Science

This week’s comedy-and-news segment of Bill Maher’s “Real Time” explains why the creeping socialism of Democrats is good—but for Republicans. who wil exploit it to the max in attack ads. (We now have a socialist mayor of both NYC and Seattle.)  Maher quotes Virginia’s new Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger, saying that “If the party doesn’t shift to the center, we will get fucking torn apart.” Maher argues that the new approbation for socialism by Democrats comes from their failure to get what they want under a capitalist system but, as he notes, the alternative is worse: “socialism doesn’t work.”

Well, of course the U.S. is already partly socialist: we have social security and Medicare, food stamps, and other government help for various groups (Maher describes some of these these). What he’s talking about is the dramatic extension of socialism proposed by people like Mamdani: free bus rides, free childcare, city-run grocery stores, and the like. To show the inimical effects of socialism, Maher uses as examples countries like North Korea, but that is “socialist” only in an extreme sense: it’s really a dictatorship in which a few get all the good stuff and most of the population goes without. But he’s right in general, as we can see what happened when Eastern Europe was under the thumb of the Soviet Union. (Malgorzata used to tell me about queuing up for hours to get a loaf of bread.) The Democratic Socialists of America, for example, call for completely open borders, defunded police, and other policies that would taint the Democrats in an election.

Some clips of the last DSA convention, showing a request for “jazz hands” instead of clapping, as well as for not wearing “aggressive” scents, tell the tale. The DSA is simply too woke for the American people, and it’s best if Democrats separate themselves from this group. Sadly, they’re pushing back on criticisms that they move towards the center, and, says Maher, that will be our undoing.  He’s right.

Well, folks, this is the last batch I have, and then the feature goes silent. If you have photos, wake it up again! Thanks.

Today’s photos come from the lens of Pratyaydipta Rudra and show one of his favorite birds. Pratyay’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

This is the second part of Scissor-tailed Flycatchers (Tyrannus forficatus) photos that I have taken over the past few years after I moved to Oklahoma.  [JAC: Part 1 is here.] I don’t remember the exact date taken for each individual photo (all taken during the summer months), so I have skipped that information and included some stories behind each photo.

As much as I love to photograph these birds in a tight frame against the sky, it also gets boring after a while. So, I started thinking about different kinds of compositions by including other elements of the environment and sometimes putting the bird smaller in the frame.

This one took off from one of the Bald Cypress trees (Taxodium distichum) bordering our local lake. The golden light was beautiful:

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher catching what I believe is a soldier beetle, probably Chauliognathus pensylvanicus, but I might be wrong:

Got it!:

There was a nice meadow in a local park that used to have beautiful wildflowers every spring. The birds loved the area, and I liked photographing them among the wildflowers. But two years ago it was mowed down to make space for frisbee golf. While this may invite some more people to the park and let them enjoy the outdoors, I was sad that the wonderful habitat was lost. This is a photo that I took there before it was mowed down:

Scissortail hover hunting over the meadow:

Another one taking off to find dinner…:

Not all birds look equally good in silhouettes, but scissortails most definitely look very elegant:

Three silhouetted birds in territorial battle. It looked like there was a mated pair and one invader who was quickly chased away!:

Two of them vocalizing and flickering their wings during some territorial disputes:

Another sunset silhouette… An orange and black to honor my OSU connection:

I like the water of the lake as a better backdrop than the sky… This one predictably came back to its favorite twig as flycatchers (and dragonflies) often do!:

I was glad to capture this unique “chase sequence” involving a flycatcher and a speedboat. The bird won:

Probably my most favorite scissortail photo ever, and I never thought I would capture that using a 16-35mm lens! On this day, there was a thunderstorm in the afternoon, and the sky was decorated with beautiful mammatus clouds after the thunderstorm. I was walking around our house with my wide lens to capture some cloud images. At that time, a couple of scissortails were appearing in the neighborhood every evening, and I was wishing that one of them would show up. I like to say that adding a scissortail to any scene makes it more beautiful!:

As I was looking around, I found out that a male scissortail was sitting right on our pecan tree! I was incredibly excited, quickly increased my shutter speed, and waited for the bird to take off. This is one of the images I got after waiting for a couple minutes.

When I said “adding a scissortail to any scene makes it more beautiful”, I obviously didn’t mean adding them using AI to an existing image, and it applies to this one too where I was able to capture the bird flying across the rainbow after my waiting for that to happen for some time:

I would like to wrap up with this closer view of our state bird. This image reminds me of the box of the boardgame called “Wingspan”. I don’t know if any of you played it, but if you are into board games, you should try it. My wife and I played it over 500 times across different expansions and we still enjoy it so much:

All motion is relative. That simple fact makes tracking the motion of distant objects outside our galaxy particularly challenging. For example, there has been a debate among astronomers for decades about the path that one of our nearest neighbors, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), took over the last few billion years. A new paper from Scott Lucchini and Jiwon Jesse Hand from the Harvard Center for Astrophysics grapples with that question by using a unique technique - the paths of hypervelocity stars.

Cutting-edge simulations show that Enceladus’ plumes are losing 20–40% less mass than earlier estimates suggested. The new models provide sharper insights into subsurface conditions that future landers may one day probe directly.

AlphaEvolve, an AI system created by Google DeepMind, is helping mathematicians do research at a scale that was previously impossible - even if it does occasionally "cheat" to find a solution

Facing its worst drought in decades, Iran is attempting to stimulate rain by spreading seeding agents in clouds, but the technique is likely to have modest benefits at best

Years ago, when I was a mere lad using Word Perfect on MS DOS, it was 4 a.m. and I just finished the final draft of a grant proposal that was due to the next day. I spun around in my chair and managed to kick out the power cord. I was a Mac user then, but had to use a PC […]

The post AI (Acupunctures Inevitable) Slop first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Scientists built a tiny clock from single-electron jumps to probe the true energy cost of quantum timekeeping. They discovered that reading the clock’s output requires vastly more energy than the clock uses to function. This measurement process also drives the irreversibility that defines time’s forward direction. The insight could push researchers to rethink how quantum devices handle information.

Scientists built a tiny clock from single-electron jumps to probe the true energy cost of quantum timekeeping. They discovered that reading the clock’s output requires vastly more energy than the clock uses to function. This measurement process also drives the irreversibility that defines time’s forward direction. The insight could push researchers to rethink how quantum devices handle information.

A major settlement in Central Asia called Semiyarka dating back to 1600 BC had houses, a big central building and even an industrial zone for producing copper and bronze

Let’s rewind the clock back…oh, I don’t know, let’s say a hundred years.

Observations of a supernova explosion have revealed its shape only one day after it was first detected. The exact nature of supernovae explosions are unclear and the subject of ongoing, detailed debate. These new observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope will advance the debate.

A 12,000-year-old clay sculpture found in Israel depicts a goose on the back of a woman, and archaeologists suggest it may be a depiction of an animistic mythological scene

Neanderthals were thought to have structures inside their noses that helped them deal with the cold, but analysis of an exceptionally preserved specimen contradicts that

Astronomers have found more than 6,000 exoplanets in the Milky Way. They've even begun to characterize the atmospheres of some of them. But the Milky Way has consumed many of its dwarf satellites. How have exoplanets fared in these remnants? How are they different? To answer those questions, astronomers have to find some of these planets, and a new survey is poised to do just that.

Some ants kill the queens of another species and take over their colonies, but we now know at least one species gets workers to do the dirty work for them through a kind of chemical subterfuge

The discovery that fat is a communicative organ with a role in everything from bone health to mood is forcing a rethink of how we view our bodies

A new dual-light microscope lets researchers observe micro- and nanoscale activity inside living cells without using dyes. The system captures both detailed structures and tiny moving particles at once, providing a more complete view of cellular behavior. Its creators tested it by analyzing changes during cell death and were able to estimate particle size and refractive index. They hope to push the technique toward imaging particles as small as viruses.

Intellectual hero and UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson again has a batch of lovely intertidal photos for us. Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them:

The first two pictures were taken on my cellphone at the Berkeley marina, where a friend was taking us sailing. Fortunately for me, the boat needed more than an hour of preparation, which I got to spend lying flat on the dock looking at the marine life growing underneath it. There’s an entire community on inaturalist devoted to observations of such “dock fouling”; it’s an incredibly rich environment. Because all I had was my phone, only a couple of the pictures I took were legible- next time I’ll bring a camera (and hope the boat needs even more work).

Clathria prolifera (red beard sponge). Most sponges can’t be identified from a photo, but apparently this brilliant one is an exception:

Genus Ciona (tunicate). Pretty much any blobby thing you see lying around the beach is some kind of tunicate, an animal with an inflow and an outflow, and usually not too much else to recommend them (unlike, say, clams, which are at least delicious). These at the marina were lovely, however, looking flower-like:

The rest of the pictures were taken in my usual spot on the coast, near or after sunset (that’s when the great winter low tides happen). At night it’s cold, wet, slippery and, of course, dark, which makes things a bit tricky.

Genus Crepidula; Slipper snail – this clings to the rock looking almost like a limpet:

Slipper snail top view:

Order Amphipoda; I liked this guy’s eyes:

   Genus Polycirrus; Spaghetti worm- it’s one worm, with many tentacles. The main body of the worm is curled up and coated in sand:

Dirona picta:  A nudibranch, munching on some matching bryozoans:

Cebidichthys violaceus (Monkeyface eel, or monkeyface prickleback) Despite its common name and looks, this is a fish, not an eel (all eels are fish, but not vice versa). Supposedly delicious, it’s one of the creatures for which I regularly see people foraging. They’re caught by “poke-poling”; a baited wire hook is just stuck into the end of a long pole, and the fishing method is to poke the hook into crevices under the rocks.    One of the advantages of nighttime tide-pooling is that there are a few creatures- this was one- that seem to get stunned by a flashlight, and they stay completely still.  In the daylight you seldom see one of these, and they’re gone in a flash, too quick to photograph:

Anthopleura xanthogrammica (tentative) (giant green anemone) Several species of anemone fluoresce like this under UV light:

For the second group of pictures [after number 4] the camera was my Olympus TG-7, in microscope mode, with a lot of extra lights.

At this point in history, astronomers and engineers who grew up watching Deep Impact and Armageddon, two movies about the destructive power of asteroid impacts, are likely in relatively high ranking positions at space agencies. Don’t Look Up also provided a more modern, though more pessimistic (or, unfortunately, realistic?), look at what might potentially happen if a “killer” asteroid is found on approach to Earth. So far, life hasn’t imitated art when it comes to potentially one of the most catastrophic events in human history, but most space enthusiasts agree that it's worth preparing for when it will. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, from Maxime Devogèle of ESA’s Near Earth Object (NEO) Coordination Centre and his colleagues analyzes a dry run that happened around a year ago with the discovery of asteroid 2024 YR4.