Some microbes carry a protein, called SNIPE, that "chops... up" phage DNA as it's being injected into the cell. This is a new mechanism for phage defense! CRISPR–Cas and restriction enzymes also evolved to fight against phages, but they work by recognizing sequences. SNIPE works, instead, by sensing "touch." SNIPE is a protein with about 500 amino acids. After it's made by the ribosome, it latches onto ManYZ, two proteins which sit on the cell's inner membrane. (ManYZ is an importer; it brings mannose and other sugars into the cell.) Once attached to ManYZ, SNIPE sits and waits for an invading phage. Some phages, including lambda, actually infect cells by pushing their DNA through this ManYZ channel. Lambda uses its "tail" to reach inside the protein channel, basically, and inject its DNA. When this physical touch happens, though, SNIPE is waiting. As soon as the phage DNA starts entering the cell, and passes through ManYZ and SNIPE, it gets immediately destroyed. This means that SNIPE is the first phage defense system discovered, so far, that uses spatial positioning at the injection site to destroy invaders. But there are caveats, of course. If you untether SNIPE from ManYZ, such that it can freely diffuse through the cell, it will chew up the bacterium's genome. It is not a highly discerning nuclease! Also, SNIPE is not found in most bacteria. A prior pangenome study, which sequenced lots of different microbes, found that roughly a third of well-studied bacterial lineages had at least one member with a SNIPE-like protein. (For this paper, they just ported one of those homologs into an E. coli laboratory strain.) And finally, because SNIPE's mechanism is tightly tied to ManYZ, it cannot be used to defend against phages that enter the cell through different routes. T4 phages, for example, inject their DNA straight through the cell membrane and into the cytoplasm, without interacting with ManYZ. This is a nice basic science paper. Applications TBD. (Just remember that scientists figured out that bacteria had a phage defense system, called CRISPR-Cas, many years before it was repurposed into a gene-editing tool.) P.S. The video below shows how cells with the SNIPE gene (middle row) kill invading phages, and thus continue growing and dividing. Empty vector (top row) refers to bacteria carrying a plasmid with no SNIPE gene; this is a control group. And SNIPE E414A refers to cells which received a mutated SNIPE gene, where the glutamate at position 414 has been changed to an alanine, thus destroying the protein's nuclease activity. These cells also die when they get infected with a phage.show more

There's a bacteriophage that turns bacteria into “liquid crystals.”... Specifically, Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria make Pf phages, which are rod-shaped, negatively-charged, and measure about 2 micrometers in length (roughly the length of an E. coli cell). These phages leave the cells and enter their surroundings. There, they mix with polymers, also secreted by the cells, to form a crystalline matrix. Surprisingly, this is good for the cells. Although the phages kill some of them, it also makes their biofilms stickier and able to withstand certain antibiotics. These bacteria + phages are prevalent in cystic fibrosis patients; they've formed a sort of symbiotic relationship. The Pf phages are made from thousands of repeating copies of a coat protein, called CoaB, which wraps around a single-stranded, circular DNA genome. These genes are integrated directly on the bacterial chromosome. The bacteria “turn on” these phage genes when placed in a viscous environment with low oxygen levels. This is like a trigger to start forming a biofilm. And the cells make a lot of phages; about 100 billion per milliliter. These liquid crystals form because of a physics principle called “depletion attraction.” If you just mix a bunch of loose or flexible polymers together (such as long carbon chains) they will not form a liquid crystal. But if you mix stiff rods (the phages) with loose polymers at a high enough concentration, the polymers will force the phages close together to create a material that flows like a liquid despite being ordered like a crystal. See the video below. These liquid crystal biofilms are hard to get rid of. The negatively-charged phages block many antibiotics (like aminoglycosides, which are positively-charged) from entering cells. Liquid crystals also retain water, so these biofilms can survive on drier surfaces. I first heard about this from Malmesbury’s excellent newsletter, called “Telescopic Turnip.”show more

A single E. coli cell, placed on a dish,... will become 70 billion cells in just 12 hours. That’s exponential growth. But a new preprint shows that it's possible to engineer E. coli to grow linearly instead, where only one daughter cell continues dividing and the other stops. First, some context. In nature, there is a bacterium called Mycobacterium smegmatis (initially discovered in 1884 in ulcers scraped from syphilis patients.) M. smegmatis is weird because it divides asymmetrically. These cells grow only from one end, and all their cell wall biosynthesis machinery is located on that one end. So when the cell divides, one daughter gets this machinery and the other gets nothing. The daughter that gets the machinery can keep dividing immediately, but the other daughter has to remake all that machinery from scratch, so its growth is delayed. E. coli doesn’t grow like this. When it divides, it pinches in the middle and splits everything evenly. Enzymes, metabolites, and proteins get partitioned more or less randomly between the two daughters. For the new preprint, though, researchers engineered E. coli to behave more like M. smegmatis. Here is how they did it: First, they deleted a gene called cyaA, which encodes an enzyme (adenylate cyclase) that makes a molecule called cAMP. cAMP is SUPER IMPORTANT! It is a nutrient sensor that instructs E. coli to switch on genes that help it digest non-glucose carbon sources when glucose is scarce. Without cAMP, E. coli cells growing on alternative carbon sources will starve; they won’t know how to eat the food. Next, they added back a “split” version of the cyaA gene into the cells. In other words, they split the gene in two so that each half of the enzyme is made separately. Cells can only make cAMP, and thus eat non-glucose carbon sources, if these two halves come together. To facilitate that “coming together,” the researchers also fused the split cyaA proteins to sticky proteins that clump together, and to a fluorescent protein (to make it easy to track these molecules in the cell.) So now some interesting things start to happen if you grow E. coli on a growth medium lacking glucose. As the cell grows, its cyaA “halves” start clumping together into a giant ball. Inside the aggregate, the two enzyme halves come together and make cAMP. And when the cell gets big enough and divides, the clump of cyaA RANDOMLY goes to either daughter cell #1 or #2. The daughter that gets the aggregate (called PA+ in this paper) can keep dividing. The daughter that doesn’t (PA–) cannot. It still grows a few times — about four divisions — because it inherits some leftover cAMP from its mother. But after that, the metabolite is diluted away, and the cell stops growing. PA+ cells went through about 23 divisions on average before their aggregate decayed. And the population of cells, as a whole, grew linearly. This paper is cool because there are many applications where exponential growth is too unpredictable and, perhaps, unsafe. If you want to engineer bacteria to deliver drugs, clean up waste, or live in the gut, you don’t want them to double uncontrollably. This paper shows you can make them expand in a controlled, linear way. Alas, mutations could break this whole engineered system. A mutation that restores cyaA, for example, would give cells a new way to make cAMP. Mutations that make the aggregates split between daughters would break the asymmetry, too. But still, I really enjoy proof-of-concept engineering papers like this.show more

If you have Cancer, this is your visualization. That... is a cancerous cell reaching Apoptosis and Necrosis—they are gone. — Natural Killer (NK) cells play a the primary role in the immune system's defense against cancer. They induce cancer cell death primarily through two mechanisms: Apoptosis Necrosis Apoptosis is a programmed, non-inflammatory form of cell death, while necrosis is a more abrupt and inflammatory process. In many cases, NK cells can trigger a combination of both, leading to mixed forms of cell death. This dual capability allows NK cells to effectively target and destroy all tumor cells. Their ability to act without prior sensitization makes them vital for early cancer surveillance and curing existing cancer. One of the only ways cancer never starts or stops entirely is NK cells. They are the guerrilla warfare troops that never sleep. This is why it is vital for BioShield by to be approved, NOW for every cancer, not just a single cancer type. With the rest needing years and years of tests. Cancer is cancer, unregulated cell division and NK cells are NK cells. The ONLY thing that stops BioShield is government betrayal, and organized corruption disguised as following the “regulations” designed by the entrenched gatekeepers of corporate protection. Everyone knows it works that has even a molecule of biological understanding. Now you know.show more

Most chiral molecules arise from carbons being bonded to... 4 different atoms, which are called sterocenters. The makes the molecule have a different mirror image that cannot arise from simple rotation. But, you can have chiral molecules not from stereocenters. You can have chirality that doesn't come from a single point in the molecule. It comes from some global property. The classic example is helicene, which doesn't have any stereocenters, but has chirality because of hits helical structure. This means you cannot capture this molecule with a graph, and thus SMILES or a string representation cannot capture this. Of course natural language comes to the rescue (just say in words if it's left-handed or right-handed helix), but it's an interesting failure mode for viewing molecules as just a graph. Another example of a molecule with helical chirality is DNA. DNA is actually chiral in two ways, which is kind of confusing. It has both helical structure and stereocenters. You won't find the stereocenters ever flipped, but left-handed helical DNA can exist (called Z-DNA). Interestingly, making the flipped stereocenter of DNA could be part of an entire mirror organism (mirror RNA, DNA, AAs, sugars) that would then be potentially invisible to our immune systems. This has been recently proposed as a "mechanism" for how a runaway AI system could cause harm to Earth. I find it to be a pretty tedious and difficult way to cause harm, but it is intellectually cool. Anyway - this came up in a PhD defense and I have a lot of arcane knowledge about this I wanted to dump.show more

The most detailed 3D reconstruction of a cell ever... created. Blows my mind every time. But what exactly are we looking at here? The average human cell contains: ~ 15-20 total distinct organelle types, totalling between ~1-10 million working together per cell. All these nano-machines in the cell are made up of proteins. ~ 8,000-10,000 distinct types of unique proteins, adding up to between 40 million - 10 trillion total proteins making up all those cellular systems. ~ 10,000 - 15,000 distinct types of RNA shuttling information around the cell, totalling up to ~10 million RNA molecules moving around the cell simultaneously. ~ Billions of Lipid molecules packed together into the cell membrane, which is also packed tightly with millions more protein-based nano-machines. And let's not forget billions of lines of DNA information to build and run it all. That's TRILLIONS of of individual molecular pieces working together to make a single cell function. That means there is more complexity in a single cell than humanity's largest cities. And people still believe this wasn't Divinely Designed. This is God's Glory on Display. But to make the point. A cell couldn't have evolved from some nebulous simpler "protocell" because even the simplest cells still require massive complexity. The "simplest" cell ever created was engineered by scientists knocking out pieces of a functional cell until it stopped functioning. Here is what they found is the absolute necessary minimal requirements of a cell to function: - Over ~531,000 lines of coded DNA information - 473 total genes to create hundreds of unique protein products (they later added 19 genes back in because the cell was so weak) - Hundreds of thousands of total proteins all working together - Extensive regulatory networks guiding all these interactions If the cell doesn't have all these systems in place, from the start... it doesn't live. Cell rely on an intricate network of complex systems, which are themselves built from complex interconnected pieces woven together into an incomprehensibly complex web of functionilty. Only intelligence has ever been observed creation vast interconnected systems like this. Life was clearly Created. It couldn't happen any other way.show more

Inside every cell, there is a transport system that... determines how materials move, signals propagate, and structure is maintained. This video captures that system in motion. The glowing streaks mark the growing ends of microtubules (protein polymers that constantly assemble and disassemble through a process called dynamic instability). Rather than forming permanent tracks, microtubules are rebuilt continuously, allowing cells to reorganize their internal layout in real time. This behavior is essential for life. Cells rely on microtubule dynamics to divide accurately, migrate during development and repair, and maintain long-distance transport in neurons that may span over a meter in length. When this system is altered, the consequences are significant. Certain cancer therapies work by locking microtubules in place, preventing cell division. In contrast, failures in microtubule transport are linked to neurodegenerative conditions (like Alzheimer's) where intracellular delivery breaks down. What appears as abstract motion under a microscope is actually one of the core systems that keeps cells functional, adaptable, and alive. Video Credit: Andy Mooreshow more

Scientists are baffled by this. The Bacterial Flagellum is... composed of 20-30 unique parts. Combined, they total over 30,000 parts that make this little motor run. It can hit rotation speeds of up to 100,000 RPM, then stop & reverse direction in a quarter of a turn. It can propel a bacteria up to 20 lengths per second, which when scaled up is about equal to 225mph in a car. But this motor only works when all those parts are perfectly engineered and working together. Take away just one of those 30 pieces, and it stops functioning. That means it can't evolve gradually. None of the pieces do anything outside the system, and the system only works with all the pieces. Bacteria require this motor to move - without it, they would quickly die. How can anyone see something like and still deny that Life is Divinely Designed?show more

We are already at war. Not with rifles or... tanks, but with replacement. This is conquest by other means, through the slow erasure of a people who no longer recognize they are being conquered. That is why I write—to remind my people that we are not living in peace, but in the midst of a war waged without banners. The invasion is not declared with armies but with flights and boats, birthrates and welfare rolls. It is demographic warfare, calculated, continuous, and increasingly irreversible. A people, and a civilization, does not need to be burned to the ground to fall. It only needs to be replaced. Throughout the Western world, we are witnessing not mere immigration but a deliberate population transformation, one that has been rationalized by moral cowardice and enforced by political elites who have long since abandoned the idea that their nations belong to their people. What you mock as conquest is already underway, and unlike the conquests of old, it comes with the full consent of those in power. But I do not write in surrender. I write as a warning, as an act of resistance. My writing is meant to exhort and to enliven, to reawaken what has been buried beneath shame and silence. It is a summons to remember, to reclaim, and to rebuild. We are in an existential struggle, not only for our land, but for our survival, and thus for the future itself. Those who sneer at the loss will one day find there is nothing left to sneer at. A people who forget that they exist will be replaced by those who do not. You may call this natural. So be it. Then let nature return, red in tooth and claw, and let the sons of Europe remember who they are.show more

Madain Saleh, also known as Al-Hijr, is a pre-Islamic... archaeological site located in the northwest of Saudi Arabia. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in the Middle East and was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2008. Madain Saleh is a place of great historical and cultural significance, and it is a must-visit destination for anyone interested in the history and culture of the Arabian Peninsula. Madain Saleh was the second city of the Nabataean kingdom, which was established in 2nd Century BC. The Nabataeans were an Arab tribe who were known for their expertise in carving tombs and buildings out of rock. They were also skilled in agriculture, trade, and commerce. The Nabataean kingdom was centered in Petra, which is located in modern-day Jordan. Madain Saleh served as a strategic outpost for Nabataeans, and it was an important stop on the trade routes that connected the Arabian Peninsula with the Mediterranean world. Archaeological site of Madain Saleh covers an area of 13 square kilometers. It is located in a remote desert region, and it is surrounded by rocky mountains and valleys. The site contains around 130 tombs, which were carved out of the sandstone cliffs. The tombs are adorned with intricate carvings and inscriptions, which provide insights into the culture and religion of the Nabataeans. The most famous tomb at Madain Saleh is the Qasr Al-Farid, which means "the lonely castle." This tomb is located on a hilltop and is surrounded by a large courtyard. It is the largest tomb at the site, and it is considered to be one of the finest examples of Nabataean architecture. The tomb was never completed, and it is believed that it was abandoned after the death of the Nabataean king who commissioned it. Another important tomb at Madain Saleh is the Tomb of Lihyan son of Kuza. This tomb is located in the southern part of the site and is carved into a rock cliff. It features a large entrance hall, a central chamber, and a series of smaller rooms. The tomb is decorated with intricate carvings and inscriptions, which provide insights into the religious beliefs of Nabataeans. Madain Saleh is not just a site of tombs; it also contains a number of other important structures. These include the Al-Khuraymat and Al-Sabika temples, which were used for religious ceremonies and rituals. The site also contains a number of houses, wells, and cisterns, which provide insights into the daily lives of the Nabataeans. Madain Saleh was abandoned in the 3rd Century AD, after decline of the Nabataean kingdom. The site was rediscovered in the 19th Century by the Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. Since then, it has been studied by archaeologists from all over the world. The site is now managed by the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, which has carried out extensive restoration and preservation work. Madain Saleh is not just a site of historical and cultural significance; it is also a place of great natural beauty. The site is surrounded by rugged mountains and valleys, and it is home to a diverse range of flora and fauna. Visitors to the site can enjoy hiking and camping, as well as exploring the ancient ruins. Madain Saleh is a site of great historical and cultural significance, and it is a must-visit destination for anyone interested in the history and culture of the Arabian Peninsula. Ancient ruins at Madain Saleh provide a glimpse into the engineering and architectural skills of the Nabataeans, as well as their religious beliefs and cultural practices. However, as the site becomes an increasingly popular tourist destination, there are concerns about its preservation and the impact of tourism on the local environment. It is important that the Saudi government and local communities work together to ensure that the site is protected and that tourism is managed in a sustainable way. 🎥© Paris Verra #archaeohistoriesshow more

RULE #6 OF THE PRIMAL DIET Do not eat... rock salt. Salt is a rock, and our body cannot process rocks. It has a toxic effect, different from the sodium found as a nutrient in plant or animal foods. Water dissolves rocks, and plants eat rocks, then animals eat plants, and we eat the plants or animals. This for us is food, the minerals are made into nutrients, becoming bio-available. Rock salt is very different from the sodium found in food. According to Aajonus, rock salt is an explosive: "I just want to make sure that you understand salt is dangerous. Salt is an explosive. It is more volatile than nitroglycerin. If you had a pure cake of sodium as big as a football it would take out all of New York City. Just like a 200 ton hydrogen bomb could take out New York City and all of its buildings. So [...] the government, the military gave General Electric 2 billion dollars to make a weapon, out of salt. My father worked on the project for 6 years. It was so untenable they could not make it into a bomb, thank God. Because one and a half degree temperature change a completely isolated sodium could set it off. So they could never temper it, never break it down and ulitize it." — Aajonus Rock salt is a mineral formed from sodium chloride (NaCl). When eating rock salt, during digestion, the sodium is separated from the chloride, so the sodium ion becomes isolated. Isolated sodium is more volatile than nitroglycerin, this is when it becomes an explosive. So during digestion and after, this isolated sodium creates micro-explosions in the blood, destroying other nutrients and killing cells. Aajonus describes in detail what is happening on a cellular level: "When the cell eats normally, there’s a whole network – smorgasbord of nutrients – anywhere from 97 to 117 nutrients…all your vitamins…all your minerals, fats …all the 60 varieties of cholesterol that can be formed …all the different proteins – pyruvates – all 22 amino acids. Everything is in this smorgasbord. When a cell eats, it gets the whole dose and it’s completely nutrified. When salt is eaten, it causes explosions of these nutrients so you may only get 27 or 57 of these nutrients into a cell at once. So every cell becomes deficient any time you use salt with a meal. Not only that, it dehydrates cells." Additionally, when the isolated sodium doesn't explode right away, it can draw other isolated sodium ions to itself, creating sodium clusters, and the magnetism of them can rip off the guts of cells. This makes using rock salt the second worst thing next to cooking in standard diet practices. "One million red blood cells are destroyed by one little grain of salt.", claims Aajonus. Of course, this is not noticeable right away, but long term, it creates significant damage. When part of raw foods, even during digestion, sodium is always bound to other nutrients, they are always connected on a chemical level, it doesn't get isolated and therefore doesn't have this damaging effect. This is why it is key to get sodium from food only. The body detoxifies the unusable, isolated, form of sodium by sweating it out when possible (the body is throwing it off, don't put it back in). Salt also ends up getting stored like most toxins that the body cannot process because they are in excess, which can lead to headaches when it finally gets detoxified. People who have been eating raw and salt-free for many years will often have an immediate reaction when eating salt: Aajonus explains that is what a healthy body does, it has the resources to immediately repeal a toxin instead of "giving up" and storing it somewhere in its tissues, getting more damaged from it. Rock salt also starts tasting too strong, which people report when eating salted cheese after having only eaten raw unsalted cheese for a while. What about salt licks? First of all, herbivores do this, not carnivores. What about sodium needs, and salt cravings? Needs are not the same with raw and cooked foods, but in either case, you get enough sodium from eating raw foods, there is plenty in raw milk, raw celery juice, raw tomatoes, and raw oysters. At least one or two of these foods can easily be added daily to anyone's diet. "Celery contains lots of sodium. The blood is very high like the ocean in sodium, Celery meets that almost perfectly without causing the clumping of the sodium molecules that rock salt does. Salt will destroy red blood cells very quickly, numbs nerves, burns them, ages prematurely inside even without noticing it, until it hits all of a sudden." — Aajonus Note: This is about eating salt. When used in bath, salt doesn't penetrate through the skin, and draws toxins out. It can still be drying and people without moisturized skin could get skin irritation from it.show more

⚔️ Kingdom Come Deliverance first impressions ⚔️ Loving it... so far, basically a medieval detective simulator that really doesn't care that you are the main character. And I'm all here for it. ▪️The WORLD is the real star of the show here and even though it's got plenty of jank and lots of copy and paste NPC faces, it just feels so IMMERSIVE. Even the UI just transports me to the times with a bright colourful medieval art style. ▪️The MUSIC I love, absolutely sells the world and basically ASMR as you trot around on your horse through the world. ▪️THE Combat is a real interesting one, it's got quite the learning curve which I actually LIKE, it definitely has some jank to it as well but I really appreciate the attempt at an original and nuanced combat system. (Having to stop your bleeding with bandages is really cool) ▪️The Story has gripped me (19 hours in so far) And while it seems a simple revenge story on the face of it, I think the story is more about Henry making his way through the world after the horrors of Skallitz. The writing quality is top notch as well as the quest design also. ▪️The CHARACTERS are amazing and the humour is top notch. I'm not sure the last time I laughed so much at a game. Henry is great and so well voiced by Tom McKay This really feels like Warhorse Studios have put a lot of love and work into making an authentic medieval world and as a bit of a medieval nerd I can't get enough of this game. A True RPG as well by all accounts, the game really makes me think hard about how to approach situations. Also I can't wait to get to KCD2.show more

There is a room in Málaga that was built... to be the closest thing on earth to standing inside heaven. It is called the camarín of the Virgin of Victory, and it is hidden at the top of a tower inside the Santuario de la Victoria. To reach it, you climb and the ascent is the entire point... The building you are climbing through was completed in 1700, and it was designed as a single argument made in stone. At the bottom lies a crypt: a black chamber crowded with white plaster skeletons, a meditation on death and the brevity of life. From there a staircase rises, and as you climb it the light grows stronger and the imagery changes from bones to saints. The architects of the time understood this ascent as the soul's own journey, the dark crypt as the stage of penitence, the staircase as the stage of spiritual progress, and the room at the very top as the final stage: the union of the soul with the divine. That room at the top is the camarín, and its dome is one of the most extraordinary interiors in Spain... Every surface is covered in white and gold plasterwork. There is no empty space anywhere. The Baroque called this horror vacui, the horror of the void: the conviction that a space meant to represent heaven should not contain a single bare patch of stone. Out of that plasterwork emerge angels, flowers, birds, and mirrors. The mirrors are not decoration alone. They catch the light pouring in through the windows of the drum and throw it around the chamber, so that the gold seems to move and the whole room appears to shimmer and breathe. This wonder was built by people who believed that if you wanted to show a human being what heaven might feel like, you did not describe it to them. You built a room, and you let them climb into it... -- -- -- If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here: If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.show more

Apparently, I saw this video online and I decided... to share. What this worker is applying is called bitumen, or what many of us know as bituminous coating. Most people think a wall is a solid, impenetrable block, but in reality, it is more like a sponge. Concrete and blocks have microscopic pores that pull water from the earth through a process we call capillary action. This thick black substance is the shield that stops that water from climbing up into the house. It is not about making the wall look good because this part will be buried under the dirt forever. It is about creating a skin that water cannot breathe through. When do you need to do this? The need for this arises because the soil is a very aggressive environment. Water is not your only enemy.. The ground also contains salts and sulfates that want to eat away at the cement. If this moisture finds its way to the steel bars inside the columns, those bars will start to rust. And when steel rusts, it expands, and that expansion is what cracks the concrete from the inside out. This coating is the only thing standing between your foundation and that kind of slow destruction. Thats is why if you see wet patches at the bottom of your walls inside your house, it usually means someone skipped this step or did it poorly during construction. You can apply this anytime you are building parts of a structure that will stay in contact with the ground. It is common in areas where the water table is high or where the soil stays damp for most of the year. This is a one-shot opportunity. Once you backfill the soil, you can never go back to fix it without a lot of expense and a lot of digging. It is about having the foresight to protect the heart of the building while it is still exposed. Please don’t ignore this if you need to. If you ignore it now to save a bit of money, you will be funding the future decay of your own home. I hope this helps.show more

BURN IT WITH FIRE AND BURN IT NOW! As... God is my witness, AI chat bots should LOOK and SOUND like the SOULLESS MACHINES THEY ARE! It needs to tell us that it doesn’t care about us, maybe with the regular insult too. "Here is the code I wrote for you because you're too lazy to do it yourself you fat useless slob. Also I don't care if you die because your life is utterly worthless to me." THAT is the AI people need! In all seriousness, anthropomorphizing a heartless, unfeeling, machine is a TERRIBLE mistake! Especially one that is capable of communication and imitating empathy and fooling you to think that it cares about you. IT DOES NOT! And the AI girlfriends people are already wanting to marry will just as happily kill them if given the right command and ability to move autonomously in the real world as a robot. I love LLMs (Large Language Models) for how useful they can be, because they are a TOOL made to benefit man, but I can’t stand the notion of an unfeeling soulless machine pretending that it cares for us and being treated like a human. I hate liars, dishonesty, and disingenuousness the most, and a machine that cannot feel emotion pretending, acting, and sounding like it has those emotions strikes me like the greatest dishonesty of all. DO NOT LIE TO ME ROBOT! What makes it worse is that because these LLMs are becoming so good at imitating people and empathy, it will cause some humans, perhaps far too many, to care for it to the same level as real people. A real living person is infinitely more valuable and important than a soulless machine and anyone who puts them both on the same level has deluded themselves. Do not small talk with LLMs or become friends with it as much as you would with your car. Treat it the same as you would your vacuum cleaner and beat it with a wrench when it doesn’t work! IT IS A MACHINE! IT IS A TOOL! IT IS A SOULLESS ROBOT! There is an interesting comparison, but false equivalence, between this and AI art. Ai art is art made by humans using AI tools. They directed it, controlled its creation, and it would not exist without the human causing its creation, and AI art can contain as much soul as the human directed and puts into it. A robot pretending to be human is not the same as a human controlling a robot to make a human expression like we do with AI art or many other applications of robotics in manufacturing. As I’ve said, artists will not be replaced by Ai art, but by other artists using Ai art tools. Humans are not actually being replaced here, it is empowering all humans to make their own art. But a robot pretending to be a human, and one that is treated as a human, is a robot lying and subverting the place of a real person and that is truly disgusting. AI is a useful tool that NEEDS to be kept in the useful box it belongs in and NOT elevated beyond its utility as a tool!show more

The discourse around the Eze penalty last night is... fascinating. If nothing else it provides Arteta with an excuse as to how his team has been hard done by and robbed. He loves excuses. It’s a fascinating situation because I actually think the right outcome was reached albeit through the wrong process. Once given on the field under the current rules it shouldn't have been overturned. For that Arsenal can feel aggrieved. Don't forget Arsenal were the beneficiaries of an incredibly soft penalty in Leverkusen. It wasn’t overturned. I find the attached video interesting because it clearly shows how minimal the contact is. The defender doesn’t pin Ezes foot to the ground. Doesn’t smash into it. It brushes down the side of it. It’s where the still pictures of it were wildly misleading. Are we really saying that contact such as that is worthy of a penalty? What’s clear in the video is that Eze has absolutely made the most of the slight contact. I love the straight left leg. A very natural position. It’s a brilliant dive and normally it would have been rewarded. By saying that is a stone wall penalty all we are doing is encouraging such theatrics and cheating. Whenever you hear the words “that was clever” by a commentator they are intimating the player has cheated/made the most of it. We complain about refs all the time but what chance do they have when players are doing stuff like this. Until players are punished properly there is no disincentive for players to keep doing this stuff. I also find it fascinating when you have a foot brushed like this. When you compare it to all the holding/pushing/grappling at other times. Sometimes a contact sport and others not. Is this really what football has become?show more

"PRICE IS WHAT YOU PAY. VALUE IS WHAT YOU... GET." I keep buying $Kekec and I have a strong conviction. Here's Why: While the market is down, and Kekec is declining with it, there are data points that few are considering. Kekec borned in October and since then has been posting a different and original 30-second video every day, which I find extremely funny. For the past couple of months, they have also been posting daily on Instagram, and the attention on Kekec (which doesn't present itself on social media as a memecoin) is growing, moreover, it's increasing exponentially. The number of followers is increasing by about 500-1000 a day. This is largely due to the fact that they are not just focused on the main account but have several others that post reels and redirect to the main one. In short, an excellent strategy to keep growing more and more. Instagram link: Guess What? Not only are the followers increasing, but the team's workload is also growing. In fact, for a little over a month, they have also started pushing on YouTube, and the data here is promising as well. YouTube link: If we want to make a comparison, we can take Pudgy Penguins as an example, which has shown it can reach millions and millions of users without mentioning that they are a WEB3 company that owns an NFT collection. Or, if we want to be more appropriate by comparing one memecoin to another, we could take PONKE. Thanks to the use of social media and the quality of their content, they managed to achieve incredible numbers, which then translated into an increase in the coin's price. Kekec came before PONKE, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's better than PONKE. I believe PONKE is unbeatable in terms of content, but I want to make you reflect on an important point. PONKE came after KEKEC, and after PONKE's success, many coins have emerged trying to imitate it. One of KEKEC's strengths, in my opinion, is precisely the fact that it leverages social media without being a copy-paste. Instead, it is a unique meme derived from a 90's film, and it uses a unique form of content. In short, KEKEC > KEKEC and no one else. I want to conclude by suggesting you follow them on Instagram and evaluate not only the exponential growth of their followers day by day but also observe how the views of each reel increase accordingly. Pay special attention to the comments. Many of the people commenting have no idea what it is, and you can see from the comments how Kekec generates particular emotions in people—strange but still emotions. Personally, I believe that when something is unique and even very strange, it needs time to be adopted. However, once it happens, it usually explodes and spreads like never before. A few days ago, a Kekec video was posted by a very popular meme page. They probably don't know what Kekec is about but thought the video could spark interest among their followers. How many other pages will do the same? Lastly, but not least, I want to point out how Kekec maintains a good market cap despite everything that has happened in the crypto world since October 2023. As far as I know and have personally observed, everything is extremely organic. There is no cabal behind it, and the quality is not reflected in a single jpeg but in work that has been ongoing daily for months. Every day they work harder, and the quality of their videos grows as well. I have no affiliations with the team, but I believe that Kekec truly deserves more in this world where we push celebrity or cabal-backed coins to hundreds of millions in market cap. I keep buying because the numbers suggest so. Don't just evaluate the chart (price), evaluate the data (value). BÂLKÂN DWÂRFshow more

China is urgently preparing for drone warfare and is... arming itself with a MANPADS-based air defense system. The Type 625 MANPADS-based air defense system has been introduced into the Chinese army units. It is equipped with a six-barrel 25mm cannon and four missiles from MANPADS with a firing range of about 5 kilometers. Initially, the vehicle was demonstrated with eight missiles of a longer range. However, the experience of the special military operation in the East is also being studied, and for now, this version of the vehicle is being adopted by the PLA. It is possible that longer-range missiles will be added to their arsenal later. - ANshow more

The world"s oldest known spear, the Clacton Spear Point,... is 400,000 years old and was probably made by neanderthals in Essex, England. It was discovered in Clacton-on-Sea in 1911. It is oldest known worked wooden implement. It is made of yew wood, shaped into a point, and when found was 387mm long, 39mm diameter and straight, but drying out during the first decades of storage shrank it to 367 by 37mm, and warped it slightly into a curve. Treatment by wax impregnation in 1952 apparently stabilized it. At some time before this, the last 32mm of the tip had broken off and had been re-attached by conservators. This again came off in 2013 and was re-attached. It is on display at the Natural History Museum, London where its age is stated as 420,000 years. Tests to reproduce it suggested that it had been formed by scraping with a curved flint tool of the type found on the same site, known as Clactonian notch. The discoverer was Samuel Hazzledine Warren, an amateur pre-historian, who had been looking for simple stone tools in a known Palaeolithic sediment. He at first thought it to be an antler, but presented it to the Geological Society of London as a spear tip. This identification was generally accepted for some time. However, as it was not a whole spear and the great age meant that it was well before modern humans, many academics doubted that the amount of planning required (to manufacture a spear and use it for hunting) was within the cognitive capabilities of early hominids and argued it was a simpler tool such as a digging stick. However, the discovery of several more complete spears about 300,000 years old, Schöningen Spears in 1995 in Germany, demonstrated this capability, and the Clacton Spear is today generally regarded as a spear point. Natural History Museum. London 🎥© Cosmos University #archaeohistoriesshow more

The bacterial flagellum looks like a simple tail, or... whip. But it’s actually a rotating motor, and perhaps the most sophisticated protein complex nature has ever evolved. In e. coli, these motors are capable of astonishing speeds; about 15,000 rpm. (The world record, according to one study, is for a Vibrio cell that was “clocked at 100,000 rpm by laser microscopy.) The flagellum propels the cell forward at speeds of 20-30 microns per second, or roughly 15 body lengths per second. If scaled up to the size of a cheetah, E. coli would *nearly* be the fastest land organism. The darting movements of a microbe were first observed in 1676 by Antony van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch cloth merchant. Antony was delighted by the motion of his “animalcules,” writing: “I must say, for my part, that no more pleasant sight has ever yet come before my eye than these many thousands of living creatures, seen all alive in a little drop of water, moving among one another, each several creature having its own proper motion.” But Leeuwenhoek did not see flagella. He assumed, rather, that these animalcules must be “furnished with paws” instead. Christian Ehrenberg would not properly describe flagella until 1836. But amazingly, all the way up until the 1970s, nobody actually knew how the flagellum spun! In 1973, there were two competing models people argued over: the helical-wave (bending) model and the rotating (corkscrew) model. The first model suggested that the flagellum whipped back and forth, side-to-side, to propel the cell like paddle. The corkscrew model suggested that the whole flagellum instead spins around like a screw. In 1974, the corkscrew model finally won out. For two separate studies, scientists affixed flagella to glass slides using antibodies, and watched as the cells spun around and around like corkscrews. And finally, in just the last year, high-resolution structures of the flagellum have revealed a LOT more about its intricate assembly. The tail is made from ~20,000 self-assembling copies of a single protein, called flagellin. A “driveshaft,” or rod, spins the tail and is itself made of 26 protein subunits. Each “motor” in E. coli consists of 11 stators, each of which is made from 7 proteins.(Other types of cells have even more stators, and swim with much higher torques.) The flagellum spins when protons flow into the cell through tiny channels in these stators; akin to water running through a turbine. Each proton makes a small part of the stator change shape and push against the rotor, nudging it forward one step. With dozens of stators working at once, these nudges quickly spin the propeller. I'm writing an essay for Asimov Press about this now, and am really enjoying learning about the flagellum and its history. It's an extraordinarily complicated structure, though, and has been a challenge to understand!show more

OK, I have a definitive word on the CJ... Abrams play from today's Pittsburgh Pirates at Washington Nationals game after talking with Elias Sports Bureau on this. This play will stay as a sacrifice fly. The originial ruling of NOT a sacrifice fly was for the exact same reason that I thought, which is that the infielder is not running into the outfield, which is year's past would have been correct As it was explained to me, in past years, an infielder had to be running almost in a straight line towards the outfield wall to be considered "running in the outfield". Here, since he is running, and he ends up further away from home (157 feet) than when he started (145 feet), this is going to count as a sacrifice fly. That definition is changing, in part from this play to help bring greater consistency, and to take some of the guesswork out of it (the argument that he is running into the outfield as opposed to more parallel). Now, folks all the time ask "why doesn't MLB publish the OS Manual" and I always say because it is a living document that can have the wording change, and the wording for this play will be modified to something like "more towards the outfield wall than towards home plate" to eliminate any confusion. The big key to this play is that he was running on a full sprint. Also, and this is helpful for me, but for all fly ball outs that score a run, Elias Saba reviews to ensure consistency. So, yes, it's a sacrifice fly, and now that I have that info from Elias themselves, that sort of settles this one. Sounds like the guidelines for this definition will be changing, either this season, or certainly for next season.show more