens
All it takes is a few contagious travelers rambling
Between insular villages, and the rate of transmission averages
And everyone catches it on Facebook in a chain reaction
Topographically map it, track the diffusion dynamic
Use it to plant a seed of activism, or spread confusion and panic
Social contagion in a language-using mammal
A social primate with a super-talent for groupish habits
Take a deep dive, seek and you’ll find, infection typically thrives
On the proliferation of acquaintances known as “weak ties”
It’s a small world after all, a meeting of minds
With slow motion fact-checkers chasing after fleet lies
Deep ties are relatively rare, relatives who care
Best friends who share everything, conventional fare
Until a social contagion appears, proliferating sources
More than exposure to one fanatical neighbor’s endorsement
A complex contagion, spreading from multiple nodes
Seven touches from seven individuals someones’ attentional flow
When the chance of infection is more than zero but less than one
It takes a proliferation of contacts to get it done
Social contagion
Buildin’ a digital network
Full of individual vectors
Infectin’ the rest of the herd
Contagion
Threats and benefits emerge
Forget about makin’ an effort
Just let the net work
Social contagion
Influencers and connectors
Transmission success turns
On network architecture
Contagion
When complexity surges
Forget about makin’ an effort
Just let the net work
Social contagion
Social contagion, I’m just friending and unfriending
I’m just checking what’s trending, posting and contending
Forget about the privacy policy, I’m consenting
Every legacy system, disruption is upending
Trackin’ the digits, big data systems, big business
Network density algorithms measure resistance
Nodes of influence at the center of social connections
With extra bridges, just don’t forget to measure the bridge width
Social contagion, it affects our spending habits
Our body mass indexes, emotions and finances
Social ties matter, their motions are so dynamic
Which businesses are now in the business of trying to capture
The Network Effect: the more connections collect
The more benefits and perks every single participant gets
When the best converge, it triggers a surge of interest (imagen edificios con luz)
Whenever the party’s poppin’ success breeds success
An arms race for attention, a contagious infection
Forget if it makes us anxious and raises rates of depression
Shareholders want quarterly profits, they can eject an
Ethically-conflicted executive, who raises objections
Social contagion! Welcome to the new society
Where information is moving virally through the wiring
And you can find a network that’ll move you to violence
Or one that you can thrive in, so choose wisely
Social contagion
Buildin’ a digital network
Full of individual vectors
Infectin’ the rest of the herd
Contagion
Threats and benefits emerge
Forget about makin’ an effort
Just let the net work
Social contagion
Influencers and connectors
Transmission success turns
On network architecture
Contagion
When complexity surges
Forget about makin’ an effort
Just let the net work
Social contagion
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8. |
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Experiments on experimental findings
The Science of Science
So many scientific studies
So many obstacles to getting published
So many trends, you can split it or lump it
Develop the status quo or disrupt it
And if you wanna be disruptive
Then get a smaller team with fewer incumbents
‘Cause it was all a dream, Biggie Smalls, it was all a gleam
In the eyes of a novice chasin’ a novelty
A temporal cluster with a high degree
Of citation impact, that’s a hot streak
When the best in the h-index comes next
To the next best, it’s the peak of success
With the rest back low, that’s a fresh plateau
But the Q-factor can still express that though
When a study getting cited is a dice throw
Q-factor is consistent highs or lows
For an individual, plus every next move
Could be the best yet, random impact rule
So keep it movin' – never let the stress impact you
Your biggest hit could be the next you do
Every study ever published, line it up
To data mine it for signals hiding
Experiments on experimental findings
The Science of Science
Don’t get excited
Just check the impact, which get cited?
A meta-study of a meta-study
Double-blinded
The Science of Science
So many scientific studies
So many changes in the way they get conducted
Co-authorship in the hundreds and bigger budgets
Big data sets on the means of production
58 million scientific papers
Less than half will ever get a citation
Just a few hit-makers get the platinum sales
Power law distribution, it’s fat-tailed
Preferential attachment, the rich get richest
Scientific publications in a competition
For citation acquisition, in different positions
Plus with intrinsic fitness characteristics
The fitness parameter, witness the stamina
Mix vintage with bleeding edge to get the maximum
Fitness impact, references get stacked
Every paper follows a specific citation path
Like a rap track, it gets released and you see
An immediate peak, plus some longevity
Some achieve street credibility, but the rest
Fall through the cracks like a null result test
Papers left in the desk drawer, gotta explore
Pre-register more, and forget the rewards
Take a risky bet, and if it’s a wrong turn
Don’t forget, failure just makes you stronger
Every study ever published, line it up
To data mine for signals hiding
Experiments on experimental findings
The Science of Science
Don’t get excited
Just check the impact, which get cited?
A meta-study of a meta-study
Double-blinded
The Science of Science
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9. |
||||
Cold fusion, here we go, take two
Spread the great news, it’s a miracle breakthrough!
Anomalous heat, we can stimulate new
Fusion reactions in a solid state too!
Wait… you… say it doesn’t replicate?
Despite the ten million Google investment stake?
Revisit the Cold Case of Cold Fusion
No excess heat detected is the conclusion
Okay, so back to exile?
Perpetual motion machine jokes, refresh now
USPTO – still kept out
Back to the old reputational death count
But… there might be something in it
A possible fusion rate-boosting mechanism
Recent advancements in calorimetrics
From pathological science to rational optimism
Just imagine, the theories abound
It’s been shunned like a too-spooky burial ground
Scooby Doo and the gang need to come figure it out
And set that one reference experiment down
Cold fusion
Some call it a myth
Cold fusion
And say it doesn’t exist
Cold fusion
Like Fleischmann and Pons
Anomalous heat
Measure twice and it’s gone
Cold fusion
But if you want it to work
Cold fusion
Invest in research
From the old fusion
To what lies beyond
Cold Fusion Renaissance
Cold Fusion, renaissance, rebirth
Back from the dead, with persistent research
‘Cause greenhouse earth really needs it to work
So let’s take a look at some features
First of all, yeah we know fusion happens
It’s a nuclear reaction of atoms up in the plasma
When it’s done right, with sufficient confinement time
Temperature and plasma density, it’s like sunlight
But that’s too hot – too under pressure
Maybe fusion can trigger in unusual conditions
So cue the experiments to fuse it into helium
Bombarding palladium with pulses of deuterium
The theory is empirically testable, we tested it
And so far there’s… less than compelling evidence
But maybe we just haven’t hit the threshold to trigger it
And hey, you can never prove a negative
Cold fusion
Some call it a myth
Cold fusion
And say it doesn’t exist
Cold fusion
Like Fleischmann and Pons
Anomalous heat
Measure twice and it’s gone
Cold fusion
But if you want it to work
Cold fusion
Invest in research
From the old fusion
To what lies beyond
Cold Fusion Renaissance
Cold fusion, Solid State Atomic
Fusion Energy, the race is upon us
With startups and academic departments and state bodies
Like ARPA-E betting their reputation on it
Google did it and so did the EU
Made that HERMES move, hands up like “me too!”
And NASA’s even moving into massive alignment
With that deuterated erbium in lattice confinement
Ooh, it’s that cold fusion renaissance
First nobody wants to touch it, and then it pops
Getting props from the Department of Defense
At the Naval Service Center up in Indian Head
And they don’t give a deuteron about the controversy
Is it proven or not!? I guess we’re all gonna see
And that debate is shooting off some anomalous heat
So cool it off and focus on the receipts
No more secret findings, just peer review
Independent replication of it in a year or two
As post docs start to see it as a career move
And if you never gave up on it, cheers to you
Cold fusion
Some call it a myth
Cold fusion
And say it doesn’t exist
Cold fusion
Like Fleischmann and Pons
Anomalous heat
Measure twice and it’s gone
Cold fusion
But if you want it to work
Cold fusion
Invest in research
From the old fusion
To what lies beyond
Cold Fusion Renaissance
|
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10. |
||||
As the fossils burn
And the tables turn
Remember
You must LENR
Who you callin’ low energy?!
Nuclear reactions in a metal beam
Packed with deuterated fuel at a density
A billion times what a tokamak has ever seen
In a solid state, a metal lattice
With individual atoms stacked in grid patterns
And that’s where fusion events happen
Contents under pressure, electrostatic
Force of two positive charges, two nuclei
Pushin’ apart hard, that’s what you usually find
Pushback, like the attitudes of science
To cold fusion findings since 1989
Crazy times call for crazy moonshots too
And this isn’t ’89 it’s 2022
And science is about finding out something new,
So what you gonna do? Quit, or tunnel through?
Get up and dust off when you get stepped on
And screen out the charge with metal lattice electrons
And press on, until a deuteron strips off
This is L-E-N-R hip-hop
This goes out to
Anomalous Results
To the cracks
In the vaults
This goes out to the
Oddballs
Under pressure from
The platinum walls
This goes out
To the holdouts
Revenge of the nerds
As the fossils burn
And the tables turn
Remember
You must LENR
Don’t tell the doyens of science
But we got research teams workin’ overtime
They know the field and they know the signs
Some experiments have a slow loading time
Italy, America, India, Japan
Anomalous heat gets detected in scans
Check the fusion events at NASA Glenn
Look around, there’s something happenin’
Call it a moment, but never call it a waste
Of effort – don’t you know what all of them chase?!
A source of energy that’s so cheap and so safe
That fossil fuel generation all gets replaced
Start small, and later put it on an escalator
Scale it from a basic application to a generator
To a whole civilization, potential major
Remember solar panels only on a calculator?
Hold on, how much energy is in a photon?
Enough for the whole draw? Bet the whole farm?
And how much energy is in a nuclear bond?
Unlock it and that’s a whole new dawn
This goes out to
Anomalous Results
To the cracks
In the vaults
This goes out to the
Oddballs
Under pressure from
The platinum walls
This goes out
To the holdouts
Revenge of the nerds
As the fossils burn
And the tables turn
Remember
You must LENR
And hey, to the Negative Nancies
Exponential growth isn’t inevitably ‘cancer’
Abundance and better living standards
Within reach if we can take ‘yes’ for an answer
Vision-lackers try to set us backwards
With cynical attacks directed at vision-havers
And meanwhile, the greenhouse gasses
Keep building up with no emission-standards
What’s the planners’ plan to skirt the crash?
In this catastrophic planetary circumstance
With the heat trajectory on a vertical track
And a few years left to avert the worst path
Just let the time go by? And don’t try
To crack the hydrated palladium goldmine?
No science allowed outside the bold lines
However small, safe, cold, or LoFi?
But the dream won’t die, so let it grow
Energy needs to be free, that’s the end goal
No more autocratic oil, and let’s end coal
L-E-N-R Let’s go!
This goes out to
Anomalous Results
To the cracks
In the vaults
This goes out to the
Oddballs
Under pressure from
The platinum walls
This goes out
To the holdouts
Revenge of the nerds
As the fossils burn
And the tables turn
Remember
You must LENR
|
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11. |
||||
Cut emissions
Unsexy
The climate is changing baby
And that is not a sexy topic
Fossil fuel wrapping us
In emissions of carbon
Like the planet’s insulated
No joke, no special gimmick
Just set a target and hit it
Get your crib retrofitted
Buildings are 40% of emissions
And 90% of the ones that we live in
Today are gonna be with us
After 2050
So get them insulated
Talk to the council, talk to the landlord
Vote for the politicians who want to
Invest in it and plan for it
Wrap an apartment building in a jacket
Fit it with a heat pump
Pre-fabbin’ the package in a factory
EnergieSprong
Insulated
If you need funds, look to the subsidies
Private investors are buzzing
That people can pay for it monthly
Emission cuts, if your city is with it
Then back your city up
If the cuts are big enough
Like Ithaca, Ithaca, Ithaca
Ithaca, Ithaca, Itha…
Gotta insulate it
Retrofit it, retrofit it
Gotta insulate it
Let’s go get it, let’s go get it
Gotta insulate it
Cut emissions, cut emissions
Gotta insulate it
Unsexy, unsexy
Gotta insulate it
You energy wastin’ bastards
Your furnace is up your walls are thin
And the glaciers are all collapsin’
We know what’s makin’ it happen
And we know what’s needed to stop it
And we all just want to help
As long as it doesn’t affect our wallets
Insulated
‘Cause none of us feelin’ the impact
Read up on it academically
Middle class life intact
And really, this is a policy issue
And if you get sad then you all need a tissue
But in the meantime, I’m livin’ blissful
‘Cause my crib is insulated
It’s nice
In the wintertime outside is ice
Snow be makin’ the whole street
Look like a wedding cake
Outside is white
Inside, I’m just fine, I’m toasty
Temperature all that, I’m boasting
Comedy Central, Martha Stewart
I’m roasting, coasting
From Boulder to Pagosa Springs
Colorado to Kinshasa, Congo
All around the world
Let’s go!
Gotta insulate it
Retrofit it, retrofit it
Gotta insulate it
Let’s go get it, let’s go get it
Gotta insulate it
Cut emissions, cut emissions
Gotta insulate it
Unsexy, unsexy
Gotta insulate it
Yeah
What a weird topic to rap about
But hey, we’re here, just one atmosphere
There ain’t no backin’ out
So get your crib retrofitted
Yeah, give it a wrap around
And get that energy transfer
Up the standards of Passive House
And Retrofit NY
And every city from here to Dubai
Either get with the emission reductions
Or hey, we’re all gonna die
So listen, Insulate Britain
Blockin’ the M25, I’m proud of you
People are dying around you
In homes with low R-Value
That R is Thermal Resistance
Each of us makes internal decisions
Whether to look away and give in
Or fully resist that pull of indifference
And it feels distant, I get it
Insulated from its effects
But every passing minute
You’re insulated less
So you gotta insulate it
Retrofit it, retrofit it
Gotta insulate it
Let’s go get it, let’s go get it
Gotta insulate it
Cut emissions, cut emissions
Gotta insulate it
Unsexy, unsexy
Gotta insulate it
Get your crib retrofitted
Gotta insulate it
Let's go get it, let's go get it
Gotta insulate it
Cut emissions, cut emissions
Gotta insulate it
Unsexy, unsexy
Repetition, repetition
Get your crib retrofitted
Let's go get it
Repetition, repetition
Unsexy, unsexy
|
||||
12. |
||||
Targeted pressure
Carbon is hard to sequester
Marshall Plan
All in together
Targeted Pressure ‘cause we been burnin’ that
Petrochemical fuel, crankin’ up the global thermostat
And yup, take a bus, take a bike, take a bite of a veggie dog
That’s just turning the heat up a little bit slower, instead of off
Clean the skies of carbon dioxide
That’s the needle-in-a-haystack that we need to find
‘Cause emissions are way too high to just mitigate
It’s a race to eliminate pollution before it obliterates
I try to be neutral, a non-partisan pupil of all
The solutions across the whole field of carbon removal
When lockin’ molecules in, it’s all about the minutia
So put them all up on the same stage – Lalapalooza
Get the natural carbon sinks in the jam
Nature’s way, baby, CO2 goes into the land
With reforestation, capturing it in the plants
Photosynthetic oxygenation and biomass
Raise a higher bar, measuring every forest fire scar
Remote sensing the carbon density with LIDAR
Trackin’ nature-based solutions is a fine art
From kelp and algae to coastal blue carbon to biochar
To the farm with the cover crops, regenerative ag
A bit less of a drag, got the decades in the bag
Climate change is now, we don’t have centuries to act
Buy time with the vertical stacks to roll it back
With that…
Targeted pressure
Global warming is relentless
Parts per million
Have gotta be lesser
Targeted pressure
Carbon is hard to sequester
Quality tested
Gigatons are the measure
Targeted pressure
Buy from a market of sellers
Offsets and credits
Negative carbon emissions
Targeted pressure
Marshal the effort
Marshall Plan
All in together
Targeted pressure – shout out the engineers
The architecture for direct capture from air
Not geo-engineering, just carbon engineering
Local factories that clean up the air, them we’re cheering
To bring the cost down per ton of carbon we can lock down
We got it now, it’s impounded in solid rock, underground
The transition to low carbon technology’s sound
But that’s just the floor, the goal is unlimited drawdown
Ssshh, the carbon is resting, it met with the targeted pressure
It met with the force of a hydraulic garbage compressor
It met with the force of global economic incentives
The force of a thousand startups finding investors
The market is dextrous, it doesn’t play favorites
It just pushes the price down, incentivizing innovations
I’m not talking about the greenwashing day-traders
Upselling credits, I’m talkin’ cost of containment
Direct capture to nature, replanting all the trees
To carbon mineralization, sprinkle the olivine
Economies of scale, and next-gen technologies
Constantly increasing durability and quality
Carbon removal, this is just the start of the movement
The gold rush is coming, call the AirMiners to suit up
In the time of CRISPR-Cas9 and quantum computing
We can make a moonshot out of carbon pollution
With the…
Targeted pressure
Global warming is relentless
Parts per million
Have gotta be lesser
Targeted pressure
Carbon is hard to sequester
Quality tested
Gigatons are the measure
Targeted pressure
Buy from a market of sellers
Offsets and credits
Negative carbon emissions
Targeted pressure
Marshal the effort
Marshall Plan
All in together
|
||||
13. |
||||
Offsetters
If the idea that you can simply
invest a little money and make
your carbon footprint disappear,
that’s because carbon offsets are bullsh…
Bad credits. Bad credits
Making-offsetters-look-bad credits
Like we never had them vetted
Scam credits
No-standard-having credits
Like we don’t know what a ‘carbon asset’ is
So let me break it down, climate change is now
Fossil fuel is what the planet is phasing out
Slowly, transforming glacier-style
Too slow to stop glacier melt
This is just an introduction to emission reduction
Supply chain, every link in production
Get rid of your combustion addiction
Give it up and mitigate the destruction
While still evading bankruptcy
Keeping your business open with emissions low
Is critical, what’s left in the mix is ‘residual’
The most expensive and difficult emissions
Offsets can help get rid of those
A bridge from low emissions to no emissions has to be
Based on the principle of ‘additionality’
Taking carbon from the atmosphere for a fee
Makin’ happen what would never happen for free
Offsetters
Makin’ amends
For carbon emissions
Offsetters
Takin’ pollution away
And just makin’ it
All better
Offsetters
Sale of indulgences
Pay for the privilege
Y’all sinners
Offsetters
Bad credits, bad credits
Improperly-vetted scam credits
Makin’ the cynical apathetic
Makin’ offsets look like a theatrical premise
At best, and at worst an actual menace
Bad credits undermine the whole rationale
Now they say “the checks simply don’t balance out”
Not enough plantable ground to capture each ounce
But the offsetters are not backin’ down
“Sometimes it fails in practice, let it go!”
It’s all fixable, check the principle
A financial incentive to grow carbon sinks
In the developing world, that is literal gold
Protect a forest, from timber companies
And poachers who would happily wreck it for us
Build a clean energy source
Transform an emitting industry into one that absorbs
“How do we pay for it?” With a carbon market
With enforceable standards so it’s not defrauded
Only true removals getting bartered on it
Now watch as total emissions start to plummet
The idea is that an offset should provide
an extra reduction of carbon
that wouldn’t have happened
any other way.
‘Cause stopping pollution
Is harder than moving
To offsetting
You might wanna hide in
A cave if you find it
Too upsetting
If we can cool off
A planet that’s getting
Too hot, let us
Don’t try to dismiss it
As greenwashing, nah
‘Cause it’s all vetted
Offsetters
Makin’ amends
For carbon emissions
Offsetters
Takin’ pollution away
And just makin’ it
All better
Offsetters
Sale of indulgences
Pay for the privilege
Y’all sinners
Offsetters
|
||||
14. |
||||
Climate Hero
Cheer on the climate hero
Hey, we must be talkin’ ‘bout climate change
I can see it your face, that writhing pain
Strife and strain, sacrifice your gains
For the planet and cast down your eyes in shame
Shame! Let the penance begin
The climate change flagellation of thin skin
Sin! Sin! Mother Nature’s vengeance
Never talk about mitigation as win-win
“When we get dedicated, we can mitigate it
By makin’ the expensive and difficult changes
Climate change is regrettably necessitating
So take your medicine and get educated!”
That’s the narrative, it’s time to bury it
Health benefits of mitigation so various
So serious, survival of the cheeriest
Live long and prosper, those are covariants
And yes, I know emissions are tragic
But co-emission factors are really killin’ us faster
Sulfur dioxide, particulate matter
Mercury, lead, cancer, heart conditions, asthma
Every year millions succumb to these
So fossil fuel companies are coming under siege
When emissions go down, so does lung disease
Some decisions aren’t as tough as they seem
Cheers to the planet and to your health
And to the glaciers, may they never melt
You could be the hero to someone else
But the one that you save might be yourself
Be yourself, just be yourself
The one that you save might be yourself
Go be the hero to someone else
And you might save yourself
Climate hero
Cheer on the climate hero
You say “Biking is to my liking”
My climate hero, sacrificing
That longer-life thing? That’s just icing
Fit like a Skarsgard Northern Viking
Walking not driving, cars go faster
Cars blow massive carbon smoke backwards
Walking is better for cardiovascular
Co-factors, hearts, strokes, and cancers
Especially if the physically activity
Is integrated with a nutritional scheme
Extra beans and greens and less red meat
Ancillary effect of living emission free
Is we never settle for less
And see fewer premature preventable deaths
Climate change is anthropogenic, and yes
Tackling it is bringin’ the health co-benefits
Cheers to the planet and to your health
And to the glaciers, may they never melt
You could be the hero to someone else
But the one that you save might be yourself
Be yourself, just be yourself
The one that you save might be yourself
Go be the hero to someone else
And you might save yourself
Climate hero
Cheer on the climate hero
Climate change, sacrifice and pain
But mitigation brings surprising gains
GAINS! Greenhouse Gas, Air Pollution
Interactions and Synergies, room for improvement
Build for humans, public transportation
Bike lanes, fewer cars and less pavement
Motivated by climate mitigation
Now just watch the drop in hospitalizations
Quantification of whatever destroys us
All that coal, gas, and oil emits poisons
Industrial sectors make electric choices
Tens of millions of future deaths avoided
Decades of better health, taken to account
The cost of mitigation really pays for itself
Before the effect on climate change is felt
So all my heroes, better save yourselves
Cheers to the planet and to your health
And to the glaciers, may they never melt
You could be the hero to someone else
But the one that you save might be yourself
Be yourself, just be yourself
The one that you save might be yourself
Go be the hero to someone else
And you might save yourself
Climate hero
Cheer on the climate hero
|
Baba Brinkman New York, New York
Science rapper and inventor of several novel hip-hop variants. Canadian transplant to New York. Pathological optimist.
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