CharonY

The latest crackdown from the administration on free speech and the speed with which media are pre-emptively caving in across the board sure shows that there is little institutional resilience left. I also feel that folks still do not quite appreciate what is being lost right now. Even if the GOP lost power now, it would take a long time to rebuild what has been torn down. And it is not even clear that they will be.

I am not even sure about that one. Economically they have started to implement a "shoot-your-own-foot" approach to things. And I am not sure how much of that is ideological vs incompetence.

In the paper (Hurowitz, J.A., Tice, M.M., Allwood, A.C. et al. Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars. Nature 645, 332–340 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09413-0) they have formulated a null hypotheses for abiotic pathways and at least with the data they had, they seem unlikely but it stops short of a full refutation. Form the conclusions:

Coming from microbiology, the concept of species was pretty scrambled to begin with. I have made peace with that by realizing that categories are essentially post-hoc models and they may or may not conform to nature. More important is whether they are useful and to realize when their usefulness ends. Basically the whole the map is not the territory issue.

Listen, if you only provide AI prompts, why should anyone discuss things with you vs just talking to the chatbot? If we are not discussing your thoughts on the matter in the first place, it really just seems a waste of everyone's time. Especially if don't making an effort of synthesizing the AI output to formulate your own discussion point. Your intellectual contribution is basically at the level of a copy/paste script.

I have read McCaffrey and I remember it as a fun mix of fantasy tropes and what essentially is a scifi background. That was of course way before I became a biologist. But then, I'd take any excuse to get a flying fire-breathing lizard. That one wasn't really that popular in Germany compared to the UK and I never came across it.

That actually makes a lot of sense to me. I read Lord of the Rings when I was very young, but also Pratchett not long after (as well as Douglas Adams). I think the silliness of those books made things a lot easier for me when I was a youth. There is at least a decent chance that I wouldn't have the patience for silliness anymore if I picked it up now (but I suspect that once/if I retire it might change again).

I am not sure what you are asking. If you are wondering whether there is fencing, yes it is outlined in the provided article. Could they bypass it? I mean theoretically. After all Hamas got out of the Gaza strip to commit atrocities. But unarmed individuals? Especially now? No chance. Especially considering that the IDF has documented cases of killing unarmed folks (including children) even if they do not attempt to enter a secured zone....

If you want information I suggest not to rely on youtube. If you have no access to other articles, you can check out wikipedia, which is at least better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip In short, Gaza has seen a number of restrictions with the latest effectively sealing them in (you can read the recent timeline in the wiki article) In Gaza, while there are designated refugee camps, they are largely integrated into the areas that are not considered camps. But basically half of the population live in the supported area. Any geographic distinction between camp and no camp is somewhat superficial, considering the population density. This is not about leaving, but about mismanagement (to put it mildly) of providing food to Gazans by IDF and contractors. It might help to get a bit of a view of how Gaza looks like. This is an older article, but has illustrations: Al JazeeraThe Gaza Strip explained in mapsThe Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli-imposed land, sea and air blockade for the past 16 years.

That is a very good way to put it. True- it is funny, in a way. Bits of it, such as how he imagined what is basically the internet (matrix) or virtual reality was clearly a product of its time and got rather dated. But in other concepts, perhaps how we interact with AI is very modern. The class struggle element is core to the "punk" aspect and it was very interesting how Gibson (and other authors in the genre) imagined things. In the early days the scrappy tech startups were often seen as the rebellious types vs the big corporations. That obviously didn't hold up well.

Of course literary preference is just a matter of taste even in if you are objectively and undeniably wrong here ;).

Yes it is definitely an acquired taste. I like the chrome-neon vibes coupled with a mix of fairly cold descriptions of society (matching the feel) juxtaposed with the almost poetic (if abstract) elements of the virtual world.

It is interesting- sometimes a bit high-octane for my taste, but a good read for sure. I didn't know that. Perhaps that is why I like his books? It is a very good book with great world-building. I would echo exchemist's notion, though. A lot of scifi of that period has a very two-dimensional view on women which makes it less enjoyable for some (especially female readers, who are are otherwise scifi nerds). My memory is hazy, but I recall a lot of exposition which amounts to an imperialist society ending up with something of a Lawrence of Arabia meets Soviets and Mujahedeen. On drugs. Lots of drugs.

For some reasons it was one of the books that I liked as a kid and didn't care that much about for later. I think Asimov is a good indicator of what your preferences are in literature.. Sci-Fi often has some kind of idea or hook which is then extrapolated. From that perspective, Asimov is fantastic. Great ideas with a lot of world-building and fantastic logical flow. On the other hand, the prose is dull (just as you would expect from someone in natural science) and pretty much the only distinguishing feature of his characters are their names. Still love those. Also, if world-building is of interest, Iain M. Banks culture novels are also fantastic. That being said, and I am not entirely sure but for some reasons I found that I like the style of Scottish writers (I found out after looking at the bios of my favorite writers and for some reasons the list was British and especially Scottish writers). From American authors, Gibson's Neuromancer has been genre-defining (cyberpunk) though slightly dated (which gives it an interesting air of nostalgia IMO) and Butler (a very different voice in scifi) come to mind among those who have not been mentioned yet. But I would echo @swansont's recommendation to check out a library and figure out what you enjoy.

And the US is doing its best to un-change the probably single biggest element of public health (i.e. vaccines in general, not only mRNA). I think a big change in the workforce will be coming and it is quite important to figure out where we go from there. For example, one issue is that AI tools are already kinda of apt in taking over bullshit office work. Essentially rote work with limited judgement calls or other need for human input. This makes it very attractive to cut down entry level jobs in favor of AI, or perhaps rather fewer people who can do the same work using AI tools. However, in many areas such drudgery (e.g. literature search) can be actually quite important to train folks and entry level positions are where they acquire skills they need to reach the higher level positions. Getting rid of those therefore eliminates "classic" training positions and I am not really seeing that folks are creating alternatives to that. It is a bit what we see in a different context in university- students use it to cut down the boring work of reading and writing and as a consequence do not properly learn to read and write, limiting their higher-level prospects.

I suspect that there could be multiple things going on here. I suspect many AI companies would want to avoid discovery to protect technologies that even after a bankruptcy they might exploit somehow. It could also affect total debt (especially if punitive damages are awarded) and perhaps there are differences in how these things are organized in a bankruptcy. But these are only wild guesses.

Wild-Ass Guess (there could be other permutations)

My WAG is that early human inquiry into nature involved munching on things.

It might be slightly off-topic, and while a narrow-use like road safety might be less questionable, I am wondering about privacy issues regarding the collection of surveillance data in the age of AI. UK, Germany and other countries do have some sort of Data Protection laws and I believe that generally speaking they are supposed to be for narrow use cases. But given the relative use of widening the scope with fast-moving tech, I am a bit concerned regarding oversight.

I should add, fermented foodstuff frequently has plenty of (mostly) harmless bacteria. Antigens from them are likely also interact with our immune system and potentially mitigate responses. Fundamentally, I would prefer priming of the immune system with those, rather than with helminths. The latter are likely able to better suppress the immune system (due to reasons mentioned earlier).

Well, we have plenty of pathogenic bacteria in our bodies, too.

It is a bit difficult to explain. The way I see it, there is really no clear optimum state of the immune system (at least as I understand it). Rather I now tend to think of it as a series of potential equilibria that are governed by an incredible number of factors, ranging from genetics, age, exposure to pathogens and other antigens through one's life history and so on.

There is potentially yet another thing at play here. In many cases, the immune system does not really fight them off. Many helminths happily reside in the gut and what many do is to modulate the immune responses of their host (many mechanisms have only recently been discovered). The overall result is that immune-related ejection is suppressed which incidentally also reduces the likelihood of allergic reactions. I think based on the molecular knowledge we have now, we can move away from the original rough hygiene hypothesis and dig a bit deeper into mechanisms. The bottom line is that the immune system is an incredibly complex system which many interactions between the body and its inhabitants. It is almost impossible to define a "best" state from the bits and pieces we know, though we can certainly define a lot of adverse outcomes.

That is exactly it. "Healthy" is actually a bit of a tricky term as we often do not really have a clearly defined optimization parameter to look at. As mentioned multiple times, there is no such things as a strong or a weak gene in isolation. And strong selection in a gene pool can leave a much less diverse gene pool that then becomes weaker to changes in selective pressures. Likewise, even things like a strong health can be difficult to define. What if you are physically ailing, but survive for a long time? What if for some reasons you are very fertile but die young? What if you have been exposed to many infections and might have strong memory effects in your immune system, yet the repeated infections have irreparably damaged your organs?

That then goes into the other argument is that we are then limiting the gene pool again. Simple example that we have discussed already: malaria. While there is a vaccine now (which is only somewhat effective) in the past there was none and in malaria-rich areas the population have a higher than typical prevalence of sickle-cell genes. These of course increase the risk of sickle-cell anemia. If there was a 100% effective vaccine, their levels would be close to those in malaria-free areas. In that scenario, would you consider you argument to be valid? And if so, how? Explain your reasoning, please.