Bridge RNA is a natural gene editing system that researchers have learned how to use. The claim is that this new method is much more flexible and powerful than CRISPR, and that it can be used for "universal rearrangements of the human genome." (News story, technical article)
Rock art in the Arabian desert (lots of camels) is dated to 12,000 years ago. (NY Times, Science News, Technical Article)
Today's strange thing is the Malicious-Looking URL Creation Service. Via Marginal Revolution.
Amazing treasures from a Hellenistic tomb in Romania.
Latin America is undergoing a truly remarkable fertility collapse, and the population of the continent may begin shrinking by 2030. According to the discussion of this tweet, the decline is most dramatic among poor, mixed-race populations, with the fertility of both whites and more-or-less pure natives ("remote Indians") holding up better.
Robin Hanson, Left vs. Right as Bickering Backseat Kids. Which is not to say that political outcomes do not matter – they often matter a lot – just that much normal politics has exactly this vibe.
Bird photographer of the year.
And the Nikon small worlds video contest.
Meanwhile in Ukraine: a Ukrainian naval drone that carries a bunch of fiber-optic controlled aerial drones.
Gothic fiction: "the Gothic always comes back to a romanticised idea of a lost, fragmented, past: a past where the imagination is unimpeded by enlightened Classical ideas about reason and order, and truth is instead shrouded in darkness, mystery, and magic."
Roman shipwreck found in Croatia: 40 feet long (12m), loaded with olives.
It was cool that it the midst of the Covid pandemic so many people around the world tried to do scientific studies of treatments and risk factors. But the rush to publish all those studies led to a lot of slop getting into print, and it is taking a long time to cleanse the system; according to Retraction Watch, more than 600 Covid papers have now been retracted.
New wave of arrests in Russia, targeting regional officials.
Disturbingly anti-competitive backroom deal between Zillow and Redfin to limit competition in online rental listings. Do you suppose they can bribe Trump enough to get out of this one?
I follow some libertarian-leaning economists who spend most of their online energy refuting the idea that we are economically worse off. This video on Twitter/X is a distillation of their arguments.
Looks like the administration might actually be following through on Trump's plan for guest farm workers, expanding access to H-2A visas used by short-term, low-skill employees.
Scott Siskind on the Fatima Sun Miracle, 30,000 words (it is subtitled "much more than you wanted to know"). Concludes that the explanation is some combination of 1) optical phenomenon caused by staring at the sun under certain conditions, and 2) faith. It is important to note that there are a bunch of recorded "sun miracles."
New exhibit of the surreal paintings of Remedios Varo, titled "Science Fictions." Varo was very interested in alchemy and I see a lot of that in these.
1 comment:
I find Dr. Marks' characterization of the Gothic as "amoral" way off-base. Friedrich and Blake anchored their work in profound moral questions, Friedrich in an overtly Christian vein. The work in both cases is, of course, complex, and no simple formulation will do them justice. But the word "amoral" simply doesn't fit either one. Blake's famous statement that Milton was (like Blake himself, of course) a poet and "thus of the devil's party" refers to what he saw as the Paradise Lost Satan's struggle against tyranny, not any sort of, let us say, Baudelairian attraction for nihilism or wicked violation.
Marks' test case of "The Castle of Otranto" is so moralistic in an 18th-century popular novel way as to be treacly. It established the basic Gothic pattern of exploring chaos, danger, and mystery and then restoring order.
Vampire literature, of course, has always been an obvious exception--until in contemporary times vampire works have practically become a branch of the romance novel industry--which in some of its modes has an obvious connection to the Gothic, but is not the same thing.
I'm writing this while travelling and under time pressure, and so I cannot approach the question with the subtlety it deserves. But I think Marks is simply wrong in the way she treats the place of amorality in this tradition.
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