(no subject)
30 Jun 2025 05:14 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
apod_feed
If you know where to look, you can see a thermonuclear explosion from a white dwarf star.
apod_feed
Things I Was Not Expecting Outside My Hotel Window Last Night, Fireworks Edition
30 Jun 2025 12:15 amscalziwhatever_feed
July 4 is most of a week away, so I was not anticipating that outside my hotel window last night would be a full-fledged professional fireworks display. But it turns out the hotel I was at, was next door to a Masonic Temple compound, and I guess they had some premature patriotic fervor. Inasmuch as I got a free fireworks show I didn’t even need to leave my hotel room for (and it ended early enough that I didn’t lose any sleep over it), I suppose I can’t complain.
Back at home now. Not anticipating a fireworks display tonight. We’ll see if that prediction holds.
— JS
I let the sun go down on me :P
29 Jun 2025 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
loganberrybunnyPublic
149/365: Sunset towards the Wyre Forest
Click for a larger, sharper image
A very warm (27 °C) day today, but disappointingly cloudy, which made it feel very humid and uncomfortable. I had enough time for a pint of perry at lunchtime, which was nice -- Wetherspoons is doing a Craft Cider Festival, and perry qualifies as it's pear cider. Specifically, I drank Midnight Special from Mr Whitehead's, a Hampshire company. A new one on me: medium-sweet and easy drinking, and although you wouldn't call it especially complex it did slip down well on a very warm day in the beer garden. My photo from today is of sunset during a short walk I was taking on the western fringes of Bewdley. This photo was taken at 9:56 pm, and I'm looking towards the Wyre Forest on the horizon.
149/365: Sunset towards the Wyre Forest
Click for a larger, sharper image
A very warm (27 °C) day today, but disappointingly cloudy, which made it feel very humid and uncomfortable. I had enough time for a pint of perry at lunchtime, which was nice -- Wetherspoons is doing a Craft Cider Festival, and perry qualifies as it's pear cider. Specifically, I drank Midnight Special from Mr Whitehead's, a Hampshire company. A new one on me: medium-sweet and easy drinking, and although you wouldn't call it especially complex it did slip down well on a very warm day in the beer garden. My photo from today is of sunset during a short walk I was taking on the western fringes of Bewdley. This photo was taken at 9:56 pm, and I'm looking towards the Wyre Forest on the horizon.
A conserved genetic signal for building neuronal pathways
29 Jun 2025 08:33 pmpharyngula_feedA new video! This one is just science, a cool paper I read way back when I was doing my post-doc. It left a strong impression on me, so I thought it would be worthwhile introducing it to all of you.
Today I want to talk about one of my favorite papers, this one:
It’s titled “Genetic Analysis of a Drosophila Neural Cell Adhesion Molecule: Interaction of Fasciclin I and Abelson Tyrosine Kinase Mutations”, by Thomas Elkins, Kai Zinn, Linda McAllister, Michael Hoffman, and Corey Goodman. Right there in the title you can see a few of my favorite things: genetics and the nervous system, and as we dig deeper you’ll find it’s also about development and relevant to evolution.
Those of you with sharp eyes may also notice that it was published in 1990 — it’s 35 years old. As an aside, I have to mention that I sometimes get students asking me if it’s OK to cite papers older than 5 years, which I find ridiculous. Of course you can. A good paper does not become obsolete, except perhaps in its interpretations. The data should hold up, although it can be improved upon. I cited papers from the 1830s in my Ph.D. thesis!
This paper holds up. I was impressed when it came out, and it affected how I think about genetics and evolution. At the time, it was incredibly relevant to the work I was doing at the time, on neuronal pathfinding. I still think it’s cool stuff.
In order to explain what’s going on in this paper, I have to provide a lot of background, so bear with me while I tell you a little bit about the technology we used in that ancient era (and still use today!).
Monoclonal antibodies
One of the methods used here was the generation of monoclonal antibodies. To do this, they took embryonic grasshoppers, ground them into a paste, added some adjuvant to stimulate the immune system, and inject the goo into mice. The mouse immune system reacted by generating antibodies against grasshopper antigens. To make them monoclonal, you cut out the mouse’s spleen, which contained the antibody producing cells, teased the tissue apart, and then fused individual cells with cancer cells to immortalize them, and then the cells are separated into individual vials, where they each make an antibody that binds to a different, single epitope. At that point you’ve got a lot of vials, each of which allows you to label a different molecule in the grasshopper.
That’s the relatively easy part. Then what you have to do is dissect hundreds of grasshopper embryos, paint each one with one antibody, and ask where the antibody sticks. The Goodman lab isolated a lot of antibodies and characterized what they bound to, and gave them names. They were specifically searching for antibodies that bound to the developing nervous system that might play a role in building the structure of the CNS.
NS structure
In the insect embryo, that structure is fairly straightforward. The nervous system is made of a chain of repeating ganglia extending the length of the animal.
These ganglia are connected by a pair of nerve pathways, one on each side of the embryo, called the longitudinal fascicles.
Each ganglion contains a pair of nerve pathways that connect the right and left sides; one is called the anterior commisure, and the other is the posterior commissure. It’s easy to visualize the early nervous system as a kind of ladder, with the longitudinal fascicles forming the side rails, and each ganglion containing two rungs, the commissures.
We also have peripheral nerves branching off to innervate the periphery.
These fascicle are like cable conduits. They contain multiple fibers, and they grow as new neurons mature and send processes into them, and each process is covered with specific molecules that act as recognition and adhesion factors. The specific combinations of these molecules is an important factor in navigation — how does a cell on the left side of the ganglion make connections with, for instance, a muscle in the right forelimb of the animal? One way is to follow the coded molecules set up by the earlier axons that had grown to form these pathways. So…turn left at the first longitudinal fascicle, follow it until you reach the posterior commissure, turn right, grow until you reach the next longitudinal fascicle, follow that until you bump into a peripheral nerve, and change tracks to grow until you reach muscle. You can build a complex nervous system that way, with fairly simple rules for each neuron.
You can see these fascicles and commissures easily with a microscope, but the molecules that label them are invisible. That was the beauty of making these monoclonal antibodies — you can use them to reveal the molecular coding present on each of the fibers running through the conduit, and you can finally see what signals the growing nervous system is employing. Some of the antibodies label everything in the CNS, like this one, called BP102, which allows you to clearly see the ladder-like structure of the embryonic nervous system.
Others label subsets of the processes, and those are the most interesting ones. The Goodman lab identified multiple antibodies that can be used to map out portions of the developing CNS, and some of them were named fasciclins, because they are expressed on the surface of axons in various fascicles. These are typically cell adhesion molecules, molecules that make the neuron ‘sticky’ to other cells, especially to some cells and not others.
It’s a molecule identified in grasshoppers, but it is homologous to molecules found in people. You won’t be surprised to learn that it’s also expressed in fruit flies, and the pattern of expression in flies and hoppers is almost identical. I spent a lot of time staring at hopper nervous systems through a microscope, and got so familiar with them that I could instantly spot and name individual cells — the terrain was like home to me. When I later got to look at the embryonic and larval fruit fly nervous system, it was a revelation. I could see the same landmarks and follow the same cells in both.
Flies and hoppers are separated by over 350 million years of evolution, so that nervous system ladder is a highly conserved structure in insects.
The one obvious difference is that flies are tiny. I was used to working with a microelectrode and micromanipulator to poke around the hopper nervous system, but no way was I going to be able to do that with flies — flies were miniaturized hoppers, and while hoppers were great for cellular work, flies were far outside my skill set. Fortunately, the Goodman lab was using genetic tools on flies, with far greater precision. They identified these promising molecules in hoppers, and then applied them to flies, where we can play all kinds of genetic games.
One of the molecules identified is called Fasciclin I, and that’s the focus of this paper by Thomas Elkins. FasI is a glycoprotein expressed on all peripheral axons, a subset of the axons in the commisures and longitudinal fascicles, and some non-neuronal cells. It has been genetically mapped — it’s in division 89D of the third chromosome of Drosophila, and it’s been isolated, cloned, and sequenced. If you’re vertebrate-centric, it has several homologs in humans: periostin and stabilins, for instance. Basically, it’s a small homophilic molecule on the surface of cells, that make cells expressing FasI stick to and follow other cells expressing Fas1.
The question Elkins and others were asking is specifically what Fas1 is doing in the nervous system, and it’s expression pattern is suggestive. It is found in “a ventrolateral cluster of neuronal cell bodies (arrows at top left), a fascicle in the posterior commissure (middle arrows at right), and the intersegmental nerve root (arrows at bottom left).” So, not everything, but a select subset of pathways. In the case of the commissures, what we see is a few thin fibers that cross the midline, so one hypothesis is that these are pioneer axons: one slender thread is sent across the ganglion, laying down a track of Fas1 signals that subsequent fibers could follow to build a more robust commissure.
But that’s just a hypothesis, an inference from an observation of the phenomenon of gene expression. The paper goes beyond that, and tests the hypothesis by deleting Fas1 and asking what the CNS of the embryo does in response. If Fas1 in the first axon to cross is the sherpa that leads all the other fibers across, then deleting Fas1 should leave all the following axons lost, and maybe the commissure would fail to form altogether. A significant part of this paper is an exercise in molecular genetics to knock out the Fas1 gene. They started with a transposable element inserted into the Fas1 gene that disrupted its function, and then to be really thorough they used gamma radiation to delete the transposable element and the adjacent DNA that contained the broken fragments of Fas1. They totally expunged Fas1 from the genome and asked what the CNS in homozygotes looked like.
The embryonic nervous system looked totally normal, as if Fas1 was totally superfluous.
Well, not totally. They looked at adult fly behavior and noticed that they were a bit uncoordinated in walking, so maybe it plays a more subtle role in fine tuning behavior.
It wasn’t a dramatic result, though, so I’m sure it was a bit disappointing. They didn’t see a clear association between Fas1 expression and gross changes in CNS structure.
Back to the drawing board. They had another interesting gene, Abelson tyrosine kinase, which is expressed in the central nervous system, much more widely than Fas1 is. Let’s make a non-functional abl mutation, and see how that disrupts the early fly CNS!
They did. It didn’t. Homozygous abl mutants produced a perfectly normal CNS scaffold of fascicles and commissures, although they did see an increased frequency of errors in 10% of the embryos. Maybe abl is a redundant accessory to building these pathways, increasing fidelity but not acting definitively to build them?
Still, it’s not a particularly exciting result.
But what if they made a homozygous double mutant, carrying both the Fas1 null mutation AND the defective abl mutation?
Now it’s getting interesting. The commissures fail to form! It looks like normal development requires cooperative interactions between at least two different gene products, fas1 and abl. Elkins dug deeper to look at how individual neurons behave in the double mutants.
In wild type embryos, a cell called RP1 grows across the midline in the anterior commissure, and then turns to grow for a short distance in the longitudinal fascicle, and then exits via the contralateral intersegmental nerve root to grow into the periphery. In the absence of both Fas1 and abl, though, the cell continues to grow, but it’s confused, and in different animals takes different, seemingly random routes. Sometimes, since it can’t cross the midline, it just exits out the ipsilateral nerve. Sometimes it just stops. And sometimes it just keeps growing down the longitudinal fascicle, looking for that labeled pathway that no longer exists.
To sum up the important points in this paper:
- There are signals that direct the growth of neurons. The developing nervous system is a matrix of various molecules that provide guidance cues.
-
These signals increase in complexity over time. RP1, for instance, is just the first cell to send a process across the anterior commissure, but as each subsequent cell uses that process to navigate, it adds its own molecular signals to the mix. If the first pioneer gets lost, there is a whole series of later neurons that are confused, and the commissure entirely fails to form.
-
There isn’t one gene that defines a specific morphological feature — neuronal pathways are the product of multiple interacting molecules and membranes and cells that cooperate to build a functional whole.
-
There is a degree of redundancy in the assembly of the nervous system. Mutating one gene does not cause the whole structure to collapse — this fault tolerance allows the accumulation of mutations that can lead to more subtle variations in the wiring of the nervous system.
-
Divergent species can be built on the same core structure, using the same molecules, but variations can produce animals as radically different in morphology as grasshoppers and fruit flies. Species that have been diverging even longer, such as humans and insects, still share similar core patterns of organization.
It’s a great paper. Unfortunately, it was published posthumously, and I have to mention that Tom Elkins died in 1989. We lost a good one.
That puts my plight in perspective. I seem to have snapped a ligament in my knee and have either been sitting in hospital rooms or lying in bed for the past few days, with no immediate relief in sight. Obviously, it could be worse. While my patreon supporters scroll by here (you can be one, too, just visit patreon.com/pzmyers), I’ll just say that I’m lucky, I live in a small, rural, and very Republican town, and we have a good local hospital with a helpful and attentive staff. I think I’ll be seeing more of them than I’d like in the next few weeks.
Unfortunately, the Republicans in congress are making changes that will hurt all the Trump-voting citizens of my county, and are destroying medicaid and medicare, and will lead to the closure of many of these rural hospitals all across the country. The leopards will be feasting on faces here, and one of the costs will be the loss of facilities that could help sew those faces back on.
While I’m not feeling great right now, I am getting the help I need, and it could be so much worse if this administration gets its way. Resist! Fight back by making sure these wicked rascal are kicked out of office! Save health care for everyone, even MAGA!
(no subject)
29 Jun 2025 01:05 amxoagrayOne of my favorite things is when I get to use my photography for good. Like when I get to use it to tell a story, or to brighten someone's day. Or to help someone some how. It gives me a warm feeling, it makes me feel like I can make a little difference to others.
Short and sweet, just how I'm feeling right now.
Short and sweet, just how I'm feeling right now.
Oh, those misleading teleologies about "progress" - and a few political notes
28 Jun 2025 08:05 pmdavid_brin_feedAnd now... some intellectual stuff, if that's what you are holding-out for!
And yes, for those of you who blithely use the terms 'left' and 'right' in politics, without actually knowing what they mean, here's one of maybe ten things you likely never knew, that you really, really ought to.
== How the left and right differently view the future's 'ordained' path.
...And why actual liberals think both 'teleologies' suck.
In fact, progressively improving, end-result teleology is a very recent epiphenomenon of Enlightenment Civilization – and almost entirely Western. Until these last 3 centuries, the pervasive historical teleologies were:
1. Successive, gradual decline, as in the Greek notions of golden, silver and iron ages.
2. More rapid, steep decline to hellish end times, followed by divine intervention, as in Christian doctrines.
3. Cyclical history – everything cycles back around, as in Hindu and Nordic lore – as well as Nazi and Confederate incantations. And now, a noxius recent mysticism called the Cult of the Fourth Turning.
All three of these ancient visions have deep roots in human psyche. All three were pushed hard by the powerful, from kings and lords to priests. And all three have long been core to what we’d now call ‘conservatism’, as they all preach at peasants: ‘Accept your place: don’t strive or even hope to improve the world.’
One exception – ironically clutched by 2000 years of persecuted Jews – was a notion that the world is improvable and that the Creator needs our assertive help to save it. Indeed, this usually-forlorn dream seems to have been what manifested in several grandsons-of-rabbis, like Sigmund Freud and especially Karl Marx.
And later – yes – in Isaac Asimov’s notions of ‘psychohistory,’ which inspired nerds across a very wide spectrum, ranging from Paul Krugman all the way to Shoko Asahara and Osama bin Laden.
Overall, it was a whole lot of grouchy-gloom to quench any glimmers of hope, during grouchy-gloomy times.
But things eventually changed, rousing a new, competing view of the time-flow of history. Inspired by the palpable progress coming out of industrial factories and modern medical science, we began to see a new kind of teleology. That of egalitarian ‘progress.’ Manifesting in either of two modes:
1. ...in moderate, incremental stages, as in the U.S. Revolution, and every American generation that followed…
2. …or else impatient transcendentalism – demanding immediate leaps to remaking humanity - as we saw in the French and then Russian and Chinese Revolutions.
Either way, this linear and ever-upward notion of historical directionality was a clear threat to the beneficiaries of older teleologies… ruling classes, who needed justification for continued obligate power. And especially excuses to repress potential rivals to their sons’ inheritance of power.
Thus it is no accident that all three of the more ancient motifs and views of ‘history’ - downward or cyclical - are being pushed, hard, by our current attempted worldwide oligarchic putsch. Each of them tuned to a different conservative constituency!
Will someone do up a nice meme on Caligula's horse, laughing at us?
* Another suggested meme about the dismal insipidity of the masks worn by ICE agents in these brownshirt-stle immigration raids.
1. ...in moderate, incremental stages, as in the U.S. Revolution, and every American generation that followed…
2. …or else impatient transcendentalism – demanding immediate leaps to remaking humanity - as we saw in the French and then Russian and Chinese Revolutions.
Either way, this linear and ever-upward notion of historical directionality was a clear threat to the beneficiaries of older teleologies… ruling classes, who needed justification for continued obligate power. And especially excuses to repress potential rivals to their sons’ inheritance of power.
Thus it is no accident that all three of the more ancient motifs and views of ‘history’ - downward or cyclical - are being pushed, hard, by our current attempted worldwide oligarchic putsch. Each of them tuned to a different conservative constituency!
For example: the Fourth Turning cult is especially rife among those Republicans who desperately cling to chants like: “I AM in favor of freedom & progress! I am!” Even though they are among the very ones causing the completely unnececessary 'crisis' that will then require rescue by a 'hero generation.'
(Side note: Are the impatient transcendentalists on "our side" of the current struggle - shouting for instant transformation(!!) - deeply harmful to their own cause, the way Robspierre and Mao were, to theirs? Absolutely. Angrily impatient with incrementalism, sanctimony junkies of the far-left were partly responsible for Trump v.2, by shattering the liberal coalition with verbal purity tests that drove away (temporarily, we hope) two millions Blacks, Hispanics and lower middle class whites.)
Why do I raise this point about teleologies of left and right yet again, even though I never get any traction with it, never ever prompting others to step back and look at such patterns?
Perhaps because new pattern aficionados are on the horizon! Indeed, there is always a hope that our new AI children will see what their cave-folk parents could not. And explain it to them.
== Some political notes ==
* Russian corvettes escort quasi-illegal Shadow tankers thru the English Channel while NATO navies daily thwart attempts to sabotage subsea pipes & data cables. Might Ukraine say: "Iran, NKorea & Gabon have openly Joined the RF waging war on us. Under the 300 year Rules of War, we may seize or sink enemy ships on the high seas. We've bought, equipped, flagged, manned and sent to the Atlantic Ukrainian navy ships to do that."
* Those shrugging-off the appointment of 22-year old Thomas Fugate as the top US counter-terrorism czar will have some 'splaining to do, when these moves - replacing competent professionals with Foxite shills - come home to roost. But I've already pointed out the glaring historical parallel: when the mad tyrant Caligula tested the Roman Senate by appointing - as Consul - his horse. No Senator stood up to that, or to C's sadist orgies or public snatch-strangulations.
Today it would take just 2 GOP Senators and 2 Reps, stepping up, to curb the insanity by half or more. Threats & rampant blackmail (check the male relatives of Collins & Murkowski) don't suffice to explain or excuse such craven betrayal across the GOP, since the first few to step up would be reckoned heroes, no matter what kompromat the KGB has on you.
Will someone do up a nice meme on Caligula's horse, laughing at us?
* Another suggested meme about the dismal insipidity of the masks worn by ICE agents in these brownshirt-stle immigration raids.
"Hey ICE masked-rangers, You think a mask suffices in 2025? When cameras can zoom into your iris? Bone structure and gait? (Keep a pebble in your shoe!) Anyway, that comrade (and fellow KGB puppet) next to you is recording every raid for his Squealer File. For plea bargaining when this all goes down."
What? You think "He'd never do that to me!"?
In poker, everyone knows who the patsy is. If you don't know, then it's you.
What? You think "He'd never do that to me!"?
In poker, everyone knows who the patsy is. If you don't know, then it's you.
== Finally, glorious Grand Dames of Sci Fi! ==
A pair of terrific speeches about science fiction. Newly- (and way-deservedly!)- installed Grand Master Nicola Griffith relates how SF encouraged her to believe that ancient injustices can be overcome, if first writers help readers believe it possible. The young MC of the event, Erin Roberts, was truly amazing, taking perspectives that were variously passionate, amusing and deeply insightful. Persuasive and yet not polemically fixated, she's the real deal that's needed now, more than ever.
Derpy on a muffin!
28 Jun 2025 11:43 pmloganberrybunnyPublic
148/365: Derpy Hooves on a muffin, Worcester
Click for a larger, sharper image
If you've been here a while then you'll probably know this first bit -- but if you're newish to this journal and are surprised by my subject line, then please read on: in the very specific context of the My Little Pony fandom, "Derpy" is the appropriate term here. It's the first name of the grey pony standing on my chocolate muffin. Although you can't see it in this profile view, she has wall eyes (originally an animation error) and is generally considered the fandom's mascot. There's a fairly detailed story behind why "Derpy" is almost universally accepted, which I'll happily repeat if anyone would like me to. But suffice it to say that in an MLP fandom context as applied to this specific pony, it is not only not a slur, it is the preferred name for her for the large majority of disabled Pony fans -- including for use by us non-disabled fans. I don't use the word anywhere else, but I do use it in Pony fandom without qualms.
As to why she's standing on my chocolate muffin... this is a photo from the MLP fandom meetup I went to today in Worcester. Derpy canonically loves muffins. I am very fond of them as well. I am also very fond of Derpy, though that's pretty much universal in the fandom. "Bolero" is the name of the café we use, a place which has been extremely good to us for some years now and which I thoroughly recommend. By the way, the character you can just see on the bag to the top left is Nightmare Moon. She was banished to the Moon (canonically "in the Moon", in fact) by her sister for a thousand years after trying to impose eternal night. Because, you know, kids' cartoon. :P
148/365: Derpy Hooves on a muffin, Worcester
Click for a larger, sharper image
If you've been here a while then you'll probably know this first bit -- but if you're newish to this journal and are surprised by my subject line, then please read on: in the very specific context of the My Little Pony fandom, "Derpy" is the appropriate term here. It's the first name of the grey pony standing on my chocolate muffin. Although you can't see it in this profile view, she has wall eyes (originally an animation error) and is generally considered the fandom's mascot. There's a fairly detailed story behind why "Derpy" is almost universally accepted, which I'll happily repeat if anyone would like me to. But suffice it to say that in an MLP fandom context as applied to this specific pony, it is not only not a slur, it is the preferred name for her for the large majority of disabled Pony fans -- including for use by us non-disabled fans. I don't use the word anywhere else, but I do use it in Pony fandom without qualms.
As to why she's standing on my chocolate muffin... this is a photo from the MLP fandom meetup I went to today in Worcester. Derpy canonically loves muffins. I am very fond of them as well. I am also very fond of Derpy, though that's pretty much universal in the fandom. "Bolero" is the name of the café we use, a place which has been extremely good to us for some years now and which I thoroughly recommend. By the way, the character you can just see on the bag to the top left is Nightmare Moon. She was banished to the Moon (canonically "in the Moon", in fact) by her sister for a thousand years after trying to impose eternal night. Because, you know, kids' cartoon. :P
View From a Hotel Window, 6/28/25: Medina, OH
28 Jun 2025 08:50 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Very different from the last View From a Hotel Window I posted, seeing that one was from Venice, Italy. This one is greener, though. And has a parking lot! Very few of those in Venice, I have to say.
Why am I here? Because of the Big Ohio Book Con, where Tochi Onyebuchi and I are in conversation tomorrow at 12:30, followed by us both signing books. If you are in the vicinity of Medina, OH tomorrow, come down and see us (the book festival is also happening today! Right now! As I write this!). If you’re not in the vicinity of Medina, Ohio today or tomorrow, well, try to have a good time anyway.
— JS
Worse than I thought
27 Jun 2025 10:59 pmpharyngula_feedThis knee gets worse and worse — now swollen and very painful. It is agony to get up out of bed, and once out, it’s painful to get up again, so I’m spending most of my time taking the path of least resistance and staying in bed, which is incredibly boring. I have to get up to use the bathroom, but then my wife got me a bed pan, so even that incentive has been lost. She’s hovering over me all day long because we both know how catastrophic it would be if I were to fall.
I have an orthopedics appointment on Monday morning. I fear my travails will not end at that point.
Friday Squid Blogging: What to Do When You Find a Squid “Egg Mop”
27 Jun 2025 09:04 pmbruce_schneier_feedTips on what to do if you find a mop of squid eggs.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
New Books and ARCs, 6/27/25
27 Jun 2025 08:18 pmscalziwhatever_feed
I was traveling much of June, and as a result we have an extra-large collection of new books and ARCs to consider here at the end of the month. What in this double stack of reading goodness would you like to take on in this final weekend of the first half of the year? Share in the comments!
Feeling bullish today
27 Jun 2025 09:27 pmloganberrybunnyPublic
147/365: Ozzy the Bull, Birmingham
Click for a larger, sharper image
I had to be in Birmingham today for boring reasons, and the city was even busier than it usually is. The New Street Eats street food festival started today, and there was a major open day for prospective students at the University of Birmingham. Still, it wasn't as bad as it is in the run-up to Christmas! Today's photo may well look familiar as I've posted Ozzy before, just not as part of the 365 project. The concourse at Birmingham New Street station (the UK's busiest outside London) is now the permanent home for the mechanical bull that was built for the Commonwealth Games in 2022. His name, Ozzy, is a nod to Ozzy Osbourne, who grew up in Aston -- although he was actually born in Marston Green, over the border in Warwickshire.
147/365: Ozzy the Bull, Birmingham
Click for a larger, sharper image
I had to be in Birmingham today for boring reasons, and the city was even busier than it usually is. The New Street Eats street food festival started today, and there was a major open day for prospective students at the University of Birmingham. Still, it wasn't as bad as it is in the run-up to Christmas! Today's photo may well look familiar as I've posted Ozzy before, just not as part of the 365 project. The concourse at Birmingham New Street station (the UK's busiest outside London) is now the permanent home for the mechanical bull that was built for the Commonwealth Games in 2022. His name, Ozzy, is a nod to Ozzy Osbourne, who grew up in Aston -- although he was actually born in Marston Green, over the border in Warwickshire.
The Age of Integrity
27 Jun 2025 11:02 ambruce_schneier_feedWe need to talk about data integrity.
Narrowly, the term refers to ensuring that data isn’t tampered with, either in transit or in storage. Manipulating account balances in bank databases, removing entries from criminal records, and murder by removing notations about allergies from medical records are all integrity attacks.
More broadly, integrity refers to ensuring that data is correct and accurate from the point it is collected, through all the ways it is used, modified, transformed, and eventually deleted. Integrity-related incidents include malicious actions, but also inadvertent mistakes.
We tend not to think of them this way, but we have many primitive integrity measures built into our computer systems. The reboot process, which returns a computer to a known good state, is an integrity measure. The undo button is another integrity measure. Any of our systems that detect hard drive errors, file corruption, or dropped internet packets are integrity measures.
Just as a website leaving personal data exposed even if no one accessed it counts as a privacy breach, a system that fails to guarantee the accuracy of its data counts as an integrity breach – even if no one deliberately manipulated that data.
Integrity has always been important, but as we start using massive amounts of data to both train and operate AI systems, data integrity will become more critical than ever.
Most of the attacks against AI systems are integrity attacks. Affixing small stickers on road signs to fool AI driving systems is an integrity violation. Prompt injection attacks are another integrity violation. In both cases, the AI model can’t distinguish between legitimate data and malicious input: visual in the first case, text instructions in the second. Even worse, the AI model can’t distinguish between legitimate data and malicious commands.
Any attacks that manipulate the training data, the model, the input, the output, or the feedback from the interaction back into the model is an integrity violation. If you’re building an AI system, integrity is your biggest security problem. And it’s one we’re going to need to think about, talk about, and figure out how to solve.
Web 3.0 – the distributed, decentralized, intelligent web of tomorrow – is all about data integrity. It’s not just AI. Verifiable, trustworthy, accurate data and computation are necessary parts of cloud computing, peer-to-peer social networking, and distributed data storage. Imagine a world of driverless cars, where the cars communicate with each other about their intentions and road conditions. That doesn’t work without integrity. And neither does a smart power grid, or reliable mesh networking. There are no trustworthy AI agents without integrity.
We’re going to have to solve a small language problem first, though. Confidentiality is to confidential, and availability is to available, as integrity is to what? The analogous word is “integrous,” but that’s such an obscure word that it’s not in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, even in its unabridged version. I propose that we re-popularize the word, starting here.
We need research into integrous system design.
We need research into a series of hard problems that encompass both data and computational integrity. How do we test and measure integrity? How do we build verifiable sensors with auditable system outputs? How to we build integrous data processing units? How do we recover from an integrity breach? These are just a few of the questions we will need to answer once we start poking around at integrity.
There are deep questions here, deep as the internet. Back in the 1960s, the internet was designed to answer a basic security question: Can we build an available network in a world of availability failures? More recently, we turned to the question of privacy: Can we build a confidential network in a world of confidentiality failures? I propose that the current version of this question needs to be this: Can we build an integrous network in a world of integrity failures? Like the two version of this question that came before: the answer isn’t obviously “yes,” but it’s not obviously “no,” either.
Let’s start thinking about integrous system design. And let’s start using the word in conversation. The more we use it, the less weird it will sound. And, who knows, maybe someday the American Dialect Society will choose it as the word of the year.
This essay was originally published in IEEE Security & Privacy.
(no subject)
27 Jun 2025 05:17 amapod_feed
An interstellar expanse of glowing gas and obscuring dust presents
Cesare Tallone's Sight-Size Paintings
26 Jun 2025 06:12 pmgurneyjourney_feedCesare Tallone was an Italian painter born on August 11, 1853, in Savona, Italy. After losing his father at a young age, he moved to Alessandria, where he began his artistic training under decorative artist Pietro Sassi, and then he continued his study at the Brera Academy in Milan.
During his time at the academy, he gained access to Francesco Hayez's studio. Tallone's career flourished as he won several awards, including the triennial combined schools of painting competition at the Brera exhibition in 1879.
Cesare Tallone (1853–1919) working on a portrait of Alessandro Pirovano, about 1911.
Like his friend Mancini, he practiced sight-size painting. He became well-known for his portraiture, gaining commissions from intellectual, bourgeois, and aristocratic circles.
Tallone's artistic legacy was further cemented through his teaching positions at the Carrara Academy in Bergamo and later at the Brera Academy in Milan, where he passed away on June 21, 1919.
A windy day
26 Jun 2025 09:19 pmloganberrybunnyPublic
146/365: Windy Ridge house sign, Bewdley
Click for a larger, sharper image
Although quite warm, it was really pretty gusty today. I didn't get out for much of a walk as I had too much to do, but I did at least manage to get a photo to keep the 365 going! Given the weather, I felt this house sign was a reasonable choice. Not very exciting, I know, but it's what you're getting. :P The forecast currently suggests another short heatwave is possible imminently, albeit more likely in the east -- there could be quite a big temperature gradient, with the west being much cooler. The east meanwhile seems certain to get up into the low 30s. The question which side of the line I in Worcestershire will fall!
Every time I look at American politics beyond the Preposterous Kumquat in the White House, I realise how little I know about it. From a British perspective Zohran Mamdani comes across like, let's say, Zarah Sultana -- and she'd be considered too left-wing to win the mayoralty even in liberal London. (The incumbent, Sadiq Khan, is generally fairly moderate.) But then New York City's Democratic majority is far higher than London's Labour lead, and the existence of Trump may be persuading lefties that they need radical politicians. Of course, what's popular in NYC won't necessarily win a Presidential election, and that (as when Corbyn was Labour leader here) may cause tensions down the line.
146/365: Windy Ridge house sign, Bewdley
Click for a larger, sharper image
Although quite warm, it was really pretty gusty today. I didn't get out for much of a walk as I had too much to do, but I did at least manage to get a photo to keep the 365 going! Given the weather, I felt this house sign was a reasonable choice. Not very exciting, I know, but it's what you're getting. :P The forecast currently suggests another short heatwave is possible imminently, albeit more likely in the east -- there could be quite a big temperature gradient, with the west being much cooler. The east meanwhile seems certain to get up into the low 30s. The question which side of the line I in Worcestershire will fall!
Every time I look at American politics beyond the Preposterous Kumquat in the White House, I realise how little I know about it. From a British perspective Zohran Mamdani comes across like, let's say, Zarah Sultana -- and she'd be considered too left-wing to win the mayoralty even in liberal London. (The incumbent, Sadiq Khan, is generally fairly moderate.) But then New York City's Democratic majority is far higher than London's Labour lead, and the existence of Trump may be persuading lefties that they need radical politicians. Of course, what's popular in NYC won't necessarily win a Presidential election, and that (as when Corbyn was Labour leader here) may cause tensions down the line.
The Big Idea: Kelli Estes
26 Jun 2025 06:20 pmscalziwhatever_feed
When strangers meet on the road, can lives change? What if those strangers are something other than just strangers? With Smoke on the Wind, author Kelli Estes has a chance encounter for the ages… in more ways than one.
KELLI ESTES:
When I started writing my novel, Smoke on the Wind, I thought it would be just like my last two: a dual timeline where the present-day protagonist learns about history taking place in the historical storyline and it changes her life in some way. But then, wouldn’t you know it, my historical protagonist ends up seeing my present-day characters walking past her on the road and her journey alters because of it.
Wait. What? I reached for the delete key but then stopped. What if I left that in? What if she – a woman in 1801 Scotland – really does see a woman and her son from 2025? What would that mean to her? What would that mean to the story?
Now, before we go any further, let me explain that I do not write science-fiction or fantasy. I write historical fiction, dual narrative, sometimes referred to as women’s fiction. We in this genre tend to stick to historical facts and realism. Readers will light our inboxes on fire if we alter history or get too, as one reader put it, “woo-woo.” (She was referring to a harbor seal that keeps reappearing to my character in a previous novel. Something tells me she really won’t like what’s happening in Smoke on the Wind!)
But, reservations aside, the idea felt exciting. And, even more, it felt possible. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen ghosts. I’ve recalled past life memories. I’ve seen movement out of the corner of my eye when no one was there and known I was seeing the lingering energy of someone who’d been there before me.
Even more, this book is set in Scotland, a place that feels mysterious and magical, where generations of people believed that Fairy Folk helped keep their livestock safe and peering through a hole in a stone could show you the future. When I’m in Scotland walking the hills and glens, especially when I know the history of what once occurred on that land, I can feel the spirits of the people who came before me as though they are standing right beside me. In other words, the veil is thin in Scotland and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to find myself touching a standing stone and traveling back in time or turning a corner and bumping into someone who’d lived three hundred years in the past.
Smoke on the Wind is set on Scotland’s most popular long-distance hiking trail, the West Highland Way. It is dual timeline meaning that there is a historical story interwoven with a present-day story and, together, they address themes such as identity, what makes a home, and the bond between mothers and sons. Because both stories occupy the same geographic space, they rub up against each other even though they are separated by over 200 years.
My present-day character, Keaka, learns about the historical character’s life which influences the trajectory of her own life. But, also, my historical character, Sorcha, sees glimpses of Keaka, which in turn, affects her life and the decisions she makes. I stuck to the facts of history – the Highland Clearances and Scotland in 1801 – but I allowed a bit of magic to come through, and I think the story works as a result. After all, we don’t really know if our own decisions are being influenced by whispers from the past, or even from the future.
As I wrote, I intended to stick with vague connections between the two women that could easily be explained away – a glimpse here and there, a whispered voice on the wind, a carving on a stone. But then I reached a scene near the midpoint of the story when, suddenly, the two women are standing face-to-face. I won’t spoil the book, so I’ll leave this vague and simply say that it’s not time-travel, but the women do see each other and communicate. I feel excited every time I think back to that scene because it feels so possible to me. Surely if I just squint hard enough, someone from another time period will appear to me, right?
It’s that sense of possibility that makes me love this story so much. Well, that and all the other things woven through the story that I equally love – the Highland Clearances, moms and sons, long-distance hiking, slow travel, visiting historic sites and feeling the weight still present, personal reinvention, the Scottish Gaelic language. Smoke on the Wind blurs time just enough that all things seem possible. History is relevant to our lives today, but maybe we’re relevant to it, too.
Smoke on the Wind: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Prognosis: boredom
26 Jun 2025 04:14 pmpharyngula_feed
not my knee
I have seen a doctor. I was x-rayed. I was informed that I have lovely knees, with no signs of arthritic degeneration. I got a blood test for my uric acid levels — they’re normal. I got a pressure bandage. I have an appointment for the orthopedic doctor for next week or the week after. But there are no quick fixes.
I hobbled out in just as much pain as when I went in.
I guess I’m just supposed to cross my fingers and hope it gets better, and if it gets worse, see an orthopedist for more tests.
Right now that means I just sit and wait for a week or more, and walk as little as possible. I’m dreading having to get up to walk 10 meters to use the bathroom.
Should you bake your pie crust upside down?! : Your goal: defying gravity.
26 Jun 2025 03:07 pmkingarthurbakes_feed
When your pie recipe calls for you to prebake the crust, do you envision spilled beans, hot parchment, and a sad, slumped crust on the bottom of the pan?
Avoid all that with help from simple gravity and a couple of pie pans. Baking your pie crust upside down (!) is a guaranteed method for making the perfect prebaked crust — one that bakes to an even golden brown and maintains its shape.
The post Should you bake your pie crust upside down?! : Your goal: defying gravity. appeared first on the King Arthur Blog.White House Bans WhatsApp
26 Jun 2025 11:00 ambruce_schneier_feedReuters is reporting that the White House has banned WhatsApp on all employee devices:
The notice said the “Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use.”
TechCrunch has more commentary, but no more information.
