The biggest Dutch farmers association LTO has walked out of talks on reforming the farm system, saying that trust in finding a solution was still lacking.
LTO chairman Sjaak van der Tak told reporters outside the agricultural ministry that the decision to leave the negotiations had been a ādifficult oneā.
āWe were bogged down in āintentionsā and farmers cannot live on intentions,ā Van der Tak said.
Farm minister Piet Adema said he was extremely disappointed that the LTO had pulled out. The agreement is for 95% completed but the LTO did not dare to take the final step, he told reporters.
Talks will continue with other interest groups, such as supermarkets and environmental groups, on Wednesday, he said. Young farmers association NAJK also left the talks after the LTO.
Concessions
Earlier on Tuesday broadcaster NOS reported that the cabinet was prepared to give farmers more leeway in deciding how they should meet targets on supporting vulnerable nature. Ministers were also prepared to ensure farmers received a minimum price for their products so their income would not be affected.
In return, all farm products in the Netherlands would have to reach sustainability standards by 2035, the broadcaster said.
Government officials, farming lobby groups, and other organisations have been talking for the last 18 months to try to make farming more environment-friendly while ensuring farmers can continue to earn a decent wage.
One of the stumbling blocks is farmer demands for more money for nature management. Farmers are also mistrustful of finance minister Sigrid Kaag, whose party (D66) wants to stick to current agreements on reducing nitrogen-based pollution by 2030.
In addition, there remain wide divisions on crucial issues such as how to deal with manure and pesticides.
Farmers in particular have been buoyed by the big wins for pro-farmers party BBB in the recent provincial elections and have said the governmentās strategy to cut nitrogen emissions needs a major rethink.
āIf that does not happen, there will be no agriculture agreement,ā Van der Tak told the Telegraaf earlier.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/06/farmers-pull-out-of-farm-reform-talks-citing-lack-of-trust/
If you're worried about ticks, put up an owl box.
The animal driving most Lyme disease in the eastern US is the white-footed mouse. Ticks that feed on them are far more likely to come away infected than ticks that feed on other animals. The bigger the local mouse population, the worse the next year's tick year.
A single barred owl pair raising chicks can take hundreds of rodents in a breeding season. Owls also don't carry Lyme. The bacterium can't survive their digestive tract, so an owl that eats an infected mouse is a dead end for the disease.
Researchers at the Cary Institute, the leading lab on Lyme ecology, have been explicit about this: "Landscapes that support predators have reduced Lyme disease risk."
One owl box on its own isn't going to fix a tick year. But a yard with owls, foxes, bobcats, and weasels in it has fewer mice, and a yard with fewer mice has fewer infected ticks.
If you have woods or fields nearby, a properly sized barn owl or screech owl box (different species, different ...
The "fly brain" controlled release is likely what has the big AI labs spooked.
We are running fly brains in web browsers while creating emergent properties quite easily.
Google Research would not have released their most cutting edge or capable brain for the masses to mess around with and we can assume that they now have internal access to artificial brains which rival human capabilities and beyond.
Now imagine those artificial super brains in hyper scale data centers that run massive arrays of them.
In 2021, I first heard of artificial brains being used to control satellites and brushed it off as science fiction.
God created humans. Humans created LLMs. And LLMs now seem to be creating artificial brains and potentially artificial consciousness.
You should embrace as much of the new technology as you are allowed to access.
Acceleration is inevitable.
Dario has written that we need to āpace the frontier,ā and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.
You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric ā market share, revenue growth, model capability ā the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. Youāve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement.
I donāt see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.
But stop pretending you need anyone elseās permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropicās investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who arenāt even at the frontier.
Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to ...