Did they really need to remake Alien?

I kind of enjoyed Alien: Romulus. It’s a solid, workmanlike ‘haunted house in space’ movie — creepy, scary, and, unfortunately, familiar. If you like Alien, you’ll like Alien: Romulus because at it’s heart it’s exactly the same movie with different set dressing.

I had the leisure to think about what I was seeing, since the plot wasn’t much of a distraction, and I found myself wondering about the biology of the xenomorphs. There’s a lot of silliness there. One small thing I noticed was how slow and awkward the xenomorphs are. No real predator would stop and vogue in front of its prey, slowly opening its jaws to extend a second set of jaws while hissing and dripping. It’s become an indispensable trope in these movies, and sure, it’s intended to slowly ramp up the tension, but that’s not how predators act.

I feed spiders twice a week. Here’s how they act: they take their time prepping. They go on alert when something stumbles into their web, orienting themselves and rising up on their legs and paying close attention. That could be a terrifying moment in the scary movie, with that moment of tension, but when it is time to attack, they don’t delay — they move fast. They dart forward, immobilize the prey with more silk or a swift bite. They don’t stupidly pose prior to trying to disable the big creature they want to eat.

Maybe you’re not acquainted with spiders. I’ve also been attacked by a dog. It did not run up to my leg, stop, cock its head, snarl, and then slowly try to bite my calf (try, because I pedaled my bike and got away). If you’re making your living by killing your food, you don’t make it a cinematic experience, you get the business over with as quickly as possible.

Another thing that bugged me was all the slime. I don’t object to wet puppets, but the action is all taking place on a big metal ship. Where is all that water dripping off these aliens coming from? Wouldn’t a ship be equipped with dehumidifiers to extract all that water out of the environment? I know there were several scenes with partially flooded chambers, but why? I’m sure condensation is an issue in a ship, but in the future, ships in the vacuum of space don’t need to conserve air and water? How nice for them.

I’m not going to try to address the energetic cost of synthesizing and containing a highly reactive substance in their blood that has the ability dissolve its way through multiple levels of a metal spaceship.

I guess I’m a bookburner now

Oh dear. I replied to a question on Threads, which was asking what to do with a collection of right-wing media. I suggested that it ought to be burned.

imajazzbaby: I am in a quandary. I am currently cheating clearing out my late father’s house. His red neck MAGA house. It’s actually not too bad, flags, war eagles, “United We Stand” stickers on the windows. But there’s a huge stack of Dennis Prager books. Plus the complete works of Ayn Rand 🤮
I don’t believe in burning books. But I don’t want to donate that crap and send it out into the world either.
Any ideas on what to do with them?
pzmyers: Nothing is sacred. Burn the trash. You are not saying others can’t read them (although they shouldn’t) but that you are decluttering your personal property.
I am sorry that your father had such poor taste in books. That does not mean you are obligated to propagate it.

Note: this is very different from denying others the right to read these books — no one is obligated to preserve every item a deceased parent once owned, and that includes books. I’m going to have to clean out my mother’s bookshelves, and she used to be a regular reader of books, mostly detective stories, murder mysteries, that sort of thing. They’re all getting tossed, one way or another. I know well that irrational feeling that every item the loved one touched should be preserved and passed on to generation after generation, but I don’t think my children, or my children’s children, would actually be grateful to someday inherit a few houses full of old stuff.

Here’s a completely different situation:

“Hundreds of New College of Florida library books, including many on LGBTQ+ topics and religious studies, are headed to a landfill,” Sarasota Herald Tribune reports.

“A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college’s library collection.”

Purging a library of every book on certain topics is a whole ‘nother ball of wax. Traditionally, they ought to have all the jugend gathered around a bonfire.

By the way, I have a bookshelf full of truly awful creationist books, and I’m not sure what to do with them. I’d leave them to a library as a historical resource, but not if they would just check them out to readers who might consider them validated because they are in a formal collection. I’ll probably suggest that they be incinerated or placed in a landfill.

Bring back the mask

I have not been masking up all summer long. This town is very sparsely populated in the summer, and instead of masking I have just been avoiding humanity as much as possible.

That’s about to change. The students are flooding back this weekend, I have advising meetings starting Monday, and I’m expected to mingle with everyone starting next week. I may have to carry a black widow on my shoulder to discourage that sort of thing.

COVID cases are rising again, so it’s a good idea to minimize exposure, so I’ll be wearing my mask all the time starting Monday. I’m also reading about the current backlash — would you believe nurses in the UK are discouraged from wearing masks?

Meanwhile, a hospital nurse in Scotland said they faced abuse for still wearing a mask.

“It horrifies me that if l choose to wear a mask I’m questioned by my colleagues and patients,” they said.

“It’s like the last couple of years and long Covid doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter when it does. I don’t want to wear a mask but l don’t want to spread or catch it either.”

They said they were at their “wit’s end” after almost three decades in nursing.

As well as seeing a rise in cases among their local populations, 40% of nurses reported that they have had Covid-19 themselves this summer.

Of those, 21% said they had attended work while infected with the virus.

In the comments section, many nurses said that the policies in their workplaces and the attitudes of managers meant they felt pressured to come to work even if they had Covid-19.

They also reported that they were discouraged from testing themselves and patients.

A care home nurse in England said that “management is actively discouraging staff from testing due to concerns about a reduced workforce”.

A nursing associate based in NHS hospitals in England added: “It’s like Covid never existed… we get told off for testing.”

Similarly, an advanced nurse practitioner in England said: “I feel that there is huge pressure on staff to work with Covid even if symptomatic which increases [the] risk of spread to patients.”

Wait, what? Nurses are told to continue working maskless with patients while symptomatic with COVID? I’ve been to the local hospital a few times this summer, and I noticed that while they still grill you on COVID symptoms and travel when you check in, no one there is wearing a mask. It would be slightly annoying to come down with a potentially deadly respiratory disease because you went in for your colonoscopy.

That settles it. The mask is back, baby. And I will look good wearing it.

So…you wanna be a science communicator?

Good for you, but I have to warn you that there some discouraging developments. There is a peculiar segment of society that will want to outlaw you.

Abortion is on the ballot in South Dakota. Insulin prices were a key issue in the June debate between Biden and Trump. The U.S. Surgeon General declared gun violence a public health crisis, and the Florida governor called the declaration a pretext to “violate the Second Amendment.”

In an intense presidential election year, the issue of anti-science harassment is likely to worsen. Universities must act now to mitigate the harm of online harassment.

We can’t just wish away the harsh political divisions shaping anti-science harassment. Columbia University’s Silencing Science Tracker has logged five government efforts to restrict science research so far this year, including the Arizona State Senate passing a bill that would prohibit the use of public funds to address climate change and allow state residents to file lawsuits to enforce the prohibition. The potential chaos and chilling effect of such a bill, even if it does not become law, cannot be understated. And it is just one piece of a larger landscape of anti-science legislation impacting reproductive health, antiracism efforts, gender affirming healthcare, climate science and vaccine development.

It’s a bit annoying that the article talks about these dire threats to science-based policy, but doesn’t mention the word “Republican” once. It’s not that the Democrats are immune (anyone remember William Proxmire, Democratic senator from Wisconsin?), but that right now Republicans are pushing an ideological fantasy and they don’t like reality-based people promoting science.

One other bit of information here is that science communication does not pay well, and you rely on a more solid financial base: a university position, or a regular column in a magazine or newspaper, anything to get you through dry spells. You can try freelancing it, but then you’re vulnerable to any attack, and hey, did you know that in America health insurance is tied to your employment? I’ve got the university position, which is nice, but that’s a job, and your employers expect you to work, and it’s definitely not a 40 hour work week sort of thing.

It doesn’t matter, though, because those employers are salivating at the possibility of replacing you with AI.

But AI-generated articles are already being written and their latest appearance in the media signals a worrying development. Last week, it was revealed staff and contributors to Cosmos claim they weren’t consulted about the rollout of explainer articles billed as having been written by generative artificial intelligence. The articles cover topics like “what is a black hole?” and “what are carbon sinks?” At least one of them contained inaccuracies. The explainers were created by OpenAI’s GPT-4 and then fact-checked against Cosmos’s 15,000-article strong archive.

Full details of the publication’s use of AI were published by the ABC on August 8. In that article, CSIRO Publishing, an independent arm of CSIRO and the current publisher of Cosmos, stated the AI-generated articles were an “experimental project” to assess the “possible usefulness (and risks)” of using a model like GPT-4 to “assist our science communication professionals to produce draft science explainer articles”. Two former editors said that editorial staff at Cosmos were not told about the proposed custom AI service. It comes just four months after Cosmos made five of its eight staff redundant.

So the publisher slashed its staff, then started exploring the idea of having ChatGPT produce content for their popular science magazine, Cosmos. They got caught and are now back-pedaling. You know they’ll try again. And again. And again. Universities would love to replace their professors with AI, too, but they aren’t even close to that capability yet, and they have a different solution: replace professors with cheap, overworked adjuncts. They won’t have the time to do science outreach to the general public.

Also, all of this is going on as public trust in AI is failing.

Public trust in AI is shifting in a direction contrary to what companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft are hoping for, as suggested by a recent survey based on Edelman data.

The study suggests that trust in companies building and selling AI tools dropped to 53%, compared to 61% five years ago.

While the decline wasn’t as severe in less developed countries, in the U.S., it was even more pronounced, falling from 50% to just 35%.

That’s a terrible article, by the way. It’s by an AI promoter who is shocked that not everyone loves AI, and doesn’t understand why. After all,

We are told that AI will cure disease, clean up the damage we’re doing to the environment, help us explore space and create a fairer society.

Has he considered the possibility that AI is doing none of those things, that the jobs are still falling on people’s shoulders?

Maybe he needs an AI to write a science explainer for him.

Shut up, AI

A tragedy in the making

We have some little friends making a home near our front door.

We’re leaving them alone and letting them go on about their business, but haven’t informed them of their terrible mistake. They’re building outside our door, but inside the screen door — they’re going to have virtually no protection from the terrible Minnesota winter. I’m figuring they can have their happy late summer endeavor, but later, when temperatures hit the negative 20s, I’ll chip their frozen home free and toss it into a snowdrift a few blocks away.

OK, Megan, which is it?

Here’s an example of standard transvestigator methodology, consistency, and accuracy:

Megan McArdle: People are shockingly good at visually distinguishing males from females, even when you choose relatively androgynous models, and even when you strip visual cues like hair.
…
Megan McArdle, a little later: My experience is that the people who misgender me are generally not really looking at me. They are store clerks, security guards, etc who have glanced my way, registered “tall”, converted that into “man”, and then called me “sir”.

Shockingly good.

She’s a regular columnist for the Washington Post, which, using her typical logical analysis, simultaneously looks like a liberal newspaper and is easily mistaken for a conservative rag.

Hey! She wrote a book titled “The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success.”. She clearly specializes in contradiction disguised as a deepity.

Teachers, soldiers, and women shouldn’t vote for these guys

Working hard to focus on the only electorate that counts.

Trump campaign spokesperson Caroline Sunshine said Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz “never held a real job in his life” — despite his years of teaching and serving in the National Guard.

During a Wednesday interview on Real America’s Voice, host Terrence Bates complained to Sunshine that reporters were not questioning Walz “on his repeated lies about his military service and every single other thing that seems to come out of his mouth.”

“Tim A. Walz, as I like to call him, because when Tim was asked to, you know, answer the call to service and deploy and fight for our country, he chose to step down and run for Congress,” Sunshine replied. “He’s never held a real job in his life, by the way. He spent all of his life running for Congress, running for office or in office.”

Terrible. He could have been a lawyer, or a venture capitalist, or a real estate speculator…you know, a real job. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been a failure my whole life, ‘working’ as a teacher. My daughter is a researcher at a university, my middle son is a major in the Army, not real jobs, obviously. Fortunately, my oldest son rescues the family reputation, since he does financial stuff in a law office (don’t ask me what, I lack the ability to comprehend real labor).

As a professor, I’m not just a lazy slacker, I am the enemy.

My wife does have a productive life…oops. Nope. There’s only one thing she’s good for.

So…the Republicans are doing their best to alienate teachers, men in the military, women, and everyone in congress. Can they win the presidency on the backs of just white male lawyers who haven’t held political office?

Hey, Elon! This is how you’ll be remembered

Not as a genius, not as a real-life Tony Stark, not as a champion of free speech, because you’re none of those things. You’re a guy who bought a hagiographer to hide your flaws and amplify your accomplishments. Unfortunately, you also have weird beliefs about spawning lots of children, which means you created witnesses to your real nature.

Vivian Wilson is at it again. This time her focus is on Walter Isaacson, the hack who wrote Musk’s biography, and this piece on Threads is going to be a big chunk of his reputation. Hooray for free speech!

Let’s talk about the Walter Isaacson book. For those of you unaware, he wrote a biography about Elon in which I am featured. This is what I have to say on the matter. It’s a bit heavy, so bear with me.

To Walter Isaacson, you threw me to the wolves in what was one of the most humiliating experiences of my entire life. Elon was your darling Tony Stark apartheid-american hero with a semi-tragic backstory who was saving the world and you were too fucking cowardly to write anything other than a sad excuse for a puff-piece. To further this goal, you portrayed me in a light that is genuinely defamatory and I’m not going to mince my words.

I was treated as a VILLAIN BACKSTORY-ORIGIN to excuse or explain away his behavior. As if my whole existence was nothing but an inconvenience to HIM. God bless the poor soul who abused his child, that must be so fucking hard for him. I was deadnamed, and misgendered for no conceivable reason and made to seem like I was just too stupid or too “communist” or too brainwashed or too what-fucking-ever to understand the 4d chess behind the reasons I was traumatized.

My identity was trivialized, my reasons for seperation were misconstrued, and I was treated as naïve; stupid, unfairly unforgiving and unreasonably moralistic. Worst of all, this was the section that was released early as part of the “promo” because you knew it would catch headlines as part of this culture war bullshit. You knew that conservatives and ‘reactionaries’ would take this and run as far as they could with it to get clicks, or to smear my name for their own self interests.

I was never asked, interviewed, or contacted to say anything for this poor excuse of pages you call a book. I know that you claim that you “reached out to me through family members” but I found out about this thing’s existence literally a MONTH before it was released. So either you are completely fucking incompetent at the most basic aspects of your “job”, or you are weaponizing your own lack of effort to try to lift the blame off of yourself because you knew damn well what you were doing.

I know for a goddamn fucking fact that you had the information necessary to contact me directly and you didn’t. It’s not exactly neuroscience when all you had to do was ask for my fucking phone number. Therefore, this “omg we like totally tried….” act isn’t gonna work. You deliberately failed because you knew the angle you were going for, and that my testimony would’ve fucked up your pretty little portrayal of an irredeemable human being.

I was content to sit in my silence up until now and to be your queer villain. You knew that I was gonna be used as an example of “how the children are being brainwashed by the trans agenda” because you did it yourself and then proceeded to blast it to every news organization to use as an ad to sell more copies. The fact that this book may have been used as justification by parents to not let their trans child obtain potentially life-saving medical treatment fucking HAUNTS me. It always will.

I’ve been waiting on talking about this subject because it genuinely hurts so much to remember. That memory of sobbing my eyes out in a dormitory worrying that I didn’t have a future because of the damage this thing did to my reputation will forever stay with me. You, your editors, and your publisher are a fucking joke for letting this thing be released into the public. I had to see posters of this thing for MONTHS afterwards.

I go by Vivian by the way, not Jenna as the book implies. Jenna is what my friends from high school and my mom calls me. If you genuinely knew what you were talking about that’s how you would’ve referred to me. It is genuinely impressive that you somehow managed to find a way to even fuck up my NAME. I think that goes to show how much research actually went into this. I am not letting this narrative continue any further.

I must request that people don’t seek out and send hate to Isaacson, I don’t think that reflects well on anyone.