iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 4h

#OTD Sept.30,1955 James Dean (Feb. 8 1931-Sept. 30, 1955 died in a car crash. Though he only released one film before his dying in a car crash, the actor became a lasting figure in pop culture. James Dean's Death: Inside His Tragic Passing at Age 24 www.biography.com/actors/a6900...

James Dean in his Porsche 550 Spyder called "Little Bastard"

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 7h

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." -Shakespeare

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 12h

It’s Time We Recognize Science Reporting’s Mental Health Toll🧪 ksj.mit.edu/news/2026/09... A session at a recent conference led KSJ director Usha Lee McFarling to reflect on the traumas that science journalists face — and what can be done to help.

"The truth is, you don't struggle with depression, you struggle with the reality we live in."
-Keanu Reeves

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 13h

Electing Trump once was bad enough. But electing him twice? “America isn’t the way it is because he’s president. He’s president because America is the way it is.”

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 14h

Local archaeologists are often portrayed as recipients of support, rather than equal partners in shaping future research That should change Iraq’s archaeological discoveries have shaped understanding of human civilisation -but its scientists have been sidelined🏺🧪 theconversation.com/iraqs-archae...

The ziggurat in Ur, Iraq.
The early bronze age (21st century BC) Ziggurat of Ur in southern Iraq. Abbas Al Yasiri/Shutterstock

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 14h

Yes! By all means write it down.🏺🧪 A diary can be very useful, not only for reflection, but you may record things that may be relevant later in the lab which by then you may not recall some of the details. Notes can be a godsend.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 14h

Lt. Uhura And MLK | Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols On How Dr. King Convinced Her To Stay On The Show www.youtube.com/shorts/zuv1i...

youtube.com

Lt. Uhura And MLK | Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols On How Dr. King Convinced Her To Stay On The Show

YouTube video by FoundationINTERVIEWS

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 15h

Consumers Are Worried About the Loss of Physical Media Ownership. Libraries Are Leading the Conversation. www.arl.org/blog/consume... Sony plans to end physical sales of PlayStation console games the impending loss of consumer autonomy in a way that librarians will find sadly familiar.

arl.org

Consumers Are Worried About the Loss of Physical Media Ownership. Libraries Are Leading the Conversation. — Association of Research Libraries

Sally Sax is head, Collection Strategy and Partnerships, MacOdrum Library, Carleton University. In a recent Atlantic Monthly article about Sony’s plan to end physical sales of PlayStation console game...

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 15h

A picture is worth a thousand words... And there are some choice words for this one.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 15h

📢Save New Horizons! Next month, the New Horizons mission plans to shut off two instruments that study the solar wind due to lack of funding Decision risks an “incalculable loss” of data NASA’s New Horizons mission may shut down two instruments over lack of funding🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...

New Horizons, launched in 2006, could operate for several more decades.Joseph Olmsted/STScI; NASA

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 15h

A Nobel prize? To a machine? Are you daft? No. Whatever AI finds will be based on work stolen from others. AI should not get a Nobel and will deserve no credit. 🧪 Stop pushing AI @nature.com !

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 16h

🔆G'morning! Sunlight takes ~8 minutes to reach Earth, but its energy spent ~100K years diffusing outward through the dense radiative zone before it escaped Meaning the energy warming your skin this afternoon was generated when Neanderthals were still walking Europe🧪 scienceblog.com/sb-at-the-su...

The sun through clouds
Photo by Sunil Shukla on Pexels

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 16h

👇 This is great! Check it out!🏺🧪

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 16h

AI does much more harm than this pittance would cover. It's very disappointing to see @nature.com selling out to AI and promoting their a false philanthropy.🧪 #Whitewash

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Republican Senator Eric Schmitt today...

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

📢 Save the ANS! On September 1st, Drexel University made the announcement that they plan to permanently close the Academy of Natural Sciences; the oldest natural history museum in all of the Americas The Plan To Destroy America's Oldest Natural History Museum🏺🧪 www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxyf...

youtube.com

The Plan To Destroy America's Oldest Natural History Museum

YouTube video by Miniminuteman

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

👇 An insightful and very relevant paper on the importance of natural history. The nature of science: The fundamental role of natural history in ecology, evolution, conservation, and education🏺🧪

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Science requires more than just intelligence; It requires a specific set of cognitive tools. 🧪 Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit: Master the art of Skepticism in the age of AI rationalitylab.com/carl-sagans-... How Carl Sagan Beat Pseudoscience (The Sagan Method) www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUgd...

youtube.com

How Carl Sagan Beat Pseudoscience (The Sagan Method)

YouTube video by Genetically Modified Skeptic

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

What Counts as Science (According to Karl Popper)? What separates science from pseudoscience, and what should a scientist be like? Karl Popper believed that the notion of falsification could help. Karl Popper on Falsification: Science vs. Pseudoscience🧪 www.thecollector.com/karl-popper-...

thecollector.com

Karl Popper on Falsification: Science vs. Pseudoscience | TheCollector

What separates science from pseudoscience, and what should a scientist be like? Karl Popper believed that the notion of falsification could help answer these questions.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"I believe that science derives its authority from something more than mastering the pipeline from data generation to publication." Replacing research w/ AI will leave science recognizable but devoid of human judgment AI Presents Science with a ‘Ship of Theseus’ Problem🧪 undark.org/2026/09/25/o...

undark.org

AI Presents Science with a ‘Ship of Theseus’ Problem

Opinion | AI can replace each part of the scientific process, leaving the enterprise recognizable but devoid of human judgment.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

You're relying on AI? LOL! That's not smart., and using AI will not make you any smarter. 🧪 World domination is next update. www.youtube.com/shorts/sJl1K...

youtube.com

World domination is next update

YouTube video by Husk IRL

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Why AI agents invent their own language if you let them chat AI models are black boxes, with complex computation even their creators don’t have a grasp why they do certain things. “Weird terms” are a natural—but disturbing—byproduct of agent swarms🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...

the Forbin Project colosuss and guardian

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

👇 #ReadTheRoom The "growing concern" @natureportfolio.nature.com , comes from scientific studies showing that it DOES (not just can) blunt memory and reasoning. You know that. Stop pushing AI. If you don't ingest the poison in the first place, then you don't need to take the antidote.🧪

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

🔆 Good morning! "Men have become the tools of their tools" -Henry David Thoreau The moral of the AI story is... Don't be a tool.

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
-Martin Luther King Jr.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

No cheating. Share the last photo of the sky from your camera roll.

A apple tree with a partly coulded blue sky

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

🔆 Happy Chuseok! 🇰🇷 Happy Korean Thanksgiving! Everything you need to know for your modern Chuseok celebration Celebrating Chuseok: A Guide to Korean Thanksgiving bestofkorea.com/korean-chuse...

A traditional Korean painting of a gathering
commonly attributed to the Joseon Dynasty artist Hyewon (Sin Yun-bok)

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

🧬 Interesting... A new study has uncovered an unexpected feature of human DNA linked to gene activity and the physical organization of DNA. Human nuclear ribomes reveal DNA-embedded ribonucleotides as epigenetic modulators of transcription-associated DNA supercoiling🏺🧪 www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

How advanced experimental science, combined with artificial intelligence, can help find "hidden" and unexplored proteins in the human body and reveal what they actually do. TM184C is a GPCR-like regulator of intercellular exchange and autophagy🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Identifying superdark GPCR-like proteins.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Proteins: Their amino acid sequences and three-dimensional structures. Uniting sequence and structure to map the protein universe across billions of years of evolution. Contrastive learning unites sequence and structure in a global representation of protein space🧪 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This 2-dimensional map of the protein universe organizes proteins so that neighboring points are closely related. The coloring indicates different protein structure types. Credit: Guy Yanai

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It may not be so random after all? Evolution on degenerate fitness landscapes is not random: Curvature drives directional drift🧪 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Finds stochastic mutation–selection dynamics induce a directional drift on manifolds of optimal fitness toward regions of reduced curvature.

An illustration of a fitness peak 'plateau' and what happens next. (Fachareldeen & Brenner, PNAS, 2026)

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Physics and biology, irrevocably joined at the hip, yet intrinsically incompatible. We can explain solids, liquids, and gases — but how nonliving matter self-assembles into life remains one of science’s great mysteries. Is Life Itself a State of Matter?🧪 thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/is-life-itse...

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

Is Life Itself a State of Matter?

We can explain solids, liquids, and gases — but how nonliving matter self-assembles into life remains one of science’s great mysteries.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Learning is a broad concept does it necessarily depend on neurons? This argues if an organism uses information from past experiences to shape its future decisions, it is also learning. Multi-Timescale Adaptation and Emergent Learning in Single Bacterial Cells🧪 journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

History-dependent adaptation in bacterial growth control. (a) In contrast to bacteria experiencing a single nutrient upshift (black), bacteria subjected to pulsatile nutrient-rich pulses (green) increase growth rate following upshift significantly faster after experiencing several pulses, but growth rate stabilizes at a value well below that of cells experiencing constant nutrient-rich conditions.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

A Quantum State Inside Living Cells? The high energy-efficiency of life is hard to understand only with classical physics. These findings provide a quantum mechanics view for understanding living cells. A quantum state of mitochondria in the living cell🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

| Modulation of ATP production in living HEK-293T cells by 71.0-THz and 87.0-THz mid- infrared (MIR) light.

a) Sample preparation and light modulation. An average power density of 10 μW/mm2 and an illumination duration of 10 min per sample are applied for the modulation. b) ATP production in HEK-293T cells without (gray) and with (orange) the MIR modulation of 71.0 THz (left) and 87.0 THz (middle). Right: A MIR laser of 53.7 THz is further employed as a control. (***: p < 0.001; **: p < 0.01; ns: p > 0.05; t-test, n = 8 samples).

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Researchers are racing to culture a menagerie of exotic organisms and finding lots of surprises. Asgard are turning up clues about what made the transition to complex life possible. These bizarre, much-coveted microbes are revealing the origins of complex life🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The Asgard Nerearchaeum marumarumayae.Credit: Dr Matthew D Johnson, Dr Bindusmita Paul and Associate Professor Debnath Ghosal

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

"Leave it to me." -The Beaver Natural Drought Mitigation: Hydrological Impacts of Beavers in Internationally Important Peatlands🧪 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🦫 Beaver reintroduction improves peatland water storage and drought resilience. The results are astounding.

Good morning, sir. I'm here to apply for the construction job?

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

A Hidden 'Heat Valve' Controlling Earth's Temperature – And It's Closing Planetary energy budget during abrupt glacial climate events set by Atlantic Ocean heat valve🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41... This implies amplified planetary heat uptake in response to projected future AMOC weakening.

Conceptual framework of the global DO–OHC cycle.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

🔆 Good morning! Big space mirrors could bring Earth on-demand light — and upend our night sky🧪 www.sciencenews.org/article/refl... A space satellite has astronomers asking: Who controls the night sky? Reflect Orbital satellites could make the darkest skies look like nighttime in the suburbs

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Repost with an image of your favourite James Bond (wrong answers only).

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

🔆 Good morning! "Meeting, they laugh and laugh. The forest grove, the many fallen leaves" - Zenrin 🍂 The Fall of Nature mu-peter.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-... #AutumnalEquinox #fFallEquinox

Glowing base of tree made by arranging leaves
Credit: Andy Goldsworthy

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

🍂 Happy Fall! #OTD First day of fall 2026: Tuesday, September 22, 2026 at 8:05 p.m. EDT #FallEquinox #AutumnalEquinox Day and night are roughly equal across the globe 🔆/🌛 Autumnal Equinox 2026 When is the First Day of Fall? 🧪 www.almanac.com/content/firs...

A small Mabon ritual gathers candles, late-summer produce, and household symbols of balance.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

"I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance" -Reuben Blades A warning to the young: Just Say No To AI🧪 engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-war... The substitution of LLMs for Genuine Thinking is a generational threat. At stake is no less than the life of the mind.

Panel 1: AI turns this single bullet point into a long email I can pretend I wrote.
Panel 2: AI makes a single bullet point out of this long email I can pretend I read.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

No, AI systems don’t have a drive to survive – a developmental psychologist explains why it only looks that way🧪 theconversation.com/no-ai-system... An AI system may take steps to stay on. And that may look like a drive to survive... But staying on is not the same as staying alive.

two men face eachother inside a cramped space full of lighted buttons and with an oval window
In the movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, astronauts Frank and Dave don’t realize that the AI controlling their ship is reading their lips as they discuss disconnecting it. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Finding the cells that put our brain to sleep🧪 arstechnica.com/science/2026... Rare cells with widespread connectivity seem to be able to trigger sleep. These cortical cells make up only around 1% of the cortex’s inhibitory neurons, but switching them on in a mouse puts the animal to sleep.

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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

IOW... we're all fatheads ;-) Neurons were long thought to depend primarily on glucose metabolism for ATP production. However, recent findings from three laboratories show neurons metabolise long-chain fatty acids as alternative fuel. Neurons run on fat🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Neurons mobilise lipid stores to fuel mitochondrial β-oxidation and support synaptic function under glucose restriction.

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