tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

The Skylab-4 astronauts' "strike" ended 50 years ago today.

But: "After a thorough review of the available evidence, it is clear that no strike or mutiny took place during the Skylab 4 mission."

So what really happened?

https://www.nasa.gov/history/the-real-story-of-the-skylab-4-strike-in-space/

#Skylab50 #History

This paper describes the predatory bacterium Vampirococcus lugosii, which preys on members of the bacterial species of the genus Halochromatium [1].

This thing is incredible. For example: Vampirococcus lugosii has a severely reduced genome, something like 1.3 Mbp, and lacks the genes which code for many of the standard biosynthetic metabolic pathways (e.g. phospholipid synthesis, amino acid synthesis, and nucleotide synthesis). Yet it is somehow still alive.

How does this work?

One mechanism that Vampirococcus uses is to get these raw materials from its prey. An example of this are the nucleotides that Vampirococcus lugosii gets by chopping up the DNA that it sucks out of its prey. And amazingly, Vampirococcus lugosii uses a CRISPR-Cas system and various restriction enzymes to accomplish this. See the image for a cartoon of this system.

Predatory microbes.

Crazy.

----
Description of “Candidatus Vampirococcus lugosii”]

Lugosii after Bela Lugosi (1882–1956), who played the role of the vampire in the iconic 1931’s film “Dracula”. Epibiotic bacterium that preys on anoxygenic photosynthetic gammaproteobacterial species of the genus Halochromatium. Non-flagellated, small flat rounded cells (500–600 nm diameter and 200–250 nm height) that form piles of up to 10 cells attached to the surface of the host. Gram-positive cell wall structure. Complete genome sequence, GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number PRJNA678638.
----

#biology #vampirococcuslugosii

References
---------------
[1] "Reductive evolution and unique infection and feeding mode in the CPR predatory bacterium Vampirococcus lugosii", https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22762-4

"What do you want me to say about slavery?" should be the end of Nikki Haley's political career.

Interesting find by @brett - Massachusetts has a bill which "Blocks Cybersecurity Insurers from Instituting Limits on Government Notification".

Backstory, insurance firms have been stopping the US government being told about ransomware incidents. I’ve also heard about multiple instances of insurance firms controlling the incident response partner, so in effect they end to end control the ransom payment and cover up.

More US states need to adopt this.

EU-27 electricity demand steadily increased until 2008. After that, it stagnated, and - so far - never reached its 2008 level again. Efficiency gains, e.g. through LED lighting, have outweighed new applications. And in the last few years, high prices led to some demand reductions too.

This of course made it easier to increase the share of renewables, to around 40% now. But...

@kevin @ianbetteridge Because ChatGPT can do your daily Duolingo sessions then and keep you in the Diamond League.

Astronomy Picture of the Day for Dec 26, 2023.
This beautiful image of a crescent moon behind mount Monte Viso, with the Basilica of Superga in the foreground was taken by Valerio Minato 10 days ago, after 5 unsuccessful attempts over 6 years. It takes a lot of planning and some good fortune to capture such an image. The alignment occurs about once a year and the weather has to cooperate.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231225.html
#APOD
1/n

Elinor Ostrom, writing about some foundational assumptions of #neoliberal #economics. (Applying the tragedy of the commons, prisoner's dilemma, etc. to macroeconomics)

No, #privatization is not the solution to prevent degradation of common pool resources. Obviously.

But our politicians, education, and media corporations continue to listen to and perpetuate the bullshit of conservative think tanks and their so-called "experts", instead of actual economists.

Also, a previous post from @pluralistic comes to mind.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory

#politics #economy #ostrom

For this year's gingerbread I made... the VLA!

#gingerbread #astronomy #radioastronomy #space

From Jay Storz, the biologist who found mice at altitudes where no mammals had previously been known to life:

“It just boggles the mind that any kind of animal, let alone a warm-blooded mammal, could be surviving and functioning in that environment. When you experience it all firsthand, it even further impresses upon you: How in God’s name is anything living up there?”

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.22.537927v1.full #life #nature

My daughter is baking cookies, Silent Night is playing, I've got some last minute food to pick up despite some frustration about the lines and rising costs at the grocery store. There's a party tonight at my cousin's. Christmas Eve is in full swing. On my Instagram feed an 8 yo #Gaza boy bleeds out from his neck in his mother's arms as she wails for mercy. May we never get used to this. #2023 #contrast

So, what makes a good theory?

One answer comes from Larry Loudan, who said that "science is essentially a problem-solving activity", and "the first and essential acid test for any theory is whether it provides satisfactory solutions to important problems."

@kallekn https://westcountryvoices.co.uk/polish-explainer-what-is-the-kerfuffle-about-the-polish-public-broadcaster-about/

I think that's the newest I could give you. Everythins is still in on the move, I am not even trying to predict how the things will settle.

However the whole Polish media scene will probably need to reorient itself

When it comes to TV stations, we had three major media conglomerates: TVP, TVN, which is very critical of PiS and Polsat, that aimed to position itself as the impartial one, but recently was growing closer and closer to PiS.

2023 Headline of the Year nominee (September)

I’m struggling to deal with this version of the internet, where hosts are removing people for voluntarily nudity, but not removing nazis.

And a big part of that is because banks & credit card processing companies won’t allow nudity and sex stuff but are totally ok with hate speech.

From a risk perspective this is asinine - very few people have ever died as a result of naked tits, while we’re watching people be murdered in hate attacks daily.

Everything is fucked and backwards.

The courts vs democracy? Frankly, I find all this “let the people decide” talk remarkably backwards. The people decided, Trump lost, and attempted an auto-coup. January 6 was the anti-democratic part. In Colorado, the system didn’t conduct a pre-emptive strike – it responded. 8/

Mathematical physicist Cécile DeWitt-Morette was born #OTD in 1922. She made foundational contributions to the study of Feynman functional integrals, organized the first American conference on general relativity (playing an indirect but important role in the eventual detection of gravitational waves), and started the Les Houches Summer School.
Images: UT-Austin

😡

Cool tool! MastodonContentMover

'a command-line tool that downloads your posts from one Mastodon instance, saving them as a set of files on your computer, and then re-posts them on any other Mastodon instance.

[so that] Mastodon users [can] move content they value when migrating from one instance to another, which is not currently possible within Mastodon itself.'

https://mastodoncontentmover.github.io/