Niels Tjoonk

Calvino and the machines Italo Calvino's 'literature machine' is a prescient vision of the perils and promise of artificial intelligence.

"Given enough time, any ‘electronic brain’ will combine and recombine words until it too happens upon something that stirs something unexpected in the reader [...]> But the key figure here is the reader -- not the machine."

engelsbergideas.com/notebook/calvino-and-the-machines/

Finally, after more than 600 games, my 3s equal my 5s #worlde

The Czech weapons giant replacing the Kalashnikov in Ukraine’s army The Russian-made Kalashnikov still prevails as the main small arm in Ukraine’s military. A Czech weapons giant is setting up shop in Ukraine’s factories to change that. The Prague-domiciled conglomer...

Slowly, Europeans are beginning to understand that one of their largest, best-trained armies is Ukraine's army. No small detail, if the Americans throw us under the bus. We will need Ukraine for Europe's security.
kyivindependent.com/the-czech-we...

Amazing writing!!

Once upon a time, in the late 1800s, people in Japan got really into breeding mice.

Coloured mice. Patterned mice. Even mice that danced.

They became known as Japanese Fancy Mice, and that caught the attention of researchers in Europe and America, who imported them for study.

2/n

YouTube video by BBC Global The greatest photo in jazz history | BBC Global

Best & happiest thing you'll see today: youtu.be/M00N9avUuLo?...

"Door zijn apparaten, werktuigen en machines eigent de mens zich goddelijke vermogens toe. De keerzijde van deze 'hybris' is evenwel dat hij als persoonlijkheid steeds kleiner wordt." > over Harry Mulisch' "De Versierde Mens" (1957) maar ook over AI. (erikdesmedt.eu/mulisch.htm)

De Hoofdige Boer (Almen, Gld)

YouTube video by Veritasium What if all the world's biggest problems have the same solution?

Amazing stuff, well told. Protein structure, Alphafold, @veritasium.bsky.social - youtu.be/P_fHJIYENdI?...

The Clown that lived forever… kind of: The life of Achile Chatouilleu Achile Chatouilleu image from California Institute Abnormalarts Achile Chatouilleu was born in 1886 and came from family of circus performers in America so he decided that he continue his family&#8…

TIL that in 1912 a clown, The French Tickler, willed that on his imminent death he would be embalmed, dressed in his clown outfit and make up, and put on display in a glass coffin.
And they did. Until 2021, when the exhibition closed down and now... no one knows where the clown corpse is 😬

Followers gezocht. Nu we niet meer actief zijn op X (algemeen FS-account 150k followers) en Mastodon helaas niet het volume van het oude Twitter lijkt te krijgen, hoop ik dat BlueSky die plaats kan innemen. Social media is toch een goedkope manier om publiek te informeren. pls rt

Making Sense of It All Hi! I’m Liz Neeley and I’m glad you’re here. Making Sense of It All is an outlet for my work at Liminal, which focuses on sensemaking in a noisy and complicated world. I built Liminal as an antidote t...

I recommend Making Sense of It All 🌸 @lizneeley.bsky.social, a hopeful and strong response to the DOGE program of terror for totalitarianism, against US research institutes and their employees. Fighting with the 2 pillars of science: community and truth-seeking.

buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

This is utterly disgusting to create your own journal, set of rules that self-select authors & have ‘peer review’ that CANNOT reject papers. How will your average joe blogs know the difference but guess what - RFK et al have a journal of “peer reviewed articles’ to cite to support their decisions

@themaximacenter.bsky.social perhaps? @westerdijkinst.bsky.social

YouTube video by Howtown Ancient skeleton fused to a cave wall

I don't know about you, but I'd like to have every Nature article come with a jazzy, showtime jingle like YouTube's Howtown did here: youtube.com/shorts/aXiwf...

A Minute in the Microverse #1

Enjoy this minute of Paramecium wandering about in a jumble of green algae and various micro debris. I never get tired of seeing how flexible these tiny cells are! #iteachbiology #microscope #edusky #science #Microminute #nature

Science Education in an Age of Misinformation

At the risk of adding something constructive to this thread, we need to quit it with the naive folk-Popperian caricature of science as an exercise of pure reason unconnected to human motives and start teaching the social process of science in high school if not sooner.

sciedandmisinfo.stanford.edu

Who else but Ilya Repin?

Emergency Response Checklist. Text says "When bad news hits, don’t freeze. When you’re SCARED, use it." Then it breaks down the acronym: SAFETY CHECK Look for immediate danger and ensure your own safety first. ASSESSMENT Just how bad are things now? (Think DEFCON readiness levels). RISK EVALUATION What is the threat to you? (Deportation? Getting sued? Being hacked?) DECIDE Now you know what to do first. Revisit according to your assessment. You’ve got this.

And finally, this isn’t about exhaustive knowledge about what is happening - it’s about figuring out what to DO.

We made an acronym to help us cope each time we feel our adrenaline spike. That & more in this week’s issue: buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

Ik lees nu Doctor Faustus van Thomas Mann en de de stukken die gaan over muziek zetten voor mij alle ramen open 🪇.

YouTube video by EuropePMC What is Europe PMC

What is Europe PMC? 🤷‍♀️
A platform that connects you to global life science publications and preprints from trusted sources. Developed by
@ebi.embl.org it’s your gateway to open science and enhanced research visibility.

Discover your next research tool: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jyY...

Reminder that @europepmc.org is a mirror of Pubmed with better search and that it indexes *all* bioRxiv preprints (as well as ResearchSquare), not just the ones funded by NIH like chauvinist Pubmed

Have there been any clues that Trump/Musk have their eyes on Pubmed?

Asking for the entire community

PARP1-DNA co-condensation drives DNA repair site assembly to prevent disjunction of broken DNA ends PARP1 and DNA co-condense at the site of DNA breaks to hold the broken DNA ends together and facilitate the assembly of repair proteins.

End here: fundamental research for translation al applications: PARP, www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... , and CAR T cells, www.cell.com/immunity/abs....

Start here: animationlab.utah.edu/phase-separa...

Mysterious Blobs in Cells Are Changing the Way We Understand Life Tiny specks called biomolecular condensates are leading to a new understanding of the cell

"No one saw the blob takeover coming." Welcoming the Phase Separation Paradigm Shift for DNA and RNA biologists.

@robwords.bsky.social Oh, it would be something if you could make a video on Pennsylvania Dutch. Can English and German speakers (and those who speak some of both 😉) understand it too? Does it have a grammar? Are there more language fusions like this?

YouTube video by Chairs missing Marianne Faithfull - Deep Water

"I'll dance with little ladies
With a hundred just like me
They hold their breath and hesitate
And dance beneath the sea
I'm walking through deep water
Trying to get to you" RIP 💔 bit.ly/4hfHMWD

#Greatread at #Science Magazine about @sebastiaanvheesch.bsky.social latest preprint:'Dark proteome’ survey reveals thousands of new human genes - The newly described genes and their products could upend aspects of human biology and accelerate medical discoveries.
www.science.org/content/arti...

The poem "Hans Breitmann's Party".

The poem, "Hans Breitmann's Party".

"She hat haar as prown ash a pretzel" - "We al got troonk ash bigs / I poot mine mout to a barrel of bier."

Dutch day of poems, in Pennsylvania Dutch.