Podcasts about eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 1, 2024 17:37

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Recommendation: reports on the search for missing hiker Bill Ewasko, published by eukaryote on August 1, 2024 on LessWrong. Content warning: About an IRL death. Today's post isn't so much an essay as a recommendation for two bodies of work on the same topic: Tom Mahood's blog posts and Adam "KarmaFrog1" Marsland's videos on the 2010 disappearance of Bill Ewasko, who went for a day hike in Joshua Tree National Park and dropped out of contact. 2010 - Bill Ewasko goes missing Tom Mahood's writeups on the search [Blog post, website goes down sometimes so if the site doesn't work, check the internet archive] 2022 - Ewasko's body found ADAM WALKS AROUND Ep. 47 "Ewasko's Last Trail (Part One)" [Youtube video] ADAM WALKS AROUND Ep. 48 "Ewasko's Last Trail (Part Two)" [Youtube video] And then if you're really interested, there's a little more info that Adam discusses from the coroner's report: Bill Ewasko update (1 of 2): The Coroner's Report Bill Ewasko update (2 of 2) - Refinements & Alternates (I won't be fully recounting every aspect of the story. But I'll give you the pitch and go into some aspects I found interesting. Literally everything interesting here is just recounting their work, go check em out.) Most ways people die in the wilderness are tragic, accidental, and kind of similar. A person in a remote area gets injured or lost, becomes the other one too, and dies of exposure, a clumsy accident, etc. Most people who die in the wilderness have done something stupid to wind up there. Fewer people die who have NOT done anything glaringly stupid, but it still happens, the same way. Ewasko's case appears to have been one of these. He was a fit 66-year-old who went for a day hike and never made it back. His story is not particularly unprecedented. This is also not a triumphant story. Bill Ewasko is dead. Most of these searches were made and reports written months and years after his disappearance. We now know he was alive when Search and Rescue started, but by months out, nobody involved expected to find him alive. Ewasko was not found alive. In 2022, other hikers finally stumbled onto his remains in a remote area in Joshua Tree National Park; this was, largely, expected to happen eventually. I recommend these particular stories, when we already know the ending, because they're stunningly in-depth and well-written fact-driven investigations from two smart technical experts trying to get to the bottom of a very difficult problem. Because of the way things shook out, we get to see this investigation and changes in theories at multiple points: Tom Mahood has been trying to locate Ewasko for years and written various reports after search and search, finding and receiving new evidence, changing his mind, as has Adam, and then we get the main missing piece: finding the body. Adam visits the site and tries to put the pieces together after that. Mahood and Adam are trying to do something very difficult in a very level-headed fashion. It is tragic but also a case study in inquiry and approaching a question rationally. (They're not, like, Rationalist rationalists. One of Mahood's logs makes note of visiting a couple of coordinates suggested by remote viewers, AKA psychics. But the human mind is vast and full of nuance, and so was the search area, and on literally every other count, I'd love to see you do better.) Unknowns and the missing persons case Like I said, nothing mind-boggling happened to Ewasko. But to be clear, by wilderness Search and Rescue standards, Ewasko's case is interesting for a couple reasons: First, Ewasko was not expected to be found very far away. He was a 65-year-old on a day hike. But despite an early and continuous search, the body was not found for over a decade. Second, two days after he failed to make a home-safe call to his partner and was reported mis...

search missing blog speech rescue recommendations reports aka ea irl unknowns coroner hiker joshua tree national park rationalist lesswrong eukaryote

LW - Recommendation: reports on the search for missing hiker Bill Ewasko by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 1, 2024 17:37

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Recommendation: reports on the search for missing hiker Bill Ewasko, published by eukaryote on August 1, 2024 on LessWrong. Content warning: About an IRL death. Today's post isn't so much an essay as a recommendation for two bodies of work on the same topic: Tom Mahood's blog posts and Adam "KarmaFrog1" Marsland's videos on the 2010 disappearance of Bill Ewasko, who went for a day hike in Joshua Tree National Park and dropped out of contact. 2010 - Bill Ewasko goes missing Tom Mahood's writeups on the search [Blog post, website goes down sometimes so if the site doesn't work, check the internet archive] 2022 - Ewasko's body found ADAM WALKS AROUND Ep. 47 "Ewasko's Last Trail (Part One)" [Youtube video] ADAM WALKS AROUND Ep. 48 "Ewasko's Last Trail (Part Two)" [Youtube video] And then if you're really interested, there's a little more info that Adam discusses from the coroner's report: Bill Ewasko update (1 of 2): The Coroner's Report Bill Ewasko update (2 of 2) - Refinements & Alternates (I won't be fully recounting every aspect of the story. But I'll give you the pitch and go into some aspects I found interesting. Literally everything interesting here is just recounting their work, go check em out.) Most ways people die in the wilderness are tragic, accidental, and kind of similar. A person in a remote area gets injured or lost, becomes the other one too, and dies of exposure, a clumsy accident, etc. Most people who die in the wilderness have done something stupid to wind up there. Fewer people die who have NOT done anything glaringly stupid, but it still happens, the same way. Ewasko's case appears to have been one of these. He was a fit 66-year-old who went for a day hike and never made it back. His story is not particularly unprecedented. This is also not a triumphant story. Bill Ewasko is dead. Most of these searches were made and reports written months and years after his disappearance. We now know he was alive when Search and Rescue started, but by months out, nobody involved expected to find him alive. Ewasko was not found alive. In 2022, other hikers finally stumbled onto his remains in a remote area in Joshua Tree National Park; this was, largely, expected to happen eventually. I recommend these particular stories, when we already know the ending, because they're stunningly in-depth and well-written fact-driven investigations from two smart technical experts trying to get to the bottom of a very difficult problem. Because of the way things shook out, we get to see this investigation and changes in theories at multiple points: Tom Mahood has been trying to locate Ewasko for years and written various reports after search and search, finding and receiving new evidence, changing his mind, as has Adam, and then we get the main missing piece: finding the body. Adam visits the site and tries to put the pieces together after that. Mahood and Adam are trying to do something very difficult in a very level-headed fashion. It is tragic but also a case study in inquiry and approaching a question rationally. (They're not, like, Rationalist rationalists. One of Mahood's logs makes note of visiting a couple of coordinates suggested by remote viewers, AKA psychics. But the human mind is vast and full of nuance, and so was the search area, and on literally every other count, I'd love to see you do better.) Unknowns and the missing persons case Like I said, nothing mind-boggling happened to Ewasko. But to be clear, by wilderness Search and Rescue standards, Ewasko's case is interesting for a couple reasons: First, Ewasko was not expected to be found very far away. He was a 65-year-old on a day hike. But despite an early and continuous search, the body was not found for over a decade. Second, two days after he failed to make a home-safe call to his partner and was reported mis...

search missing blog speech rescue recommendations reports aka ea irl unknowns coroner hiker joshua tree national park rationalist lesswrong eukaryote

LW - Web-surfing tips for strange times by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2024 13:38

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Web-surfing tips for strange times, published by eukaryote on June 1, 2024 on LessWrong. [This post is more opinion-heavy and aimlessly self-promoting than feels appropriate for Lesswrong. I wrote it for my site, Eukaryote Writes Blog, to show off that I now have a substack. But it had all these other observations about the state of the internet and advice woven in, and THOSE seemed more at home on Lesswrong, and I'm a busy woman with a lot of pictures of fish to review, so I'm just going to copy it over as posted without laboriously extricating the self-advertisement. Sorry if it's weird that it's there!] Eukaryote Writes Blog is now syndicating to Substack. I have no plans for paygating content at the time, and new and old posts will continue to be available at EukaryoteWritesBlog.com. Call this an experiment and a reaching-out. If you're reading this on Substack, hi! Thanks for joining me. I really don't like paygating. I feel like if I write something, hypothetically it is of benefit to someone somewhere out there, and why should I deny them the joys of reading it? But like, I get it. You gotta eat and pay rent. I think I have a really starry-eyed view of what the internet sometimes is and what it still truly could be of a collaborative free information utopia. But here's the thing, a lot of people use Substack and I also like the thing where it really facilitates supporting writers with money. I have a lot of beef with aspects of the corporate world, some of it probably not particularly justified but some of it extremely justified, and mostly it comes down to who gets money for what. I really like an environment where people are volunteering to pay writers for things they like reading. Maybe Substack is the route to that free information web utopia. Also, I have to eat, and pay rent. So I figure I'll give this a go. Still, this decision made me realize I have some complicated feelings about the modern internet. Hey, the internet is getting weird these days Generative AI Okay, so there's generative AI, first of all. It's lousy on Facebook and as text in websites and in image search results. It's the next iteration of algorithmic horror and it's only going to get weirder from here on out. I was doing pretty well on not seeing generic AI-generated images in regular search results for a while, but now they're cropping up, and sneaking (unmarked) onto extremely AI-averse platforms like Tumblr. It used to be that you could look up pictures of aspic that you could throw into GIMP with the aspect logos from Homestuck and you would call it "claspic", which is actually a really good and not bad pun and all of your friends would go "why did you make this image". And in this image search process you realize you also haven't looked at a lot of pictures of aspic and it's kind of visually different than jello, but now you see some of these are from Craiyon and are generated and you're not sure which ones you've already looked past that are not truly photos of aspic and you're not sure what's real and you're put off of your dumb pun by an increasingly demon-haunted world, not to mention aspic. (Actually, I've never tried aspic before. Maybe I'll see if I can get one of my friends to make a vegan aspic for my birthday party. I think it could be upsetting and also tasty and informative and that's what I'm about, personally. Have you tried aspic? Tell me what you thought of it.) Search engines Speaking of search engines, search engines are worse. Results are worse. The podcast Search Engine (which also covers other topics) has a nice episode saying that this is because of the growing hoardes of SEO-gaming low-quality websites and discussing the history of these things, as well as discussing Google's new LLM-generated results. I don't have much to add - I think there is a lot here,...

google ai web speech seo results substack ea tumblr surfing search engines llm gimp strange times homestuck rationalist lesswrong craiyon eukaryote

LW - Web-surfing tips for strange times by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2024 13:38

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Web-surfing tips for strange times, published by eukaryote on June 1, 2024 on LessWrong. [This post is more opinion-heavy and aimlessly self-promoting than feels appropriate for Lesswrong. I wrote it for my site, Eukaryote Writes Blog, to show off that I now have a substack. But it had all these other observations about the state of the internet and advice woven in, and THOSE seemed more at home on Lesswrong, and I'm a busy woman with a lot of pictures of fish to review, so I'm just going to copy it over as posted without laboriously extricating the self-advertisement. Sorry if it's weird that it's there!] Eukaryote Writes Blog is now syndicating to Substack. I have no plans for paygating content at the time, and new and old posts will continue to be available at EukaryoteWritesBlog.com. Call this an experiment and a reaching-out. If you're reading this on Substack, hi! Thanks for joining me. I really don't like paygating. I feel like if I write something, hypothetically it is of benefit to someone somewhere out there, and why should I deny them the joys of reading it? But like, I get it. You gotta eat and pay rent. I think I have a really starry-eyed view of what the internet sometimes is and what it still truly could be of a collaborative free information utopia. But here's the thing, a lot of people use Substack and I also like the thing where it really facilitates supporting writers with money. I have a lot of beef with aspects of the corporate world, some of it probably not particularly justified but some of it extremely justified, and mostly it comes down to who gets money for what. I really like an environment where people are volunteering to pay writers for things they like reading. Maybe Substack is the route to that free information web utopia. Also, I have to eat, and pay rent. So I figure I'll give this a go. Still, this decision made me realize I have some complicated feelings about the modern internet. Hey, the internet is getting weird these days Generative AI Okay, so there's generative AI, first of all. It's lousy on Facebook and as text in websites and in image search results. It's the next iteration of algorithmic horror and it's only going to get weirder from here on out. I was doing pretty well on not seeing generic AI-generated images in regular search results for a while, but now they're cropping up, and sneaking (unmarked) onto extremely AI-averse platforms like Tumblr. It used to be that you could look up pictures of aspic that you could throw into GIMP with the aspect logos from Homestuck and you would call it "claspic", which is actually a really good and not bad pun and all of your friends would go "why did you make this image". And in this image search process you realize you also haven't looked at a lot of pictures of aspic and it's kind of visually different than jello, but now you see some of these are from Craiyon and are generated and you're not sure which ones you've already looked past that are not truly photos of aspic and you're not sure what's real and you're put off of your dumb pun by an increasingly demon-haunted world, not to mention aspic. (Actually, I've never tried aspic before. Maybe I'll see if I can get one of my friends to make a vegan aspic for my birthday party. I think it could be upsetting and also tasty and informative and that's what I'm about, personally. Have you tried aspic? Tell me what you thought of it.) Search engines Speaking of search engines, search engines are worse. Results are worse. The podcast Search Engine (which also covers other topics) has a nice episode saying that this is because of the growing hoardes of SEO-gaming low-quality websites and discussing the history of these things, as well as discussing Google's new LLM-generated results. I don't have much to add - I think there is a lot here,...

google ai web speech seo results substack ea tumblr surfing search engines llm gimp strange times homestuck rationalist lesswrong craiyon eukaryote

LW - Carl Sagan, nuking the moon, and not nuking the moon by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2024 10:10

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Carl Sagan, nuking the moon, and not nuking the moon, published by eukaryote on April 13, 2024 on LessWrong. In 1957, Nobel laureate microbiologist Joshua Lederberg and biostatician J. B. S. Haldane sat down together imagined what would happened if the USSR decided to explode a nuclear weapon on the moon. The Cold War was on, Sputnik had recently been launched, and the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution was coming up - a good time for an awe-inspiring political statement. Maybe they read a recent United Press article about the rumored USSR plans. Nuking the moon would make a powerful political statement on earth, but the radiation and disruption could permanently harm scientific research on the moon. What Lederberg and Haldane did not know was that they were onto something - by the next year, the USSR really investigated the possibility of dropping a nuke on the moon. They called it "Project E-4," one of a series of possible lunar missions. What Lederberg and Haldane definitely did not know was that that same next year, 1958, the US would also study the idea of nuking the moon. They called it "Project A119" and the Air Force commissioned research on it from Leonard Reiffel, a regular military collaborator and physicist at the University of Illinois. He worked with several other scientists, including a then-graduate-student named Carl Sagan. "Why would anyone think it was a good idea to nuke the moon?" That's a great question. Most of us go about our lives comforted by the thought "I would never drop a nuclear weapon on the moon." The truth is that given a lot of power, a nuclear weapon, and a lot of extremely specific circumstances, we too might find ourselves thinking "I should nuke the moon." Reasons to nuke the moon During the Cold War, dropping a nuclear weapon on the moon would show that you had the rocketry needed to aim a nuclear weapon precisely at long distances. It would show off your spacefaring capability. A visible show could reassure your own side and frighten your enemies. It could do the same things for public opinion that putting a man on the moon ultimately did. But it's easier and cheaper: As of the dawn of ICBMs you already have long-distance rockets designed to hold nuclear weapons Nuclear weapons do not require "breathable atmosphere" or "water" You do not have to bring the nuclear weapon safely back from the moon. There's not a lot of English-language information online about the USSR E-4 program to nuke the moon. The main reason they cite is wanting to prove that USSR rockets could hit the moon.4 The nuclear weapon attached wasn't even the main point! That explosion would just be the convenient visual proof. They probably had more reasons, or at least more nuance to that one reason - again, there's not a lot of information accessible to me.* We have more information on the US plan, which was declassified in 1990, and probably some of the motivations for the US plan were also considered by the USSR for theirs. Military Scare USSR Demonstrate nuclear deterrent1 Results would be educational for doing space warfare in the future2 Political Reassure US people of US space capabilities (which were in doubt after the USSR launched Sputnik) More specifically, that we have a nuclear deterrent1 "A demonstration of advanced technological capability"2 Scientific (they were going to send up batteries of instruments somewhat before the nuking, stationed at distances from the nuke site) Determine thermal conductivity from measuring rate of cooling (post-nuking) (especially of below-dust moon material) Understand moon seismology better via via seismograph-type readings from various points at distance from the explosion And especially get some sense of the physical properties of the core of the moon2 Reasons to not nuke the moon In the USSR, Aleksandr...

LW - Carl Sagan, nuking the moon, and not nuking the moon by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2024 10:10

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Carl Sagan, nuking the moon, and not nuking the moon, published by eukaryote on April 13, 2024 on LessWrong. In 1957, Nobel laureate microbiologist Joshua Lederberg and biostatician J. B. S. Haldane sat down together imagined what would happened if the USSR decided to explode a nuclear weapon on the moon. The Cold War was on, Sputnik had recently been launched, and the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution was coming up - a good time for an awe-inspiring political statement. Maybe they read a recent United Press article about the rumored USSR plans. Nuking the moon would make a powerful political statement on earth, but the radiation and disruption could permanently harm scientific research on the moon. What Lederberg and Haldane did not know was that they were onto something - by the next year, the USSR really investigated the possibility of dropping a nuke on the moon. They called it "Project E-4," one of a series of possible lunar missions. What Lederberg and Haldane definitely did not know was that that same next year, 1958, the US would also study the idea of nuking the moon. They called it "Project A119" and the Air Force commissioned research on it from Leonard Reiffel, a regular military collaborator and physicist at the University of Illinois. He worked with several other scientists, including a then-graduate-student named Carl Sagan. "Why would anyone think it was a good idea to nuke the moon?" That's a great question. Most of us go about our lives comforted by the thought "I would never drop a nuclear weapon on the moon." The truth is that given a lot of power, a nuclear weapon, and a lot of extremely specific circumstances, we too might find ourselves thinking "I should nuke the moon." Reasons to nuke the moon During the Cold War, dropping a nuclear weapon on the moon would show that you had the rocketry needed to aim a nuclear weapon precisely at long distances. It would show off your spacefaring capability. A visible show could reassure your own side and frighten your enemies. It could do the same things for public opinion that putting a man on the moon ultimately did. But it's easier and cheaper: As of the dawn of ICBMs you already have long-distance rockets designed to hold nuclear weapons Nuclear weapons do not require "breathable atmosphere" or "water" You do not have to bring the nuclear weapon safely back from the moon. There's not a lot of English-language information online about the USSR E-4 program to nuke the moon. The main reason they cite is wanting to prove that USSR rockets could hit the moon.4 The nuclear weapon attached wasn't even the main point! That explosion would just be the convenient visual proof. They probably had more reasons, or at least more nuance to that one reason - again, there's not a lot of information accessible to me.* We have more information on the US plan, which was declassified in 1990, and probably some of the motivations for the US plan were also considered by the USSR for theirs. Military Scare USSR Demonstrate nuclear deterrent1 Results would be educational for doing space warfare in the future2 Political Reassure US people of US space capabilities (which were in doubt after the USSR launched Sputnik) More specifically, that we have a nuclear deterrent1 "A demonstration of advanced technological capability"2 Scientific (they were going to send up batteries of instruments somewhat before the nuking, stationed at distances from the nuke site) Determine thermal conductivity from measuring rate of cooling (post-nuking) (especially of below-dust moon material) Understand moon seismology better via via seismograph-type readings from various points at distance from the explosion And especially get some sense of the physical properties of the core of the moon2 Reasons to not nuke the moon In the USSR, Aleksandr...

LW - Book review: Cuisine and Empire by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 22, 2024 19:55

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Book review: Cuisine and Empire, published by eukaryote on January 22, 2024 on LessWrong. People began cooking our food maybe two million years ago and have not stopped since. Cooking is almost a cultural universal. Bits of raw fruit or leaves or flesh are a rare occasional treat or garnish - we prefer our meals transformed. There are other millennia-old procedures we do to make raw ingredients into cooking: separating parts, drying, soaking, slicing, grinding, freezing, fermenting. We do all of this for good reason: Cooking makes food more calorically efficient and less dangerous. Other techniques contribute to this, or help preserve food over time. Also, it tastes good. Cuisine and Empire by Rachel Laudan is an overview of human history by major cuisines - the kind of things people cooked and ate. It is not trying to be a history of cultures, agriculture, or nutrition, although it touches on all of these things incidentally, as well as some histories of things you might not expect, like identity and technology and philosophy. Grains (plant seeds) and roots were the staples of most cuisines. They're relatively calorically dense, storeable, and grow within a season. Remote islands really had to make do with whatever early colonists brought with them. Not only did pre-Columbian Hawaii not have metal, they didn't have clay to make pots with! They cooked stuff in pits. Running in the background throughout a lot of this is the clock of domestication - with enough time and enough breeding you can make some really naturally-digestible varieties out of something you'd initially have to process to within an inch of its life. It takes time, quantity, and ideally knowledge and the ability to experiment with different strains to get better breeds. Potatoes came out of the Andes and were eaten alongside quinoa. Early potato cuisines didn't seem to eat a lot of whole or cut-up potatoes - they processed the shit out of them, chopping, drying or freeze-drying them, soaking them, reconstituting them. They had to do a lot of these because the potatoes weren't as consumer-friendly as modern breeds - less digestible composition, more phytotoxins, etc. As cities and societies caught on, so did wealth. Wealthy people all around the world started making "high cuisines" of highly-processed, calorically dense, tasty, rare, and fancifully prepared ingredients. Meat and oil and sweeteners and spices and alcohol and sauces. Palace cooks came together and developed elaborate philosophical and nutritional theories to declare what was good to eat. Things people nigh-universally like to eat: Salt Fat Sugar Starch Sauces Finely-ground or processed things A variety of flavors, textures, options, etc Meat Drugs Alcohol Stimulants (chocolate, caffeine, tea, etc) Things they believe are healthy Things they believe are high-class Pure or uncontaminated things (both morally and from, like, lead) All people like these things, and low cuisines were not devoid of joy, but these properties showed up way more in high cuisines than low cuisines. Low cuisines tended to be a lot of grain or tubers and bits of whatever cooked or pickled vegetables or meat (often wild-caught, like fish or game) could be scrounged up. In the classic way that oppressive social structures become self-reinforcing, rich people generally thought that rich people were better-off eating this kind of diet - carefully balanced - whereas it wasn't just necessary, it was good for the poor to eat meager, boring foods. They were physically built for that. Eating a wealthy diet would harm them. In lots of early civilizations, food and sacrifice of food was an important part of religion. Gods were attracted by offered meals or meat and good smells, and blessed harvests. There were gods of bread and corn and rice. One thing I appreciate about this...

running eating gods empire speech cooking meat remote palace ea wealthy bits cuisine potatoes andes grains rationalist lesswrong rachel laudan eukaryote

LW - Book review: Cuisine and Empire by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 22, 2024 19:55

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Book review: Cuisine and Empire, published by eukaryote on January 22, 2024 on LessWrong. People began cooking our food maybe two million years ago and have not stopped since. Cooking is almost a cultural universal. Bits of raw fruit or leaves or flesh are a rare occasional treat or garnish - we prefer our meals transformed. There are other millennia-old procedures we do to make raw ingredients into cooking: separating parts, drying, soaking, slicing, grinding, freezing, fermenting. We do all of this for good reason: Cooking makes food more calorically efficient and less dangerous. Other techniques contribute to this, or help preserve food over time. Also, it tastes good. Cuisine and Empire by Rachel Laudan is an overview of human history by major cuisines - the kind of things people cooked and ate. It is not trying to be a history of cultures, agriculture, or nutrition, although it touches on all of these things incidentally, as well as some histories of things you might not expect, like identity and technology and philosophy. Grains (plant seeds) and roots were the staples of most cuisines. They're relatively calorically dense, storeable, and grow within a season. Remote islands really had to make do with whatever early colonists brought with them. Not only did pre-Columbian Hawaii not have metal, they didn't have clay to make pots with! They cooked stuff in pits. Running in the background throughout a lot of this is the clock of domestication - with enough time and enough breeding you can make some really naturally-digestible varieties out of something you'd initially have to process to within an inch of its life. It takes time, quantity, and ideally knowledge and the ability to experiment with different strains to get better breeds. Potatoes came out of the Andes and were eaten alongside quinoa. Early potato cuisines didn't seem to eat a lot of whole or cut-up potatoes - they processed the shit out of them, chopping, drying or freeze-drying them, soaking them, reconstituting them. They had to do a lot of these because the potatoes weren't as consumer-friendly as modern breeds - less digestible composition, more phytotoxins, etc. As cities and societies caught on, so did wealth. Wealthy people all around the world started making "high cuisines" of highly-processed, calorically dense, tasty, rare, and fancifully prepared ingredients. Meat and oil and sweeteners and spices and alcohol and sauces. Palace cooks came together and developed elaborate philosophical and nutritional theories to declare what was good to eat. Things people nigh-universally like to eat: Salt Fat Sugar Starch Sauces Finely-ground or processed things A variety of flavors, textures, options, etc Meat Drugs Alcohol Stimulants (chocolate, caffeine, tea, etc) Things they believe are healthy Things they believe are high-class Pure or uncontaminated things (both morally and from, like, lead) All people like these things, and low cuisines were not devoid of joy, but these properties showed up way more in high cuisines than low cuisines. Low cuisines tended to be a lot of grain or tubers and bits of whatever cooked or pickled vegetables or meat (often wild-caught, like fish or game) could be scrounged up. In the classic way that oppressive social structures become self-reinforcing, rich people generally thought that rich people were better-off eating this kind of diet - carefully balanced - whereas it wasn't just necessary, it was good for the poor to eat meager, boring foods. They were physically built for that. Eating a wealthy diet would harm them. In lots of early civilizations, food and sacrifice of food was an important part of religion. Gods were attracted by offered meals or meat and good smells, and blessed harvests. There were gods of bread and corn and rice. One thing I appreciate about this...

running eating gods empire speech cooking meat remote palace ea wealthy bits cuisine potatoes andes grains rationalist lesswrong rachel laudan eukaryote

LW - Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11 by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 7, 2024 56:42

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11, published by eukaryote on January 7, 2024 on LessWrong. [Header image: Photo of the lunar lander taken during Apollo 11.] In 1969, after successfully bringing men back from landing on the moon, the astronauts, spacecraft, and all the samples from the moon surface were quarantined for 21 days. This was to account for the possibility that they were carrying hostile moon germs. Once the quarantine was up and the astronauts were not sick, and extensive biological testing on them and the samples showed no signs of infection or unexpected life, the astronauts were released. We know now that the moon is sterile. We didn't always know this. That was one of the things we hoped to find out from the Apollo 11 program, which was the first time not only that people would visit another celestial body, but that material from another celestial body would be brought back in a relatively pristine fashion to earth. The possibilities were huge. The possibilities included life, although nobody thought this was especially likely. But in that slim chance of life, there was a chance that life would be harmful to humans or the earth environment. Human history is full of organisms wrecking havoc when introduced to a new location - smallpox in the Americas, rats in Pacific Islands, water hyacinth outside of South America. NASA, Congress, and various other federal agencies were apparently convinced to spend millions of dollars building an extensive new facility and take extensive other measures to address this possibility. This is how a completely abstract argument about alien germs was taken seriously and mitigated at great effort and expense during the 1969 Apollo landing. I've added my sources throughout, but a lot of this work draws from two very good pieces: Michael Meltzer's When Biospheres Collide [1] and Mangus and Larsen's Lunar Receiving Laboratory Project History[2]. Terms Forward contamination: The risk that organisms from earth would be present on a spacecraft and would be carried onto a planet (or other celestial body). They might even be able to replicate there. The risks from forward contamination are: Harming current research efforts (including determining if there is indigenous life on a planet) Permanently harming future research efforts Permanently disrupting a pristine natural environment (whether or not it has indigenous life) Back contamination: The theoretical risk that organisms indigenous to another celestial body are returned to earth - alongside samples or inadvertently - and replicate in the environment or as a pathogen. The risks from back contamination are: Earth ecosystems, crops, or humans are harmed NASA's modern terms are "restricted vs. unrestricted earth return," about material samples (rocks, dust, gas, etc) returning from celestial bodies. Samples that are understood to be sterile and harmless would not be subjected to quarantine. Since we are now very certain that the moon is sterile, new samples coming back from the moon would be considered unrestricted. (A space agency might still want to handle an unrestricted sample with special precautions, but these would be to keep the sample protected, not because they thought the sample might contain organisms.) Apollo 11 is the first restricted earth return process. Regarding the facility, I default to using "Lunar Receiving Laboratory" or "LRL" here, which did end up being the name of the facility in question; you will also sometimes see "Lunar Sample Receiving Laboratory" or "LSRL" for the same. How back contamination risks became a concern From 1959, concern over back contamination risk was extremely niche. By 1966, mitigation of back contamination risk had become a requirement for the entire moon landing mission. How did this happen? Forward contamin...

LW - Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11 by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 7, 2024 56:42

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11, published by eukaryote on January 7, 2024 on LessWrong. [Header image: Photo of the lunar lander taken during Apollo 11.] In 1969, after successfully bringing men back from landing on the moon, the astronauts, spacecraft, and all the samples from the moon surface were quarantined for 21 days. This was to account for the possibility that they were carrying hostile moon germs. Once the quarantine was up and the astronauts were not sick, and extensive biological testing on them and the samples showed no signs of infection or unexpected life, the astronauts were released. We know now that the moon is sterile. We didn't always know this. That was one of the things we hoped to find out from the Apollo 11 program, which was the first time not only that people would visit another celestial body, but that material from another celestial body would be brought back in a relatively pristine fashion to earth. The possibilities were huge. The possibilities included life, although nobody thought this was especially likely. But in that slim chance of life, there was a chance that life would be harmful to humans or the earth environment. Human history is full of organisms wrecking havoc when introduced to a new location - smallpox in the Americas, rats in Pacific Islands, water hyacinth outside of South America. NASA, Congress, and various other federal agencies were apparently convinced to spend millions of dollars building an extensive new facility and take extensive other measures to address this possibility. This is how a completely abstract argument about alien germs was taken seriously and mitigated at great effort and expense during the 1969 Apollo landing. I've added my sources throughout, but a lot of this work draws from two very good pieces: Michael Meltzer's When Biospheres Collide [1] and Mangus and Larsen's Lunar Receiving Laboratory Project History[2]. Terms Forward contamination: The risk that organisms from earth would be present on a spacecraft and would be carried onto a planet (or other celestial body). They might even be able to replicate there. The risks from forward contamination are: Harming current research efforts (including determining if there is indigenous life on a planet) Permanently harming future research efforts Permanently disrupting a pristine natural environment (whether or not it has indigenous life) Back contamination: The theoretical risk that organisms indigenous to another celestial body are returned to earth - alongside samples or inadvertently - and replicate in the environment or as a pathogen. The risks from back contamination are: Earth ecosystems, crops, or humans are harmed NASA's modern terms are "restricted vs. unrestricted earth return," about material samples (rocks, dust, gas, etc) returning from celestial bodies. Samples that are understood to be sterile and harmless would not be subjected to quarantine. Since we are now very certain that the moon is sterile, new samples coming back from the moon would be considered unrestricted. (A space agency might still want to handle an unrestricted sample with special precautions, but these would be to keep the sample protected, not because they thought the sample might contain organisms.) Apollo 11 is the first restricted earth return process. Regarding the facility, I default to using "Lunar Receiving Laboratory" or "LRL" here, which did end up being the name of the facility in question; you will also sometimes see "Lunar Sample Receiving Laboratory" or "LSRL" for the same. How back contamination risks became a concern From 1959, concern over back contamination risk was extremely niche. By 1966, mitigation of back contamination risk had become a requirement for the entire moon landing mission. How did this happen? Forward contamin...

TWiEVO 91: Meet your very distant cousins

This Week in Evolution

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2023 91:50

Nels and Vincent discuss new findings using phylogenetic approaches about how complex eukaryotic cells emerged from prokaryotic ancestors, which firmly place eukaryotes as a clade nested within the Asgard archaea. Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent RacanielloS Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email Become a patron of TWiEVO Links for this episode •Join the MicrobeTV Discord server •Heimdallarchaeial ancestry of eukaryotes (Nature) Science Picks Nels – Juneteenth issue of Cell – collection of essays from black and brown scientists Vincent – Tara Oceans Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

evolution google podcasts mutation asgard natural selection trampled nels phylogenetics distant cousins eukaryote twievo

LW - Will the growing deer prion epidemic spread to humans? Why not? by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2023 21:45

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Will the growing deer prion epidemic spread to humans? Why not?, published by eukaryote on June 25, 2023 on LessWrong. Helpful background reading: What's the deal with prions? A novel lethal infectious neurological disease emerged in American deer a few decades ago. Since then, it's spread rapidly across the continent. In areas where the disease is found, it can be very common in the deer there. Chronic wasting disease isn't caused by a bacteria, virus, protist, or worm – it's a prion, which is a little misshapen version of a protein that occurs naturally in the nervous systems of deer. Chemically, the prion is made of exactly the same stuff as its regular counterpart – it's a string of the same amino acids in the same order, just shaped a little differently. Both the prion and its regular version (PrP) are monomers, single units that naturally stack on top of each other or very similar proteins. The prion's trick is that as other PrP moves to stack atop it, the prion reshapes them – just a little – so that they also become prions. These chains of prions are quite stable, and, over time, they form long, persistent clusters in the tissue of their victims. We know of only a few prion diseases in humans. They're caused by random chance misfolds, a genetic predisposition for PrP to misfold into a prion, accidental cross-contamination via medical supplies, or, rarely, from the consumption of prion-infected meat. Every known animal prions is a misfold of the same specific protein, PrP. PrP is expressed in the nervous system, particularly in the brain – so infections cause neurological symptoms and physical changes to the structure of the brain. Prion diseases are slow to develop (up to decades), incurable, and always fatal. There are two known infectious prion diseases in people. One is kuru, which caused an epidemic among tribes who practiced funerary cannibalism in Papua New Guinea. The other is mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) AKA Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which was first seen in humans in 1996 in the UK, and comes from cows. Chronic wasting disease (CWD). Is, like every other animal prion disease, a misfold of PrP. PrP is quite similar in both humans and deer. Is found in multiple deer species which are commonly eaten by humans. Can be carried in deer asymptomatically. But it doesn't seem to infect people. Is it ever going to? If a newly-emerged virus were sweeping across the US and killing deer, which could be spread through consuming infected meat, I would think “oh NO.” I'd need to see very good evidence to stop sounding the alarm. Now, the fact that it's been a few decades, and it hasn't spread to humans yet, is definitely some kind of evidence about safety. But are we humans basically safe from it, or are we living on borrowed time? If you live in an area where CWD has been detected, should you eat the deer? Sidenote: Usually, you'll see “BSE” used for the disease in cows and “VCJ” for the disease in humans. But they're caused by the same agent and this essay is operating under a zoonotic One Health kind of stance, so I'm just calling the disease BSE here. (As well as the prion that causes it, when I can get away with it.) In short The current version of CWD is not infectious to people. We checked. BSE showed that prions can spill over, and there's no reason a new CWD variant will never do the same. The more cases there are, the more likely it is to spill over. That said, BSE did not spill over very effectively. It was always incredibly rare in humans. It's an awful disease to get, but the chance of getting it is tiny. Prions in general have a harder time spilling over between species than viruses do. CWD might behave somewhat differently but probably will stay hampered by the species barrier. Why do I think all of thi...

american uk humans speech spread epidemics chronic helpful ea deer papua new guinea prp one health bse cwd chemically prions prion rationalist lesswrong eukaryote

LW - Will the growing deer prion epidemic spread to humans? Why not? by eukaryote

LessWrong Curated Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2023 21:45

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Will the growing deer prion epidemic spread to humans? Why not?, published by eukaryote on June 25, 2023 on LessWrong. Helpful background reading: What's the deal with prions? A novel lethal infectious neurological disease emerged in American deer a few decades ago. Since then, it's spread rapidly across the continent. In areas where the disease is found, it can be very common in the deer there. Chronic wasting disease isn't caused by a bacteria, virus, protist, or worm – it's a prion, which is a little misshapen version of a protein that occurs naturally in the nervous systems of deer. Chemically, the prion is made of exactly the same stuff as its regular counterpart – it's a string of the same amino acids in the same order, just shaped a little differently. Both the prion and its regular version (PrP) are monomers, single units that naturally stack on top of each other or very similar proteins. The prion's trick is that as other PrP moves to stack atop it, the prion reshapes them – just a little – so that they also become prions. These chains of prions are quite stable, and, over time, they form long, persistent clusters in the tissue of their victims. We know of only a few prion diseases in humans. They're caused by random chance misfolds, a genetic predisposition for PrP to misfold into a prion, accidental cross-contamination via medical supplies, or, rarely, from the consumption of prion-infected meat. Every known animal prions is a misfold of the same specific protein, PrP. PrP is expressed in the nervous system, particularly in the brain – so infections cause neurological symptoms and physical changes to the structure of the brain. Prion diseases are slow to develop (up to decades), incurable, and always fatal. There are two known infectious prion diseases in people. One is kuru, which caused an epidemic among tribes who practiced funerary cannibalism in Papua New Guinea. The other is mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) AKA Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which was first seen in humans in 1996 in the UK, and comes from cows. Chronic wasting disease (CWD). Is, like every other animal prion disease, a misfold of PrP. PrP is quite similar in both humans and deer. Is found in multiple deer species which are commonly eaten by humans. Can be carried in deer asymptomatically. But it doesn't seem to infect people. Is it ever going to? If a newly-emerged virus were sweeping across the US and killing deer, which could be spread through consuming infected meat, I would think “oh NO.” I'd need to see very good evidence to stop sounding the alarm. Now, the fact that it's been a few decades, and it hasn't spread to humans yet, is definitely some kind of evidence about safety. But are we humans basically safe from it, or are we living on borrowed time? If you live in an area where CWD has been detected, should you eat the deer? Sidenote: Usually, you'll see “BSE” used for the disease in cows and “VCJ” for the disease in humans. But they're caused by the same agent and this essay is operating under a zoonotic One Health kind of stance, so I'm just calling the disease BSE here. (As well as the prion that causes it, when I can get away with it.) In short The current version of CWD is not infectious to people. We checked. BSE showed that prions can spill over, and there's no reason a new CWD variant will never do the same. The more cases there are, the more likely it is to spill over. That said, BSE did not spill over very effectively. It was always incredibly rare in humans. It's an awful disease to get, but the chance of getting it is tiny. Prions in general have a harder time spilling over between species than viruses do. CWD might behave somewhat differently but probably will stay hampered by the species barrier. Why do I think all of thi...

american uk humans speech spread epidemics chronic helpful ea deer papua new guinea prp one health bse cwd chemically prions prion rationalist lesswrong eukaryote

"There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)" by Eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2023 19:14

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fRwdkop6tyhi3d22L/there-s-no-such-thing-as-a-tree-phylogeneticallyThis is a linkpost for https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-tree/[Crossposted from Eukaryote Writes Blog.]So you've heard about how fish aren't a monophyletic group? You've heard about carcinization, the process by which ocean arthropods convergently evolve into crabs? You say you get it now? Sit down. Sit down. Shut up. Listen. You don't know nothing yet.“Trees” are not a coherent phylogenetic category. On the evolutionary tree of plants, trees are regularly interspersed with things that are absolutely, 100% not trees. This means that, for instance, either:The common ancestor of a maple and a mulberry tree was not a tree.The common ancestor of a stinging nettle and a strawberry plant was a tree.And this is true for most trees or non-trees that you can think of.I thought I had a pretty good guess at this, but the situation is far worse than I could have imagined.

tree trees shut eukaryote

Short-chain di-carboxylates as positive allosteric modulators of the pH-dependent pentameric ligand-gated ion channel GLIC: requirement of an intact vestibular pocket

PaperPlayer biorxiv neuroscience

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2023

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2023.03.03.530963v1?rss=1 Authors: Van Renterghem, C., Nemecz, A., Delarue-Cochin, S., Joseph, D., Corringer, P.-J. Abstract: Using a bacterial orthologue of brain pentameric neurotransmitter receptors, we show that the orthotopic/orthosteric agonist site and the adjacent vestibular region are functionally inter-dependent in mediating compound-elicited modulation. We propose that the two sites in the extracellular domain are involved ''in series'', a mechanism which may have relevance to Eukaryote receptors. We show that short-chain di-carboxylate compounds are positive modulators of GLIC. The most potent compound identified is fumarate, known to occupy the orthotopic/orthosteric site in previously published crystal structures. We show that intracellular pH modulates GLIC allosteric transitions, as previously known for extracellular pH. We report a caesium to sodium permeability ratio (PCs/PNa) of 0.54 for GLIC ion pore. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info Podcast created by Paper Player, LLC

positive llc pocket copy chain requirements dependent intact vestibular gated biorxiv glic ligand ion channel eukaryote

Optimization of energy production and central carbon metabolism in a non-respiring eukaryote

PaperPlayer biorxiv cell biology

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 29, 2022

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2022.12.29.522219v1?rss=1 Authors: Alam, S., Gu, Y., Reichert, P., Bahler, J., Oliferenko, S. Abstract: Most eukaryotes respire oxygen, using it to generate biomass and energy. Yet, a few organisms lost the capacity to respire. Understanding how they manage biomass and energy production may illuminate the critical points at which respiration feeds into central carbon metabolism and explain possible routes to its optimization. Here we use two related fission yeasts, Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Schizosaccharomyces japonicus, as a comparative model system. We show that although S. japonicus does not respire oxygen, unlike S. pombe, it is capable of efficient NADH oxidation, amino acid synthesis and ATP generation. We probe possible optimization strategies using stable isotope tracing metabolomics, mass isotopologue distribution analysis, genetics, and physiological experiments. S. japonicus appears to have optimized cytosolic NADH oxidation via glycerol-3-phosphate synthesis. It runs a fully bifurcated TCA cycle, supporting higher amino acid production. Finally, it uses the pentose phosphate pathway both to support faster biomass generation and as a shunt to optimize glycolytic flux, thus producing more ATP than the respiro-fermenting S. pombe. By comparing two related organisms with vastly different metabolic strategies, our work highlights the versatility and plasticity of central carbon metabolism in eukaryotes, illuminating critical adaptations supporting the preferential use of glycolysis over oxidative phosphorylation. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info Podcast created by Paper Player, LLC

llc copy carbon gu optimization metabolism atp tca reichert energy production nadh biorxiv eukaryote

28: 光岡幸一さん (後半) 22.08.26

JAPAN UNK RADIO

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 2, 2022 56:59

東京を拠点に活動する美術家の光岡幸一さんをお招きした回の後半です。前半とあわせて、いただいたおたより全てに答えていただきました。偶然居合わせた画家の高橋慎太郎さんも引き続き会話に加わっていただいています。＊野外収録（京都・鴨川）のため、工事音や蝉の声等の環境音が入っています。 (0:00- ) 森山大道がコンビニでおにぎり買うなら何味 (4:15- ) おすすめの芸人ラジオ (17:35- ) 作品が生まれるキッカケ / コミュニケーションで心掛けていること (28:35- ) 対象との関わり方をさぐる (34:00- ) 関わり方の線引きへの意識 (37:25- ) 最も古い作品制作の記憶 (43:10- ) 最近あった面白い話 (46:30- ) 中央防波堤外側埋立地見学会 (53:55- ) ending *読み上げおたより：こっこさん（20代京都）、ピッピ♀さん（20代大阪）、ぶたまんさん（30代東京）、ぴょんぴょんさん（20代千葉）、宝島さん（20代東京）、しげるさん（20代東京）、あんぱんのおへそさん（30代京都）、ちはるさん（10代大阪） TOPICS マユリカのうなげろりん！！ハライチのターン！ GERA(ラジオ母ちゃん、吉住の聞かん坊な煩悩ガール、肥溜めラジオ）ダイアンのTOKYO STYLE ガクヅケゴスケメグちゃん M1グランプリあらびき団路上生活者の物資を積んだ台車を治して返す作品コロコロコミッククリスタルケイのあの曲舞洲スラッジセンター（〇フンデルトヴァッサー　×フンボルトテッサ―）中央防波堤外側埋立地光岡幸一 / ミツオカ　コウイチ http://mitsuoka.info/ 1990 愛知県で生まれた。 2009/04 武蔵野美術大学建築学科入学 2011/04 武蔵野美術大学油絵学科３年次編入学 2013/04 東京藝術大学大学院油絵学科入学 2016/03 東京藝術大学大学院油画科修了個展 2022/05 「poetry taping」nadiff apart(東京)企画・宮下 2022/01 「ひぃ～～～～゜～～ゅ～＾～～う～～」Token Art Center(東京) 2021/02 「もしもといつも」block house(東京)/企画・吉田山　 2019/08 「あっちとこっち」fl田sh(東京)/企画・fl田sh 2015/06 「うつりゆく、そこに」space wunderkammer(東京) 直近のグループ展 2022/06 「ghost liness2」studio ghost(東京)企画・保良雄/渡辺志桜里 2022/05 「おなじみのうごき」art center ongoing(東京) 2022/03 「豊田市制70周年記念郷土作家美術作品購入事業・芸術の隣人たち」豊田市民ギャラリー(愛知) 2022/03 「Tokyo Creative Salon」日本橋外壁(東京) 2021/12 「とよた街中芸術祭」豊田市美術館/七州城(愛知) 2021/10 「のけもの」3331ARTS CHIYODA(東京)企画・吉田山 2021/10 「写真新世紀2021」東京都写真美術館(東京) 2021/10 「ATAMI ART GRANT」ホテルニューアカオ(静岡) 2021/08 「K-TEN27」豊田市美術館市民ギャラリー(愛知) 2021/07 「vernacular communication」TAMA ART CENTER(東京) 2021/07 「群馬青年ビエンナーレ2021」群馬県立近代美術館(群馬) 2021/05 「project ATAMI」ホテルニューアカオ(静岡) 2021/03 「水に流せば」EUKARYOTE(東京)企画・吉田山 2021/02 「広島市現代美術館企画　どこ×デザ」旧日本銀行広島支店(広島) 受賞歴写真新世紀2021 優秀賞　横田大輔選豊田市文化新人賞広島市現代美術館企画「どこ×デザ」蔵屋美香 Tokyo　Frontline　Photoaward2017 大山光平審査員賞第１４回・写真1_wallファイナリスト第１３回・写真1_wallファイナリスト群馬青年ビエンナーレ２０１５　奨励賞群馬青年ビエンナーレ２０１２　入選

eukaryote

27: 光岡幸一さん (前半) 22.08.26

JAPAN UNK RADIO

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2022 51:43

東京を拠点に活動する美術家の光岡幸一さんがはるばる京都までお越しくださり、鴨川で野外収録を行いました。前半では、写真を取り入れた作品に関しての話や、いただいたお便りを通して文字のシリーズについて話したりしています。偶然居合わせた画家の高橋慎太郎さんも一部会話に加わっていただいています。 (0:00- ) opening (5:07- ) 都市の暗渠（渋谷の泥のシリーズ） (24:57- ) 写真との関わり方（1WALLの頃） (37:00- ) 熱海のホテルの作品 / UNK名前批判 (43:13- ) 文字のシリーズがはじまったキッカケ *読み上げおたより：えりなさん（20代神奈川）、大介さん（40代京都） TOPICS 芦川さん（光岡さんの友人）渋谷の泥のシリーズ（もしもといつも）豊田市美術館・市民ギャラリーブロックハウス（泥のシリーズを発表した渋谷の地下にあるギャラリー）暗渠新世紀の審査会のアーカイブ動画（22:50あたりから）アンダーグラウンド（畠山直哉）関東ローム層 1WALL タルボットカメラルシダ熱海のホテルの作品（ATAMI ART GRANT）ガムテープで文字をデザインしてるおじさん（佐藤修悦）ミニマル/コンセプチュアル(兵庫県立美術館) 光岡幸一 / ミツオカ　コウイチ http://mitsuoka.info/ 1990 愛知県で生まれた。 2009/04 武蔵野美術大学建築学科入学 2011/04 武蔵野美術大学油絵学科３年次編入学 2013/04 東京藝術大学大学院油絵学科入学 2016/03 東京藝術大学大学院油画科修了個展 2022/05 「poetry taping」nadiff apart(東京)企画・宮下 2022/01 「ひぃ～～～～゜～～ゅ～＾～～う～～」Token Art Center(東京) 2021/02 「もしもといつも」block house(東京)/企画・吉田山　 2019/08 「あっちとこっち」fl田sh(東京)/企画・fl田sh 2015/06 「うつりゆく、そこに」space wunderkammer(東京) 直近のグループ展 2022/06 「ghost liness2」studio ghost(東京)企画・保良雄/渡辺志桜里 2022/05 「おなじみのうごき」art center ongoing(東京) 2022/03 「豊田市制70周年記念郷土作家美術作品購入事業・芸術の隣人たち」豊田市民ギャラリー(愛知) 2022/03 「Tokyo Creative Salon」日本橋外壁(東京) 2021/12 「とよた街中芸術祭」豊田市美術館/七州城(愛知) 2021/10 「のけもの」3331ARTS CHIYODA(東京)企画・吉田山 2021/10 「写真新世紀2021」東京都写真美術館(東京) 2021/10 「ATAMI ART GRANT」ホテルニューアカオ(静岡) 2021/08 「K-TEN27」豊田市美術館市民ギャラリー(愛知) 2021/07 「vernacular communication」TAMA ART CENTER(東京) 2021/07 「群馬青年ビエンナーレ2021」群馬県立近代美術館(群馬) 2021/05 「project ATAMI」ホテルニューアカオ(静岡) 2021/03 「水に流せば」EUKARYOTE(東京)企画・吉田山 2021/02 「広島市現代美術館企画　どこ×デザ」旧日本銀行広島支店(広島) 受賞歴写真新世紀2021 優秀賞　横田大輔選豊田市文化新人賞広島市現代美術館企画「どこ×デザ」蔵屋美香 Tokyo　Frontline　Photoaward2017 大山光平審査員賞第１４回・写真1_wallファイナリスト第１３回・写真1_wallファイナリスト群馬青年ビエンナーレ２０１５　奨励賞群馬青年ビエンナーレ２０１２　入選

unk eukaryote

LW - Fiber arts, mysterious dodecahedrons, and waiting on “Eureka!” by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 5, 2022 14:26

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Fiber arts, mysterious dodecahedrons, and waiting on “Eureka!”, published by eukaryote on August 4, 2022 on LessWrong. Part 1: The anomaly This story starts, as many stories do, with my girlfriend 3D-printing me a supernatural artifact. Specifically, one of my favorite SCPs, SCP-184. We had some problems with the print. Did the problems have anything to do with printing a model of a mysterious artifact that makes spaces bigger on the inside, via a small precisely-calibrated box? I would say no, there's no way that be related. Anyway, the image used for the SCP in question, and thus also the final printed model, is based a Roman dodecahedron. Roman dodecahedrons are a particular shape of metal object that have been dug up in digs from all over the Roman period, and we have no idea why they exist. Many theories have been advanced. You might have seen these in an image that was going around the internet, which ended by suggesting that the object would work perfectly for knitting the fingers of gloves. There isn't an alternative clear explanation for what these are. A tool for measuring coins? A ruler for calculating distances? A sort of Roman fidget spinner? This author thinks it displays a date and has a neat explanation as for why. (Experimental archaeology is so cool, y'all.) Whatever the purpose of the Roman dodecahedron was, I'm pretty sure it's not (as the meme implies is obvious) for knitting glove fingers.1 Why? 1: The holes are always all different sizes, and you don't need that to make glove fingers. 2: You could just do this with a donut with pegs in it, you don't need a precisely welded dodecahedron. It does work for knitting glove fingers, you just don't need something this complicated. 3: The Romans hadn't invented knitting. Part 2: The Ancient Romans couldn't knit Wait, what? Yeah, the Romans couldn't knit. The Ancient Greeks couldn't knit, the Ancient Egyptians couldn't knit. Knitting took a while to take off outside of the Middle East and the West, but still, almost all of the Imperial Chinese dynasties wouldn't have known how. Knitting is a pretty recent invention, time-wise. The earliest knit objects we have are from Egypt around 1000 CE. This is especially surprising because knitting is useful for two big reasons: First, it's very easy to do. It takes yarn and two sticks and children can learn how. This is pretty rare for fabric manufacturing – compare, for instance, weaving, which takes an entire loom. Sidenote: Do you know your fabrics? This next section will make way more sense if you do. Woven fabricKnit fabricCommonly found in: trousers, collared/button up shirts, bedsheets, dish towels, woven boxers, quilts, coats, etc. Not stretchy. Loose threads won't make the whole cloth unravel.Commonly found in: T-shirts, polo shirts, leggings, underwear, anything made of jersey fabric, sweaters, sweatpants, socks.Stretchy. If you pull on a lose thread, the cloth unravels. Second, and oft-underappreciated, knitted fabric is stretchy. We're spoiled by the riches of elastic fabric today, but it wasn't always so. Modern elastic fabric uses synthetic materials like spandex or neoprene; the older version was natural latex rubber, and it seems to have taken until the 1800s to use rubber to make clothing stretchy. Knit fabric stretches without any of those. Before knitting, your options were limited – you could only make clothing that didn't stretch, which I think explains a lot of why medieval and earlier clothing “looks that way”. A lot of belts and drapey fabric. If something is form-fitting, it's probably laced. (.Or just more-closely tailored, which unrelatedly became more of a thing later in the medieval period.) You could also use woven fabric on the bias, which stretches a little. Medieval Europe made stockings from fabric cut like this. Imagine a sock ma...

LW - Fiber arts, mysterious dodecahedrons, and waiting on “Eureka!” by eukaryote

The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong Top Posts

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 5, 2022 14:26

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Fiber arts, mysterious dodecahedrons, and waiting on “Eureka!”, published by eukaryote on August 4, 2022 on LessWrong. Part 1: The anomaly This story starts, as many stories do, with my girlfriend 3D-printing me a supernatural artifact. Specifically, one of my favorite SCPs, SCP-184. We had some problems with the print. Did the problems have anything to do with printing a model of a mysterious artifact that makes spaces bigger on the inside, via a small precisely-calibrated box? I would say no, there's no way that be related. Anyway, the image used for the SCP in question, and thus also the final printed model, is based a Roman dodecahedron. Roman dodecahedrons are a particular shape of metal object that have been dug up in digs from all over the Roman period, and we have no idea why they exist. Many theories have been advanced. You might have seen these in an image that was going around the internet, which ended by suggesting that the object would work perfectly for knitting the fingers of gloves. There isn't an alternative clear explanation for what these are. A tool for measuring coins? A ruler for calculating distances? A sort of Roman fidget spinner? This author thinks it displays a date and has a neat explanation as for why. (Experimental archaeology is so cool, y'all.) Whatever the purpose of the Roman dodecahedron was, I'm pretty sure it's not (as the meme implies is obvious) for knitting glove fingers.1 Why? 1: The holes are always all different sizes, and you don't need that to make glove fingers. 2: You could just do this with a donut with pegs in it, you don't need a precisely welded dodecahedron. It does work for knitting glove fingers, you just don't need something this complicated. 3: The Romans hadn't invented knitting. Part 2: The Ancient Romans couldn't knit Wait, what? Yeah, the Romans couldn't knit. The Ancient Greeks couldn't knit, the Ancient Egyptians couldn't knit. Knitting took a while to take off outside of the Middle East and the West, but still, almost all of the Imperial Chinese dynasties wouldn't have known how. Knitting is a pretty recent invention, time-wise. The earliest knit objects we have are from Egypt around 1000 CE. This is especially surprising because knitting is useful for two big reasons: First, it's very easy to do. It takes yarn and two sticks and children can learn how. This is pretty rare for fabric manufacturing – compare, for instance, weaving, which takes an entire loom. Sidenote: Do you know your fabrics? This next section will make way more sense if you do. Woven fabricKnit fabricCommonly found in: trousers, collared/button up shirts, bedsheets, dish towels, woven boxers, quilts, coats, etc. Not stretchy. Loose threads won't make the whole cloth unravel.Commonly found in: T-shirts, polo shirts, leggings, underwear, anything made of jersey fabric, sweaters, sweatpants, socks.Stretchy. If you pull on a lose thread, the cloth unravels. Second, and oft-underappreciated, knitted fabric is stretchy. We're spoiled by the riches of elastic fabric today, but it wasn't always so. Modern elastic fabric uses synthetic materials like spandex or neoprene; the older version was natural latex rubber, and it seems to have taken until the 1800s to use rubber to make clothing stretchy. Knit fabric stretches without any of those. Before knitting, your options were limited – you could only make clothing that didn't stretch, which I think explains a lot of why medieval and earlier clothing “looks that way”. A lot of belts and drapey fabric. If something is form-fitting, it's probably laced. (.Or just more-closely tailored, which unrelatedly became more of a thing later in the medieval period.) You could also use woven fabric on the bias, which stretches a little. Medieval Europe made stockings from fabric cut like this. Imagine a sock ma...

John Boothroyd | How one eukaryote invades and co-opts the cells of another

Pipettes and Politics

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 4, 2022 26:12

John Boothroyd, a professor and administrator at Stanford University, won the 2022 Alice and C. C. Wang Award in Molecular Parasitology, which recognizes established investigators who are making seminal contributions to the field of molecular parasitology. Boothroyd leads a lab that studies the pathogenesis of parasitic infections, in particular Toxoplasma gondii. He presented his award lecture, "How one eukaryote invades and co-opts the cells of another: The story of the truly audacious Toxoplasma gondii" on Monday, April 4, at the 2022 ASBMB Annual Meeting, held in conjunction with Experimental Biology, in Philadelphia. Learn more about his work: https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/people/122421/boothroyd-honored-for-toxoplasma-gondii-research.

philadelphia stanford university cells invades toxoplasma experimental biology boothroyd eukaryote

Eukaryote

MKW Community Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 9, 2022 2:22

Chill JKMN raps to study/relax to

eukaryote

There"s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) by eukaryote

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2021 12:41

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: There"s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically), published by eukaryote on LessWrong. This is a linkpost for/ [Crossposted from Eukaryote Writes Blog.] So you've heard about how fish aren't a monophyletic group? You've heard about carcinization, the process by which ocean arthropods convergently evolve into crabs? You say you get it now? Sit down. Sit down. Shut up. Listen. You don't know nothing yet. “Trees” are not a coherent phylogenetic category. On the evolutionary tree of plants, trees are regularly interspersed with things that are absolutely, 100% not trees. This means that, for instance, either: The common ancestor of a maple and a mulberry tree was not a tree. The common ancestor of a stinging nettle and a strawberry plant was a tree. And this is true for most trees or non-trees that you can think of. I thought I had a pretty good guess at this, but the situation is far worse than I could have imagined. CLICK TO EXPAND. Partial phylogenetic tree of various plants. TL;DR: Tan is definitely, 100% trees. Yellow is tree-like. Green is 100% not a tree. Sourced mostly from Wikipedia. I learned after making this chart that tree ferns exist (h/t seebs), which I think just emphasizes my point further. Also, h/t kithpendragon for suggestions on improving accessibility of the graph. Why do trees keep happening? First, what is a tree? It's a big long-lived self-supporting plant with leaves and wood. Also of interest to us are the non-tree “woody plants”, like lianas (thick woody vines) and shrubs. They're not trees, but at least to me, it's relatively apparent how a tree could evolve into a shrub, or vice-versa. The confusing part is a tree evolving into a dandelion. (Or vice-versa.) Wood, as you may have guessed by now, is also not a clear phyletic category. But it's a reasonable category – a lignin-dense structure, usually that grows from the exterior and that forms a pretty readily identifiable material when separated from the tree. (.Okay, not the most explainable, but you know wood? You know when you hold something in your hand, and it's made of wood, and you can tell that? Yeah, that thing.) All plants have lignin and cellulose as structural elements – wood is plant matter that is dense with both of these. Botanists don't seem to think it only could have gone one way – for instance, the common ancestor of flowering plants is theorized to have been woody. But we also have pretty clear evidence of recent evolution of woodiness – say, a new plant arrives on a relatively barren island, and some of the offspring of that plant becomes treelike. Of plants native to the Canary Islands, wood independently evolved at least 38 times! One relevant factor is that all woody plants do, in a sense, begin life as herbaceous plants – by and large, a tree sprout shares a lot of properties with any herbaceous plant. Indeed, botanists call this kind of fleshy, soft growth from the center that elongates a plant “primary growth”, and the later growth from towards the outside which causes a plant to thicken is “secondary growth.” In a woody plant, secondary growth also means growing wood and bark – but other plants sometimes do secondary growth as well, like potatoes (in roots) This paper addresses the question. I don't understand a lot of the closely genetic details, but my impression of its thesis is that: Analysis of convergently-evolved woody plants show that the genes for secondary woody growth are similar to primary growth in plants that don't do any secondary growth – even in unrelated plants. And woody growth is an adaption of secondary growth. To abstract a little more, there is a common and useful structure in herbaceous plants that, when slightly tweaked, “dendronizes” them into woody plants. Dendronization – Evolving into a tree-like morphology. (In the style of “carciniz...

green tree speech wood trees wikipedia analysis yellow shut ea tan partial tl canary islands sourced rationalist botanists lesswrong eukaryote

Spaghetti Towers by eukaryote

The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong Top Posts

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2021 4:36

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Spaghetti Towers, published by eukaryote on the AI Alignment Forum. This is a linkpost for/ Here's a pattern I'd like to be able to talk about. It might be known under a certain name somewhere, but if it is, I don't know it. I call it a Spaghetti Tower. It shows up in large complex systems that are built haphazardly. Someone or something builds the first Part A. Later, someone wants to put a second Part B on top of Part A, either out of convenience (a common function, just somewhere to put it) or as a refinement to Part A. Now, suppose you want to tweak Part A. If you do that, you might break Part B, since it interacts with bits of Part A. So you might instead build Part C on top of the previous ones. And by the time your system looks like this, it's much harder to tell what changes you can make to an earlier part without crashing some component, so you're basically relegated to throwing another part on top of the pile. I call these spaghetti towers for two reasons: One, because they tend to quickly take on circuitous knotty tangled structures, like what programmers call “spaghetti code”. (Part of the problem with spaghetti code is that it can lead to spaghetti towers.) Especially since they're usually interwoven in multiple dimensions, and thus look more like this: “Can you just straighten out the yellow one without touching any of the others? Thanks.” Second, because shortsightedness in the design process is a crucial part of spaghetti machines. In order to design a spaghetti system, you throw spaghetti against a wall and see if it sticks. Then, when you want to add another part, you throw more spaghetti until it sticks to that spaghetti. And later, you throw more spaghetti. So it goes. And if you decide that you want to tweak the bottom layer to make it a little more useful – which you might want to do because, say, it was built out of spaghetti – without damaging the next layers of gummy partially-dried spaghetti, well then, good luck. Note that all systems have load-bearing, structural pieces. This does not make them spaghetti towers. The distinction about spaghetti towers is that they have a lot of shoddily-built structural components that are completely unintentional. A bridge has major load-bearing components – they're pretty obvious, strong, elegant, and efficiently support the rest of the structure. A spaghetti tower is more like this. Image from the always-delightful r/DiWHY. (The motto of the spaghetti tower is “Sure, it works fine, as long as you never run lukewarm water through it and unplug the washing machine during thunderstorms.”) Where do spaghetti towers appear? Basically all of biology works like this. Absolutely all of evolution is made by throwing spaghetti against walls and seeing what sticks. (More accurately, throwing nucleic acid against harsh reality and seeing what successfully makes more nucleic acid.) We are 3.5 billion years of hacks in fragile trench coats. Scott Star Codex describes the phenomenon in neurotransmitters, but it's true for all of molecular biology: You know those stories about clueless old people who get to their Gmail account by typing “Google” into Bing, clicking on Google in the Bing search results, typing “Gmail” into Google, and then clicking on Gmail in the Google search results? I am reading about serotonin transmission now, and everything in the human brain works on this principle. If your brain needs to downregulate a neurotransmitter, it'll start by upregulating a completely different neurotransmitter, which upregulates the first neurotransmitter, which hits autoreceptors that downregulate the first neurotransmitter, which then cancel the upregulation, and eventually the neurotransmitter gets downregulated. Meanwhile, my patients are all like “How come this drug that was supposed to cure my depression is givin...

google speech ea gmail bing spaghetti towers part b rationalist eukaryote

Eukaryote

Roger Hanson

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 22, 2021 51:02

We will be streaming videos pertaining to #Science, #History (everything #Historic,, or just #Vintage. We will still be streaming about #Historical #Politics too. The Preatorian is on Both YouTube and Facebook: YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKKK1BD8BM3ZbWuldagf67g Facebook https://www.facebook.com/rogerhanson1973 Check our podcast out too on any of these available platforms. Anchor https://anchor.fm/roger-hanson Breaker https://www.breaker.audio/roger-hanson Google Podcasts https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9lNzUzZTVjL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz Overcast https://overcast.fm/itunes1525023695/roger-hanson Pocket Casts https://pca.st/oikab2vw RadioPublic https://radiopublic.com/roger-hanson-WDVAJV Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/491HEm7bbx4ccXvoJ4RZJh Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/rogerhanson1969 #science #sciencefact #biologystudent #sciencenerd #cosmology #biology #chemistry #scienceiscool #History #Historic #Vintage #HistoricPolitics --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/roger-hanson/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/roger-hanson/support

history science historic vintage eukaryote

Episode 19. The origin of life (with Dr. James Saenz)

Till the bottom

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 25, 2020 81:47

In this episode we go to the root of it all. We sat down with Dr. James Saenz, who leads a research group investigating biological membranes, to talk about the very origin of life. Not long ago, to ponder about life's first steps was an almost esoteric task; this was a problem that Darwin himself thought best to be left entirely for future thinkers to solve. Today, the scientific community has amassed an impressive amount of knowledge and clues about how life arose from absolutely inert matter. The acquisition of this knowledge must be among the most exciting quests that humanity has ever or could ever embark on, surprisingly, it is also one of the most unsung epic stories we can think of. The status quo needs to change and this is our effort to do that. In this episode, we try pin down a list of the features a structure needs to have in order to be worthy of the title "living organism". We also try to be concrete about the environmental conditions that were most likely to be present at the nest of life. Primordial soup? Black smokers? Alkaline hydrothermal vents? Where did all begin? One way or another, "simple" bacteria entered the stage, but, how did we get complex Eukaryote leviathans from these humble beginnings? Yes, we talk about this puzzle too. We close the episode pondering about another "trivial" unsolved problem: is this planet the only one in the universe teeming with life? We hope you enjoy this one and until the next time! Find us in: Our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMXM2Vc0d21wjDt5chP26sQ?view_as=subscriber Our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Tillthebottom/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tillthebottom

black alkaline primordial saenz origin of life eukaryote

203: A magnetotactic consortium under the sea

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2019 58:19

The TWiM team reveals thousands of small novel genes in the human microbiome, and a mutualistic symbiosis between marine protists covered with magnetosome-containing bacteria. Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Elio Schaechter, Michele Swanson and Michael Schmidt Links for this episode Thousands of small novel genesin human microbiome (Cell) A magnetotactic consortiumunder the sea (Nat Micro) Image credit Letters readon TWiM 203 Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission. Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv Become a Patron of TWiM!

music reading open letters thousands frame microbiome microbiology consortium microbes symbiosis orf microbial mutualism twim eukaryote magnetoreception protist

"Future Fossils 101" with Michelle Shevin & Michaelangelo

FUTURE FOSSILS

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2018 90:27

This week's guests are two of the most limber and insightful minds I know, futurist Michelle Shevin and actor-artist "The Ungoogleable" Michaelangelo. Since this is episode one of a whole new hundred episodes – and since I'm a sucker for ceremony and round numbers – this week we're taking a whirlwind tour of this show's recurring themes: how life, mind, culture, psychology, art, and science all change in the Internet Age, and how to live the best lives that we can amidst these transformations...Support the show for exclusive episodes, music, a book club, and more:patreon.com/michaelgarfieldMichelle Shevinmedium.com/@micheboxMichaelangelovoidandimagination.comWe Discuss:• Kronos & Kairos, revisited• Re: JF Martel – Episodes 18 & 71 • The information science of innovation and why Terence McKenna’s Timewave Zero may not be TOTAL hogwash• Book: Geoff West - Scale• Re: “An Oral History of the End of ‘Reality’” – Episode 91 • IS our time unique at all?• WJT Mitchell paraphrase: “We’re all constantly feeling as though everything is about to happen, or perhaps it already has and we just haven’t noticed it”• #presentshock• Did we miss the singularity?• Trapped in the present• MA: “chronopractic adjustments” of pulling your past and future into alignment• MA: “I feel like all expression is a form of deception…I try to look to the deception closest to the truth.”• Plato: “Writing is a step backward from Truth.”• Biological evolution as machine learning and the domestication of humans by technology• MA: “I took a hit of GPS / got lost within the endlessness / gave up the compass in my chest / and oriented to the West”• Michaelangelo – Episode 37 • Evolution’s bias toward paedomorphy / neoteny• MS: “What happens when DNA becomes the substrate for all this information?”• Storing data in the organic cloud• The zone of proximal evolution and how “We can’t invent what we don’t have the parts lying around for”• Every new technology is a remix• David Krakauer – Episode 75 • Dennis McKenna - Episode 88 • Toxoplasmosis mind control and how nobody actually things if “my brain made me do it”• MS: “If we are midwives to new myths, then part of the project is to litter the landscape with the right raw material, so that in the future, the right raw material is just lying around for people to pick up and build the tools with.”• MA: “meme-ifying” (vs. “mummifying”)• Book: Sam Harris – Free Will• Film: Upstream Color• Film: Primer• Book: Peter Watts – Blindsight• Book: Peter Watts – Echopraxia• Re: The Teafaerie – Episode 100 • Re: Erik Davis – Episode 99 • Re: Doug Rushkoff – Episode 67 • Weird Studies Podcast is amazing, their Episode 32 on Eyes Wide Shut• MG: “At the dusk of civilization, our eyes are adjusting to the darkness.”• The digital dark age• Book: Stewart Brand – The Clock of the Long Now• Richard Doyle on Philip K. Dick and the evolutionary arms race of cameras and blind spots leading inexorably toward paranoia and then beyond into metanoia (see also, “The Evolution of Surveillance Part 3: Living in the Belly of the Beast”)• An entropy-driven metabolic arms race inevitab fractal Argus, coated in eyes• When it comes to living through a Dark Age, MA suggests, “I think it comes down to learning how to glow in the dark. The agents of deception are our greatest teachers, in that sense.”• MA: “Increased surveillance creates more performative personalities.”• Re: Mitch Mignano – Episodes 57 & 98 • Elon Musk on Joe Rogan (of course that guy believes in simulation theory)• Song: Yeasayer’s “Under The Glass of the Microscope”• Linear, Circular, Helical time• MS: “Planning often disguises itself as prediction”• What is causation, anyway?• Possibility as a fractal branching lightning bolt from potential to actual• MA: “Scrye-ogenic Future” in a crystalline model of time• MA: synchronicities vs. “synchroniceties”• Book: Julian Jaynes – The Bicameral Mind• Daniel Dennett’s “software archeology”• The origins of divination• Morsels of bicamerality reinstated by our digital ecology, with someone’s agenda in it• MS: “The arrogance is in thinking that it was only ever us.”• The Neurological Explanation for Imaginary Friends• The Microbiological Explanation for “Self-Transforming Machine Elves”• Swing Low, Eukaryote, coming for to carry me home• David Pearce – “The Antispeciesist Manifesto”• Are Laboratory Burgers Vegan?• Empathy is a human (but not uniquely human) super power• Rebranding the human species (eg, “Dog Friends,” “Cat Friends”)• Book: Alejandro Jodorowsky - Where The Bird Sings Best• Expertise is knowing the right search terms• DNA as a language; microbial ecology as a language• Introspection as an escape hatch from history and “profane time”• And more... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

SoT 318: A Wacky Eukaryote Is Always Fun

Science On Top

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2018 40:02

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:10 Wombats - the cute, pudgy marsupials in Australia, have cubic poops. Square, angular blocks of poop. But how and why? We may now have a better understanding. 00:08:25 HD186302 is a star 184 light-years from Earth. And it's so similar to our sun, it could be long lost twin. 00:16:49 A team of researchers have studied the genomes of a group of microbes called Hemimastigotes and found that they are so bizarre, they deserve their very own kingdom in the tree of life. 00:26:02 Using the Keck observatory telescopes in Hawaii, astronomers have detected water in the atmosphere of a planet 179 light years away. This episode contains traces of WNYC's On The Media looking at CNN's coverage of the U.S. Global Change Research Program's National Climate Assessment.

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Hey Scientists: Let's Not Research Eugenics!

The Wholesome Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 25, 2018 63:27

Does a huge head correlate with intelligence? No listener, of course it doesn't! But people used to think that, and wanted to craft society on that basis... But here's the strange thing. While you might be thinking eugenics is just a historical topic, I hate to break it to you listener, there's still some folk out there who truly believe... Rod and Will sit down for a beer to explore! Also: We explore the problems that occur when your research participants speak to the press! Also economic eugenics! And finally, nine other words that start with Eu: Euphemism! Euthanize! Euphorbia! Euphonium! Euthyroid! Eutrophic! Eukaryote! Eutectoid! The Wholesome Show is @rodl and @willozap, proudly supported by @ANU_CPAS!

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TWiP 140: Blasting Blastocystis

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2017 95:13

The triple TWiP solve the case of the Peace Corp Veteran with Eosinophilia, and discuss the genome sequence of the hyper-prevalent parasitic eukaryote Blastocystis. Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, and Daniel Griffin Become a patron of TWiP. Links for this episode: Genome diversity of Blastocystis (PLoS Biol) Photo credit Letters read on TWiP 140 This episode is brought to you by Blue Apron. Blue Apron is the #1 fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country. Get $30 off your first delivery and FREE SHIPPING by going to blueapron.com/twip. Case Study for TWiP 140 From Dr. Arthur Mumelo, northern Kenya. One-year-old girl. Brought by mother with skin lesions that developed a week prior. The lesions are five in total – on the forehead, neck, back, chest and right arm. The lesions look like boils/furuncles but keep changing size and appearance – like something is moving under the skin. They are painful and itchy. Child is breastfeeding well. No other complaints. Child was born at Nyahururu County Referral Hospital. Gets vaccinations at Melwa Health Centre (Rural), vaccinations are up to date. They live in a wooden house with a dirt floor, roofed with corrugated iron sheets. The house has two rooms. They sleep on raised beds. There is a big community dam in the neighborhood, with stagnant water throughout the year. They don’t use mosquito nets. They have reliable clean water supply from the government. They have one dog but the neighbors’ dogs also visit their compound and living area. They hang their clothes on the clothesline after washing; never dry their clothes on the grass. Clothes not hot-ironed. On Examination; Child is breastfeeding well, afebrile, no pallor, no jaundice, not in distress. Occipital lymphadenopathy; tender, mobile. Furuncles on the forehead, chest neck, back and right arm. They are 1-3cm in diameter and 0.5 cm high, tender, have a central punctum from which serosanguineous fluid is discharging. This is a rural health centre – the only labs done are a peripheral blood film – which showed increased eosinophils and neutrophils. HIV test – negative. Send your case diagnosis, questions and comments to twip@microbe.tv Music by Ronald Jenkees

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TWiP 115: The Cuscuta Factor

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2016 96:37

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, and Daniel Griffin The TWiPlets solve the sad case of the Boy Who Went Swimming, and explain why the tomato is resistant to the plant parasite Cuscuta. Links for this episode: Detection of plant parasite by a tomato receptor (Science) Dodder (Wikipedia) Mixed messages (TWiP 77) Image credit Letters read on TWiP 115 This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service that offers over 1,400 documentaries and nonfiction series from the world's best filmmakers. Get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month, and for our audience, the first two months are completely free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/microbe and use the promo code MICROBE. This episode is also sponsored by Drobo, a family of safe, expandable, yet simple to use storage arrays. Drobos are designed to protect your important data forever. Visit www.drobo.com to learn more. Become a patron of TWiP. Case Study for TWiP 115 This week's case is more challenging, but with a better outcome than last time. Thailand: 32 year old Thai man from southern coastal part of country, comes to ID hospital in Bangkok with two months of watery diarrhea. Rapid onset. Looks emaciated, protuberant belly. Ten times per day, has trouble flushing feces in toilet, floats. Eats normal fare, boat noodles, fish, rice, vegetables. Som tam - fish sauce from raw fish. Also with salted crab, not well cooked. No unusual past med history, healthy fisherman, no medication. Married with kids, everyone healthy. No bad habits. Monogamous. HIV negative. Liver, spleen not enlarged. Abdominal xray with contrast: loss of villi. Good appetite. No abdominal pain. Too weak to work. No vomiting. Send your case diagnosis, questions and comments to twip@microbe.tv

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TWiM #128: A moonlighting phage protein

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2016 77:35

A eukaryote without a mitochondrion, and using a phage enzyme to eliminate intracellular bacteria are two topics discussed by the TWiMers on this episode. Image (right): An entry in the ASM Agar Art Contest which bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the TWiM hosts. Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Elio Schaechter, Michele Swanson, and Michael Schmidt. Subscribe to TWiM (free) on iTunes, Stitcher, RSS, or by email. You can also listen on your mobile device with the Microbeworld app. Links for this episode Copper and Michael Schmidt in the news (The Scientist) Fair Pay for Postdocs (Huff Post) National Microbiome Initiative (White House) The shrinking mitochondrion (The Scientist) Eukaryote without a mitochondrion (Curr Biol) Why have organelles retained genomes? (Cell Sys) Bugs as drugs (Amer Acad Micro) Phage encoded lysin eliminates intracellular bacteria (eLife) This episode is brought to you by CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service that offers over 1,400 documentaries and nonfiction series from the world's best filmmakers. Get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month, and for our audience, the first two months are completel free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/microbe and use the promo code MICROBE. Send your microbiology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twim@microbe.tv

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TWiP 105: Survival of the fattest

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2016 113:23

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, and Daniel Griffin The TWiPanosomes solve the case of the Young Man from Anchorage, and discuss how cestode parasites increase the resistance of brine shrimp to arsenic toxicity. Links for this episode: Trichinella life cycle (pdf) When parasites are good for health (PLoS Path) The Origin of AIDS by Jacques Pepin Letters read on TWiP 105 Case study for TWiP 105 This week's case involves a 32 yo male with several concerns. Spent 6 weeks doing religious missionary work in Kenya, performed baptisms in Lake Victoria.Waist deep in water, no shoes. Took malaria drugs, ate lots of interesting foods: cichlids, ugali, corn based food, flavored with greens; stew with some sort of meat, beef and goat. Five weeks after return developed rash with fever, shortness of breath. Three of four friends who were with him in Kenya reported similar symptoms. The fourth who did not get sick did not go in water, nor did he eat very much. No medical/surgical history, no drugs. Had some sexual activity while there. Elevated white count, 70% eosinophils. Chest CT shows nodules in lungs. Doc told him, allergy, you will be fine. The water he went into is near a village, there are rodents nearby, and a runoff. Send your diagnosis to twip@microbe.tv Send your questions and comments to twip@microbe.tv

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TWiP 103: Scroll down, please

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 13, 2016 67:31

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, and Daniel Griffin Guest: Michael Libman The TWiP-scholars solve the case of the Housewife from Kolkata, discuss mutations in the IL17 gene associated with cerebral malaria, and hear a case presentation from guest Michael Libman. Links for this episode: IL-17 mutations and risk of cerebral malaria (Inf and Imm) Echinococcosis (CDC) Echinococcus life cycle (pdf) Letters read on TWiP 103 Case study for TWiP 103 This week's case concerns a 42 yo male, refugee in Canada, from DRC, former Zaire, where there is unending civil war. Upper middle class, professor of French at university. Had been imprisoned, tortured, lived in jungle for a few years, reached refugee camp in Tanzania, moved to Canada. Came to health care system 15 months after arrived. Was sent to psych, unstable emotionally, delusions, hallucinations, depression, post traumatic issues. Was under psych care for ~1 yr, did not improve, became worse. Sent to hospital. History: talked about having minor injury, hurt lower back, pain there bothering him. Some anemia (normochromic), basic hem/chem/urine/liver nothing remarkable. Physical exam, nothing remarkable. HIV negative. Some evidence for chronic inflammatory condition: sed rate 60 (elevated), had diffuse increase in IgG, IgM. Developed some low level autoantibodies; anti-nuclear, p-anka, anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies. Slightly elevated fever for a few days, then few days or week with no fever. No eosinophilia. Radiology: on CT did have some mediastinal, aortic, axillae, lymphadenopathy. Prob screened in Africa for malaria and treated; prob also got ivermectin. Also got head MRI: not completely normal, classic nonspecific midbrain abnormality. Diffuse mild edema. Weight loss remarkable. No visual problems. Send your diagnosis to twip@microbe.tv Send your questions and comments to twip@microbe.tv

TWiM #118: Spore-drops keep fallin’ on my head

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2015 65:35

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Elio Schaechter and Michele Swanson On the last episode for 2015, Vincent, Elio, and Michele discuss how soil amoeba hunt nematodes in packs, and the role of mushrooms as rainmakers. Subscribe to TWiM (free) on iTunes, Stitcher, Android, RSS, or by email. You can also listen on your mobile device with the Microbeworld app. Links for this episode Pack hunting by a common soil amoeba on nematodes (Environ Micro) Mushrooms as rainmakers (PLoS One) Mushroom by Nicholas Money In the Company of Mushrooms by Elio Schaechter Image credit Letters read on TWiM 118 This episode is sponsored by ASM Microbe 2016 and ASM Biodefense Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission. Send your microbiology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twim@twiv.tv.

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TWiP 99: You get your polar bear from your nana

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 5, 2015 99:55

The TWiP trifecta solves the case of the Professor Who Went to Brazil, and discuss an amazing case of a tapeworm that turned into a tumor in an AIDS patient. Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, and Daniel Griffin Links for this episode: Do young doctors need more sleep? (Slate) H. nana tumor in AIDS patient (NEJM) Hymenolepiasis (CDC) H. nana lifecycle (CDC/Wikipedia) Image credit Letters read on TWiP 99 Case study for TWiP 99 This week's case is a 53 yo woman visiting family in US, comes in with intense belly pain, right upper part of belly. Has become strict vegetarian after having breast cancer, on raw vegetable diet (carrots, collect plants in local markets). From Bolivia. Lives in agricultural area, avoids sheep, fearful of dogs. Housekeeper. Married, lives with husband. Noticed pain when came to US. Breast cancer: localized, removed lesion, no therapy, months ago. No allergies, family healthy. No insect bites, lives in concrete house. Physical exam: not febrile, right upper quadrant is very tender, some liver enlargement. CBC: 10,000 white count, mostly eosinophils, liver function: AST, ALT, AlkPhos all normal. Neuro exam: normal. Five months before this diet, she did have normal diet. Some meat, drank milk. Send your diagnosis to twip@twiv.tv Contact Send your questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twip@twiv.tv Subscribe Subscribe to TWiP (free) in iTunes, by the RSS feed or by email TWiP is a MicrobeTV production

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TWiM #94: Nitrochondria

Microbiology 1 - Fall 2009

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2014 66:50

Vincent, Elio, and Michael discuss a symbiosis between a nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria and a single-celled eukaryotic alga. Links for this episode: Unicellular cyanobacterium and alga symbiosis (Science) Diversity of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium and its host (Environ Micro) Talmudic Question #4 (answer) Talmudic Question #2 Coccolithophore (Wikipedia) Visit microbeworld.org/twim to view the complete shownotes and entire back catalog.

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2009-09-11 Microbiology Lecture Transcript: Eukaryote Organisms

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 10, 2013

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2009-09-09 Microbiology Lecture Transcript: Prokaryote Versus Eukaryote Paradigm

Microbiology 1 - Fall 2009

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 10, 2013

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TWiM #34: Doing the DISCO with Emiliania