Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
#Musk's cult may actually be larger than #Trump's, and more vocal thanks to #Xitter, but Trump has all the hard power. So I suspect Musk is on his way to a nasty case of #windowcancer or #teatoxicity. I won't be sorry if he does some damage on the way out, though.
https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/06/six-types-dinosaur-eggs-found-one-place/
The story is less dramatic than the headline (try to contain your shock) which makes it sound like multiple #species sharing a #nest. That would be tremendous news, implying amazing things about #interspecies behavior. But it's still a very nice find. And I love some of the site names on the map.
Also, the journal article is linked from the story, which IMO should be mandatory for all #popular #science #reporting. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0314689
What the find does seem to show is a diverse ecosystem with multiple species sharing nesting *grounds*. Some of them were related, like various kinds of the unfairly-named† #oviraptors, while others weren't even #dinosaurs at all! That's still pretty nifty.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating: no more than today, the #Mesozoic was never All Killing, All The Time. Dinosaurs did, of course, hunt and eat each other, and no doubt destroyed rivals' nests as well. But most of the time, they were living their lives in relative peace. Modern dinosaurian behavior is as good a guide as any here: even the meanest #birds tend their nests more than they fight.
†#Oviraptor was discovered on a nest, and the initial assumption was that it was stealing the eggs for food, thus the name "egg thief." Subsequent discoveries showed the eggs were its own—it was brooding, not raiding. But the species and all its kin have to bear the slander through their afterlife.
If I had a nickel for every time I've realized I'm a member of a group which popular culture often (a) fetishizes, and (b) portrays as entirely female, I'd have ten cents. Which isn't very much money, but it does seem a little weird that it's happened twice.
"Sorry, our #medical systems here in the West have ZERO incentive to cure, only #treatment and #sustaining #patients long term in order to milk them. Even if they found a #cure, you wouldn’t get it. That’s just bad business."
"Go fuck yourself."
I think I handled that appropriately.
@zuthal Yeah, I think that's specific to easily identified targets—as you say, aircraft parked in the open are almost a perfect use case. I said elsenet that for strikes on more ambiguous targets, and especially in fluid situations like CAS, I really think autonomous drones will be dramatically worse than human pilots about collateral damage and friendly fire. I wouldn't want to be the grunt relying on a Cylon Raider for backup.
A friend points out that the success of the #Ukrainian #drone #attack on #Russian #airfields has to have the US and other large #defense #industries rather jittery. All those big high-tech megabucks systems ... something something ten-rupee jezail.
My suspicion is that the age of drone supremacy will be short-lived: as long as they rely on human #pilots on the ground, their #signals can be jammed, traced, or hacked. Best-case scenario, the drones become flying bricks. Middle-case, the ground control facilities become #artillery targets. Worst-case, the drones are turned against their erstwhile controllers.
Those systems already exist in embryonic form—note that #Ukraine had to rely on old-fashioned #infiltration to get close enough for the strikes to work. You can bet every major #military power on the planet is already putting a lot of money into R&D for much more sophisticated approaches. Of course the alternative is autonomous drones, taking off with a set of mission parameters and the same decision-making authority as pilots in crewed #aircraft. That, uh, presents its own set of problems.
With all this said, drones are going to be a big *part* of everyone's arsenal going forward, and yeah, it's going to disrupt current #doctrine considerably. Assuming Ukraine survives the war, which I'm increasingly confident it will, veterans will be in great demand as consultants—at least in smart countries. I wonder if the US will be one of those.
Joni #Ernst is a year younger than me. Like me, she probably has decades of life ahead of her. She is also probably aware, as I am, that we're at the age where things start ... just happening. Not to everyone our age, or even most people. But to some. To *enough* to be a source of worry.
A nagging #cough. A #mole you don't remember being there the last time you looked. The sensation of an irregular #heartbeat. Moments of inattention and confusion. Fear that never quite goes away.
If she has any of these symptoms, I hope they're nothing significant. Really, I do. There is a short list of people I truly want to see drop dead, and she's not on it. However vehemently I disagree with her politics, if she were my patient, I'd give her the best possible care. Like I always have.
But when she goes in for her next #medical appointment, if she mentions any of these or other worrisome symptoms to her provider, goes through the usual battery of tests—
—I really do kind of hope the good doctor says "well, we're all going to die" before giving her the all-clear.
Map of US #job losses due #federal #research #funding cuts, on a county-by-county level. Not shown: the number of jobs lost to knock-on effects, of which mine could well be one. And oh yeah, since so many of these grants are #medical and #epidemiological, the number of people who will FUCKING DIE as a result of this lunacy.
@FeralRobots exactly this. And they pretend philosophical thought experiments like the trolley problem are in the same class as scientific thought experiments like Einstein's "what would the world look like if I rode on a beam of light?", when they're just not. Drives me quietly nuts. Or not so quietly, as the case may be.
And here it is. "Kill kids and future mothers first" is an odd strategy for a natalist party, but expecting consistency from these loons is a mug's game. I bet I know how they make it fit together in their heads, and so do you. https://endpts.com/rfk-jr-ends-routine-covid-vaccine-guidance-for-kids-pregnant-women/?u=e79ec92b-641d-4704-968d-efd571e586b5
The lengths to which people will go to defend the #TrolleyProblem are both hilarious and terrifying. Bonus points if they accuse you of "not understanding thought experiments."
No, sweetie, I understand fine. I just don't want to be part of your circle jerk.
If this didn't happen, it should have.
Implications for current political issues are left as an exercise to the reader.
The #WISP exists partially as a deliberate counter to this—i.e. to portray #fictional #dinosaurs more like the first panel than the second. Not that I expect it ever to become a #movie. But *if it does*, I will use the vast power for which #writers are known in #Hollywood to ensure my dinosaurs don't have mange and broken wrists.
@gsymon Freeform is basically a whiteboarding app, right? I hadn't thought of trying to adapt that to mapmaking, but I can see some similarities.
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
