Lobsters, OK — but please don’t boil the bison

You wouldn’t want to take a bath in 70°C water. That would be painful. That’s the temperature of the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone. We had a dramatic demonstration of how awful it would when a bison stumbled into the spring and was cooked to death.

That’s horrific, but unsurprising. We last visited Yellowstone several decades ago, after a major fire had swept through the place. It wasn’t exactly wholesome for the kids — black charred snags everywhere, heaps of bones where some animal had died in place, and the hot springs were surrounded with skeletons in the muck. It would have made the visit even better if the kids could have watched a massive animal die a horrible painful death. Yellowstone isn’t Disneyland.

I’d rather spare them this sort of thing, though.

Yellowstone’s thermal pools might not be capable of dissolving organic matter, but bodies tend to disappear quickly once they fall in. When Il Hun Ro, 70, fell into the Abyss Pool in the West Thumb Geyser Basin around July 7, the only evidence at the scene was several “dark clumps” and Ro’s shoe-clad foot, which was recovered from the water.

Nature isn’t kind.

Learning a bit about neurodivergence

A person named Elise has compiled a spreadsheet of responses from neurodivergent people about their jobs and careers. I learned something from browsing through it. Most of the respondents seen to favor jobs that don’t require extensive interactions with people, but there was on grade school teacher there — they liked the strict schedule. There was a PhD researcher in the mix, but they seem to have lucked into a position with no teaching, just field and lab work. One paramedic says, “Dopamine dump in intense situations feels normal to people with ADHD.”

It seems neurodivergent people are diverse. Who knew?

Truth Social is nothing but self-serving lies

Late last night, I got an alert with the good news that Iran and Israel were going to stop shooting missiles at each other.

US president Donald Trump has announced in a social media post that Iran and Israel have agreed to a ceasefire. On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR,” Trump wrote on his platform, Truth Social. This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will!

This was on social media, not the news, and was accompanied with sycophants yelling that now, they have to give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize. Also, it was a ceasefire, not yet the end of the war, so it was presumptuous to announce that not only was this the end of the war, but also that Trump was naming the war.

Then, a little later…

Just after 5am GMT, Trump posted to social media that a ceasefire was now in effect, adding PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! Earlier he told NBC the ceasefire was unlimited and would last forever.

A ceasefire is a ceasefire, so it’s a little desperate to then beg the opponents to NOT VIOLATE IT.

But then I wondered…when did Truth Social become an international news agency, with reporters publishing reports of actual events? It’s just Donald Trump sitting on a solid gold toilet tapping out his fantasies on his phone. You shouldn’t believe anything on Truth Social.

So I was not surprised this morning that Israel and Iran continue to exchange fire despite Trump’s ceasefire declaration.

Air raid sirens sounded in northern Israel at about 10.30pm, in response to what the Israeli military said was an Iranian missile launch, about two and a half hours after the ceasefire was first announced. Israeli reports said two missiles had been intercepted. Iran denied launching missiles after the ceasefire but Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said he had ordered immediate retaliation on Tehran.

“I have instructed the IDF to respond forcefully to Iran’s violation of the ceasefire with powerful strikes against regime targets in the heart of Tehran,” Katz said in a statement. “In light of Iran’s complete violation of the ceasefire declared by the US president and the launch of missiles towards Israel … I have instructed the IDF … to continue the intense activity of attacking Tehran to thwart regime targets and terrorist infrastructures in Tehran, in continuation of the activity that took place yesterday.”

And now Trump is spittin’ mad because now he’s learning that his precious ceasefire and end of the war were built on wishes and farts and are dissipating in the same winds that are blowing away his credibility.

They don’t know what the f**k they’re doing: Trump lashes out at Israel and Iran

Neither do you, Donald. Neither do you.

“our nation’s reputation abroad is plummeting”

The World Humanist Conference was scheduled for next year in Washington DC. I’ve been to this conference in Oxford in the past — it’s a good meeting, and I would have planned on attending. I can’t confidently travel abroad anymore because of the fucked up way the US handles security at airports. I’m even reluctant to do much domestic travel.

If I’m unwilling to travel, the shoe is also on the other foot — who would want to travel to the repressive hellhole that the US has become? So I was not surprised to get this email from Jen Scott of American Atheists.

As the Board Chair of American Atheists, I’m writing you today with some difficult news: Due to escalating threats to civil liberties, human rights, and international relations under the Trump Administration, the board and staff of American Atheists have withdrawn our organization as host of the 2026 World Humanist Congress, originally scheduled to be held next August in Washington, D.C.

The Board of Directors takes seriously our duty to ensure the safety of our members and the continued ability of American Atheists to carry out its mission. This decision was not made lightly. It comes after a thorough evaluation of our organization’s ability to successfully host and safely execute an event of this magnitude in the coming year, given the new and yet unfolding risks posed by the escalation of religious nationalism and the erosion of human rights in our country.

In just its first six months, the Trump Administration’s actions — including the deportation of legal immigrants, detentions and refusals of admission to visitors of the United States, and travel restrictions — have created an environment that is not only incompatible with our values but also inhospitable to members of our global secular community.

Already, our nation’s reputation abroad is plummeting. And fueled by fear of being detained, surveilled, or harassed at our borders, so, too, are the number of foreign arrivals. A significant majority of the potential attendees we surveyed expressed apprehension about the political climate and a reluctance or unwillingness to travel to D.C., including U.S. residents and key volunteers.

Our board and staff are also acutely aware that executive orders retributively targeting private and nonprofit entities the administration views as disloyal to its agenda present an existential threat to American Atheists, our members, and our partner organizations.

Here’s the sobering truth: Under this administration, it is impossible for American Atheists to guarantee or even make reasonable assurances regarding the admissibility of international guests from key regions of the world, nor is it feasible for us to ensure the security of those who are granted entry to the United States or to mitigate against the still unknown events of the coming year.

The totality of these circumstances and the reality of this moment is deeply troubling. We are witnessing the dismantling of foundational freedoms and the weaponization of the state to stifle dissent, suppress civil society, and silence voices like ours. The repressive actions of this regime not only obstruct our ability to gather in peace but strike at the very heart of what our community stands for.

Of course, we are disappointed. But we are not deterred.

Together with our partners at Humanists International, we have responded to this challenge with agility, vision, and resolve to secure a new location. Today, we can happily announce the 2026 World Humanist Congress will take place August 7-9, 2026, in Ottawa, Canada.

It’s embarrassing to be a citizen of the United States anymore.

Would you like to visit the US next year?

Put yourself in their shoes

There may be little point to these comments, because the people who need to hear them most are incapable of empathy.

Our bombing of Iran was a surprise attack, and the initial missiles flung at them by Israel was done under cover of negotiations between US diplomats and Iran. It was about as underhanded as you can get. But Trump was oblivious to the dishonor when he posted a comment on Truth Social, that is parodied here.

@RealHirohito We have completed our very successful attack on Hawaii. All planes are now outside of America air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Pearl Harbor. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great Japanese Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter

I deplore the Iranian theocracy, but you have to consider the people living under it.

I was born in an Iranian prison. My parents were held in their jails. My uncles lie in their mass graves.
Nothing you can tell me about the crimes of the Iranian regime that I haven’t lived in blood and bone.
That doesn’t mean I want my people bombed, maimed, killed, their homes in ruins.
If your vision of liberation comes only through the ‘l destruction of innocent Ylives, then it’s not freedom you’re after.]
Sahar Delijani,

Please, world, I would welcome the dissolution of the Trump/Republican regime that is wrecking our country, but don’t bomb me and claim you’re helping us.

So much effort spiraling down the drain of AI

Google has come up with a new tool for generating video called Veo — feed it some detailed prompts, and it will spit back realistic video and audio. David Gerard and Aron Peterson decided to test it and put it through its paces, and see whether it produces output that is useful commercially or artistically. It turns out to be disappointing.

The problems are inherent to the tools. You can’t build a coherent narrative and structured sequence with an algorithm that just uses predictive models based on fragments of disconnected images. As Gerard says,

Veo doesn’t work. You get something that looks like it came out of a good camera with good lighting — because it was trained on scenes with good lighting. But it can’t hold continuity for seven seconds. It can’t act. The details are all wrong. And they still have the nonsense text problem.

The whole history of “artificial intelligence” since 1955 is making impressive demos that you can’t use for real work. Then they cut your funding off and it’s AI Winter again.

AI video generators are the same. They’re toys. You can make cool little scenes. In a super limited way.

But the video generators have the same problems they had when OpenAI released Sora. And they’ll keep having these problems as long as they’re just training a transformer on video clips and not doing anything with the actual structure of telling a visual story. There is no reason to think it’ll be better next year either.

So all this generative AI is good for is making blipverts, stuff to catch consumers’ attention for the few seconds it’ll take to sell them something. That’s commercially viable, I suppose. But I’ll hate it.

Unfortunately, they’ve already lost all the nerds. Check out Council of Geeks’ video about how bad Lucasfilm and ILM are getting. You can’t tell an internally consistent, engaging story with a series of SIGGRAPH demos spliced together, without human artists to provide a relevant foundation.

America is a zombie nation infected with the rage virus

Two days ago, Donald Trump was whining that he wasn’t going to win a Nobel Peace Prize, despite the fact that he had been so great at negotiating peace in the world.

I am very happy to report that | have arranged, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a wonderful Treaty between the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of Rwanda, in their War, which was known for violent bloodshed and death, more so even than most other Wars, and has gone on for decades. Representatives from Rwanda and the Congo will be in Washington on Monday to sign Documents. This is a Great Day for Africa and, quite frankly, a Great Day for the World! | won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this, | won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan, | won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between Serbia and Kosovo, | won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for keeping Peace between Egypt and Ethiopia (A massive Ethiopian built dam, stupidly financed by the United States of America, substantially reduces the water flowing into The Nile River), and | won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for doing the Abraham Accords in the Middle East which, if all goes well, will be loaded to the brim with additional Countries signing on, and will unify the Middle East for the first time in “The Ages!” No, | won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what | do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/lran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!

He really, really wants a Nobel prize to put on his mantel. Obama got one, you know.

So yesterday he went golfing, and made an unconstitutional attack, an act of war, on Iran, sending B2 bombers to drop bunker-busters on Iranian nuclear sites. Not that he cares about the Constitution — it’s not as if Congress will suddenly grow a spine — or that he cares about loss of life, or that he cares that he has now embroiled the country in another massive, futile war in the Middle East, he’s got to prop up his belief that he’s a strong man. This is just standard petty tyrant shit, lashing out with violence because he’s not good enough to use American strength to do something right. Blow something up, sure, yeah, that works in the movies, so it’s what he’s going to do.

Donald Trump: Remember what I previously said–Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is.

Actually, Obama negotiated a nuclear non-proliferation treaty with Iran.

Hello, 2003. I never wanted to see your ugly face again, with your baseless accusations of Weapons of Mass Destruction to justify wrecking another nation, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, wasting thousands of American lives, spreading more chaos throughout a region on the other side of the world. All because Trump wants a “Mission Accomplished” banner of his very own, or, somehow, a Nobel Peace Prize. I expect he will at least get a bump in his favorability ratings, because this is a rogue nation in which many of the people will shout “YEE-HAAAW” and cheer as the bombs fall on some other country.

We’ve got the rage virus burning through the US. And you all know what you’ve got to do to stop a zombie.

A proud ally of Morris Pride

I walked to the Morris Pride celebration at Eastside Park this afternoon, wearing my Biology is Bigger than Binaries t-shirt.

I’m not wearing it now, because as soon as I got home I stripped off almost all my clothes. It’s hot! It was not a pleasant walk, but about 70 people braved the heat and were at the park. Right now I’m just sitting with a fan, drinking a lot of iced tea.

I also learned that Brokeback Mountain has been re-released, and is playing at the Morris Theater tomorrow morning at 10am, which means a lot of good Christians are going to have to skip church tomorrow.

I know it looks a bit blotchy, but that’s because I had it in my pocket, I was sweating ferociously, and all my clothes are a bit blotchy now.

Of course I will be attending, but I’d rather you didn’t. Brokeback Mountain always makes me cry, and I don’t want to be seen all red-eyed and teary at the end.