gilleain

Great soundtrack. My favourite scene that uses music in the film is when 'Search and Destroy' plays when shooting pirates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQbhuxiyv5c

Great article actually. Mirrors the mournful tone of the film.

"Blá nótt yfir himininn ..."

Some of the confusion here is from our history. This is my (likely confused) understanding:

James VI/I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I) was king of _both_ England and Scotland and only later did the Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Union combine the two. You might notice I've neglected Wales which was (considered?) part of England.

In any case, England is a country, yes. Also the UK is a country.

What about "Really Actually Unsinkable 9"?

Fair point - but I wonder how many people that have visited Wikipedia know about simple wiki. I was probably aware of it, but not enough to remember to suggest it as an alternative!

I mean - it is certainly better ... but it is still a lot of stuff. For example:

> Part of an organism's DNA is "non-coding DNA" sequences. They do not code for protein sequences. Some noncoding DNA is transcribed into non-coding RNA molecules, such as transfer RNA, ribosomal RNA, and regulatory RNAs.

Do you _need_ to know about tRNA, rRNA, and operons (?) to understand DNA? The thing about an encyclopedia/wiki entry is that it has to cover the whole topic. This is a strength for reference, as you can scan it and find the bit you need. For learning from scratch, I can see that a conversational approach (with a human or LLM) has advantages where the learner can direct the level of detail and path through the material.

Ultimately, both are worthwhile, but I can also see the strengths/weaknesses of both ways to learn.

Wikipedia is a great _reference_ but not necessarily the best way to learn about a topic. Of course, this depends on the topic, on who has been writing the page, etc

A particularly bad example is higher maths - a wiki pages on a complex mathematics topic often reads like "A gruncheon is a worch in the brashation of plusters" and each of these words is a separate page or topic. Of course, you _can_ in theory 'just' click through all the tree of linked pages to understand a concept ...

For DNA the page (scanning it now) is well laid out, with images (including a spinning Rasmol? image) and lots of detail. However, the detail could be a drag on understanding for some : There are 'nucleotides' and 'nucleosides' and 'nucleobases'? There are non-canonical bases? Supercoiling? Z-DNA? While I know (most) of these things, it is because I've learned about them in other contexts, or by direct instruction.

I'm not saying it is impossible to understand DNA from that page, but it is likely to be harder (for some?) than a more conversational approach to learning.

Hah instantly knew it was a Patrick Boyle video. He's a well-known expert in rap music that also does finance on the side.

Nice. This part was especially interesting:

> “When we react phosphite, a form of phosphorus that naturally occurs in hydrothermal vents, with organic compounds, we get metabolic phosphorylation reactions overnight in water. Phosphite and palladium replace ATP and enzymes; it’s amazing, and it makes early evolution a lot easier to grasp” says Schlikker.

As far as I know, there are no palladium enzymes ... checks ... ok, no _natural_ ones (that we know of). Which is interesting, as other enzymes in metabolism that use metals seem to have 'adopted' the metal(s) as a cofactor - like nickel, iron, molybdenum, even vanadium in at least one case.

Interesting, however that was 1966:

> the explosive was detonated at a depth of 1,500 m (1,640 yd) on 30 September 1966. The hole that the explosive was lowered into had also been sealed with cement so as to prevent atmospheric radioactive contamination.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nat...

> The last nuclear explosion by the Program 7, codenamed Rubin-1, was performed in Arkhangelsk Oblast on September 6, 1988.

Although there is no separate page for that.

Interestingly (well to me) this is also how some ion channels in cells work - the solvation shell (water cage) allows protein pores to distinguish between sodium and potassium.

Not sure this is the best paper, just a random pick :

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09692...

Huh. More complex than I understood:

"...there are two groups of hypotheses explaining the selectivity on the basis of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The first group mainly considers flexibility/mobility of the carboxyl groups in the EEEE ring that provides a preferable space-charge environment for partly hydrated Na+ ions to pass and an unfavorable environment for K+.19,20,21 The second group proposes the “steric” selectivity mechanism, suggesting that the SF of Navs is not wide enough to let a fully hydrated K+ pass through, while fully hydrated Na+ traverses through the pore without a significant barrier"

Different paper about the 'selectivity filter' https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10....

"The backbone carbonyl oxygens plus the hydroxyl group of the threonine form four ion binding sites, called S1 to S4 from the extracellular side (see Figure 1A), and they perfectly mimic the hydration shell of potassium ions"

What I like about the selectivity filter is that it uses the backbone carbonyls.

Perhaps also vary the bird? Wikipedia tells me pelicans are in the order _Pelecaniformes_ so shoebills or herons might do.

Reminds me of an interview I saw at the height of the NFT/crypto craze, when the interviewee was challenged to come up with a use-case, and they threw out "buying a house".

So there is (AFAIK) just one part of the process to buy a house that blockchains could address, and that is transfer of ownership. The rest of the process is an estate agent (realtor) communicating between buyer/seller/legal/etc to make it all happen. A tiny proportion would be solved 'on-chain'.

Maybe shouldn't need to be said, but people really need to _actually_ understand a problem before proposing a solution!

A good music track does not _need_ a video, but some videos definitely can enhance the music or are just amazing by themselves.

'Sabotage' by the Beastie Boys (Spike Jones), 'Hunter' by Bjork (Paul White), 'Praise You' by Fatboy Slim (also Spike Jones), ... er Billie Eilish 'When The Party's Over', Apex Twin's Windowlicker (Chris Cunningam). There are so many great music videos that are more than just the song.

Of course, some are just the artist singing in front of a greenscreen, and that's fine I suppose. Still, they are fundamentally different to an excellent music video.

If I was feeling unfair I would say there is no difference! However, if a friend drew me an eye on A3 paper would I frame it? Probably yes...

Others have said this better, but art is an qualitative/emotional thing, not a simply measurable quantity of an object. We tend to use the effort put in as a proxy measure for quality, but when photocopiers and 3D printers and - yes - genAI get involved, that becomes harder or impossible.

Beating Guitar Hero is emotional, but not artistic. Photorealistic drawings could be emotional, and may or may not be artistic. Putting a text prompt into a generative model to make a (frankly terrible) music video for $100 is ... something else.

Interesting, so the 'pure vision' of the director can remain unsullied by the inept crew, huh? :)

More seriously, it reminds me of a video I was watching yesterday about a tabletop roleplay DM who was great at _telling_ stories but the players felt they were not included in the story. That is, the 'art' (if it is) of roleplay is collaborative between the storyteller and the players.

Are movies not usually a collaboration among a group of people (director, crew, etc) to produce a single work? Rather than liberating the vision, this process forces the visionary to engage with the constraints and limitations of the real world. Mabe why movies made on massive budgets by directors who have a string of recent successes can sometimes turn out terrible, as their ego outgrows the project?

I partly agree with you - I used to think of mechanical difficulty as a kind of 'proof of work' for art. Nowadays I am less interested in the idea of what counts as art or not.

However, consider works like photorealistic drawings of eyes (usually at a very large scale). A lot of people like these, and consider them to be fine art, while others (art critics?) consider them bland. Contrast that with a Picasso flamingo drawn with a single line.

There is artistic value in high-effort, low concept works as well as low-'effort', high-concept works and other combinations. Perhaps what we are all looking for is effort of some kind (I prefer human effort) whether that is conceptual effort or practice in drawing lines on paper.

The only solution? Answer the phone in an over the top comedy accent, such as Simpsons characters, or just whatever comes to mind.

Well, confusingly, the last picture on the blogpost look (to my untrained eye) to be tetrapods. Those are 'tetrahedral' (ish) shapes.

In contrast, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolos (plural 'Dolosse') are two tapering cylinders at right angles to each other. They have the same symmetry, but a different structure. Does that make any difference to how effective they are? No idea!

edit: When I said the "same symmetry" of course I should have said the dolos has some of the symmetries of the tetrapod (subgroup?).

Interesting point - usually people approach the question "who draws the tiger" from the other end. As in, the assumption is (not unreasonably!) the genAI is doing all the work and the AI 'artist' is doing nothing.

Of course, the more control you have - as you say - over the process, the more you are the artist.

I have to say, I'm not that interested in whether the output 'really' is art or not. I'm sympathetic to non-AI artists and I personally prefer art made by humans. However ... it is not impossible to make something that looks good or communicates an interesting idea with AI, but not trivially.

Of course, now the question the boy in the article asked - "where does the Tiger come from?" - could be answered with "the prompt".

The arguments today are whether a prompt like "draw a Tiger" are the same somehow to someone using a pencil or digital stylus or whatever to draw a tiger.

"But I do know that there’s no program that will draw one from scratch, any size or pose or color or style, like I want it, without an artist at the helm. And there’s no magic answer for us artists except that we are each unique. We are the only variable"

Not anymore! Now the only variable (for good or bad) is the prompt? Just add "super photorealistic, no bad anatomy" I suppose :)

I see that I was unclear - I did not mean "the law goes along with this, and I don't know why?" I meant "I do not understand why Sov. Cit. would believe that the law would agree to these ideas".

A very clear example of this is the 'Sovereign Citizen', who have bizarre beliefs around how to interact with courts. As far as I understand it, there are some 'cheat codes' people believe (incorrectly) are effective in literally getting you out of jail free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement

> Another common belief among sovereign citizens is that they can opt out of the purported contract, making themselves immune from the laws they do not wish to follow, by declining to "consent": when confronted by police officers or other officials, sovereign citizens typically attempt to negate their authority by saying, "I do not consent"

Like, why would this be true, and if it was, why would law enforcement and courts go along with it? I find it very odd.

I suspect Sandi Toksvig, one of the hosts of QI. One of the 'success' messages is "quite interestng!".

No offence mean to anyone, but the whole exercise feels very QI : superficial 'understanding' of a large range of things (for example words) without much of a connection between these words.

That's actually a feature that washing machines have had for a while - "generative washing" - it is where the extra odd socks come from.

I recently bought the book 'Watch Repair for Beginners' for reference (a project I slightly unwisely agreed to do).

It has some great diagrams, but obviously nothing on these interactive animations (er, naturally, since it is a book).

However the author (Harold C. Kelley) has descriptions for the diagrams similar to a maths proof - like "Warning lever W is raised in position to engage the pin P ... The unlocking lever U lifts the drop lever D ..." - not easy to follow, but maybe if you have the mechanism in front of you!

I meant metallocenes in general:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallocene

A metal atom sandwiched between two Cp rings. You _can_ model this as 5 single bonds between each atom of a ring (so 10 total C-M bonds), or you have to have some kind of 'edge' (bond) between the ring as a whole and the metal.

The more general issue is that a graph model of a chemical assumes a 'bond' is between exactly two atoms. Three-center hydrogen bonds are another example where this model fails to capture the chemistry very well.

Of course, it's a tradeoff - you can model _most_ compounds with just graphs (plus atom type, charge, chirality) and the relatively few that do not quite fit are special cases.

There is a lot of graph theory in Chemistry - modelling chemicals as (vertex/edge coloured) graphs, reaction networks, etc.

Of course some molecules (eg aromatic systems, like ferrocene) are not naturally representable as graphs. I wonder if it is the same with synthesis - are there reactions hard to model as a graph (or petri net or whatever). One simple example I know is that you have to be careful with including a node for 'water' as it gets connected to everything else! Or at least in biochemistry it does.

You got me. Usually I read them.

edit: Huh. Actually not a bad read. It even mentions ' On Growth and Form' which is interesting, if outdated. There are more modern texts like 'Shapes', 'Flow', and 'Branches' by Philip J Ball.

Surface area to volume ratio?

A very reasonable question, that I don't have an immediate concrete answer to!

Apparently I upvoted this question in the past (found it by searching for an answer - no AI, like the good old days)

https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/2507/are-there-a...

One answer mentions actin and hexokinase. I'm not familiar with the actin fold, but looks like a bab sandwich of some kind.

Another commenter on this page mentioned the 'Rossman fold', another classic, and TIM barrels also occur to me. One caution is that some of these I would consider higher-level patterns - the 'Topology' level of CATH hierarchy.

Naturally, the more high-level (abstract) the fold pattern, the larger the sequence space it covers. It is less interesting to say that a helical bundle (for example) covers a lot of diverse sequences.

That would be difficult - a metabolic map is a diagram showing the known reactions. At any point in time, only a subset of these will be active. Like a road map - at midnight, only some roads will have traffic.

I think what you are looking for is more like a model of the metabolome, showing the flow through the network under certain conditions (steady-state, growth, cell stress, etc). Not sure if there is a readily available database of such models, or how easy it would be just to run them and get meaningful results.