An engram refers to the hypothetical physical or biochemical changes in the brain that are thought to be the basis of memory. It is a neurological trace that represents the storage of information or experiences in the brain. [Psychology.tips]
Our memories can be defined in different ways. One is based on what people report, such as recalling what they ate for dinner last night or what happened on their seventh birthday. Another way is in terms of an enduring pattern or circuit of cells and connections in the brain, known as an engram, that constitutes the biological representation of a remembered experience.
When considering privately funded satellites, Elon Musk comes to mind as the funder of the development of the Starlink network. This report, from NewScientist (28 June 2025, paywall), must be concerning to him:
The asteroid 2024 YR4, which was once thought to be on a collision course with Earth, may still pose a threat to the planet. There is still a chance the space rock could smash into the moon, and the resulting explosion could shower Earth with a cloud of satellite-destroying shrapnel. …
The chance of a collision with the moon, however, has slowly been increasing, and now stands at 4.3 per cent based on the last observations taken before the asteroid flew out of view of our telescopes until 2028. And according to Paul Wiegert at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and his colleagues, such a collision could still cause significant damage to Earth’s satellites. …
Wiegert and his team calculated that 2024 YR4 could create a kilometre-wide crater on the moon – the largest lunar impact for at least the past 5000 years, though relatively small compared with a typical crater. An impact of this size would eject a cloud of debris into space, and by simulating its potential behaviour 10,000 times, the team found that this could cause Earth’s satellites to experience a level of collisions equivalent to what we would expect to see in years or even decades, but occurring in just a few days.
They do state that, depending on conditions, satellites may be damaged rather than destroyed, but since satellites are difficult to repair, this, too, is serious. Replacement may be the only option.
Or maybe the asteroid will miss the Earth and Moon.
It occurred to me yesterday that Wisdom is the Prey of Age.
Or, more accurately, Wisdom is the anti-prey of Age. For those of a literal bent.
Although those with a literal bent would, by nature, not use such a phrase.
To be clear, prey is the definitional subject of the mechanism by which something extends its existence via consumption; yet, Wisdom consumption appears to be a paradox, as consumption, or reduction of something into its constituents for appropriation by another entity, reduces the probability of age-extension.
And this is why inappropriate metaphor employment is in violation of the World Constitution.
The team identified the piece of OspC, known as an epitope, that triggers the immune response and found that was the part that varies so widely worldwide. Based on [an] earlier epiphany in [Dr. Richard T. Marconi’s] lab, the team then invented a next-generation process they call chimeritope technology. Using this approach, they designed a DNA molecule comprising the epitope encoding sequences from several different variants of OspC. The word chimeritope is formed from the words chimeric — joining together parts of different organisms — and epitope. [VCU Health]
Epitope:
An epitope, also known as antigenic determinant, is the part of an antigen that is recognized by the immune system, specifically by antibodies, B cells, or T cells. The part of an antibody that binds to the epitope is called a paratope. Although epitopes are usually non-self proteins, sequences derived from the host that can be recognized (as in the case of autoimmune diseases) are also epitopes. [Wikipedia]
Using a new technique that he and his lab dubbed “chimeritope technology”, they stitched together small snippets of different OspC protein antigens that provoked an immune response. This super protein proved effective enough for a vaccine for dogs that was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2016. A human vaccine is on its way – Marconi’s lab is currently working with the National Institutes of Health to get it into human trials and then on to market in the next several years.
The same Marconi as above. OspC is used by the responsible bacteria to evade the human immune system, and there’s twenty one known variants; thus the need for chimeritope technology to construct a vaccine that applies to all those variants.
Tollbooth (2021; US title: The Toll) is a tidy example of modern film noir. Multiple gangs wish control of a tollbooth in the Welsh hinterlands. In it lives the leader, if he does indeed lead anyone, of one of the gangs, a bookish man who still manages to indulge in a certain amount of violence.
Into this comes a policewoman who is damaged by the mysterious death of her brother a year earlier; upholding the public weal somehow seems hollow in his absence. The antics of triplets, dancing in the shadow of Death, clownish gangs looking to acquire the booth, even the arrival of a gang boss from the old days, boastful and annoying, fails to improve her mood.
And then everyone meets for the final standoff. Welsh inscrutability vs the modern age.
Like the Welsh personality, this story doesn’t invite you in; you may have to break a window and stick your head in. But if you like a certain melancholic uncertainty in your life, Tollbooth will deliver for you.
I do feel sorry for Erick Erickson, I really do. He so wants to be part of the political system of the United States, but both Parties are really going downhill, as I noted here.
We are expected to cheer on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act because it is the Republican bill.
This Republican bill adds to the deficit, adds to the debt, picks winners and losers, raises the debt ceiling beyond the $37 trillion in existing debt, and just rearranges deck chairs as the nation sinks into insolvency. It is fiscally irresponsible.
Without its passage, taxes will go up. That is the only real justification for this legislation. But taxes are going to go up on everyone significantly eventually because this legislation does not seriously tackle the issues of our fiscal solvency and uses sleights of hand to suggest any real benefit.
The Senate version of the plan will raise the debt ceiling $5 trillion. The House wanted to raise it $4 trillion. We will be crossing $40 trillion in debt soon.
I cannot help but notice how he clings to the spectre of higher taxes as if it’s the worst thing in the world, even worse than those baby-killers he imagines exists. But this paragraph is better yet:
This piece of legislation will not win or lose an election in November of next year. But it will also not have the stimulative effect so many of its cheerleaders want to claim. It may offset some of the costs of tariffs, but will saddle us with more debt and ultimately drive up interest rates to burden Americans, disincentivize the creation of families, and put more young workers on the path towards socialism as they blame market forces instead of Washington for their economic stagnation.
Erickson recognizes the Republican tenet of lower taxes – never mind cutting health-enhancement measures that improve worker productivity – do have a limit.
But will he recognize the corruption endemic to the Republicans? I’m sure he knows the Democrats’ ideology is the anchor around their necks, and not the pro-choice position; but the moral character of his fellow conservatives is doing worse than the Democrats, so far as I can see.
Go read his piece. It’s a painful bit of agony, and I do mean it when I say I feel sorry for him. But it’s his problem, not mine.
The United States obtained intercepted communication between senior Iranian officials discussing this month’s U.S. military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program and remarking that the attack was less devastating than they had expected, said four people familiar with the classified intelligence circulating within the U.S. government.
The communication, intended to be private, included Iranian government officials speculating as to why the strikes directed by President Donald Trump were not as destructive and extensive as they had anticipated, these people said. Like some others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
The intercepted signals intelligence is the latest preliminary information offering a more complicated picture than the one conveyed by the president, who has said the operation “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. [WaPo]
So it seems there’s objective evidence to trust the Defense Intelligence Agency assessments more than President Trump’s “Well, some guy told me!”
Some readers may wonder why this is important. As an independent voter who’s watched Trump, when my gorge wasn’t rising, from the start of his first campaign, this indicates to me that he’s not changed a whit. His actions have no connection to justice or making the world a better place. He continually seeks to improve his political position by pleasing politically extreme factions, implementing crackpot ideas, such as the failed tariffs, return the United States to a mythical Golden Age in which most Americans would be miserable, and generally taking shots at a Democratic opposition that is only slightly less incompetent than the Republicans.
And sometimes more incompetent.
This makes his decision to employ weapons, even against an Iran in the grips of a theological government that tortures its own people and spreads terror internationally in the name of a divine creature, suspect. Without the latter, he’d be completely unjustified in his decision to bomb Iran.
And, as Steve Benen points out, even this was unnecessary. He’s been boomeranged by his own decision to torpedo the JCPOA.
It’s perhaps not surprising that our bombing of the Iran sites was less than completely effective, and not because this is the Trump Administration, home of the incompetent, but because it’s a hard mission.
The offense is the boastful, grasping manner of the Mendacity Machine, President Trump. It suggests the future will become worse as he finds his frantically desired glory keeps slipping between his fingers.
For many American viewers, this may seem like it’s in a foreign language where they don’t yell a lot. Americans, in movies, deliver each line with so much emotion that we’ve burned out several Greek gods. Their rotting husks litter the heavens, occasionally dropping bits of arrogance, sarcasm, and schadenfreude on the highways.
The Station Agent (2003) is an entry in the slice-of-life genre. A man with a physical challenge inherits a train stop, a simple little building, from his employer. From there he meets several other people, each battling their demons, as he battles his, and become friends with some of them, learning as they go.
In some ways this reminds me of Paterson (2017), probably my favorite movie of that year. It’s not a dance with your favorite action star from one adrenaline high to the next; it’s a chronicle of some problems, some tragedies, and some accomplishments that a few folks in New Jersey experience. Some of them are at Point A at the start and Point B at the end; some never get off Point A, clinging too strongly to their likes, dislikes, tragedies, even philosophies, and thus never progressing down their trail.
I won’t say this is as good as Paterson, but by no means let that caveat stop you from seeing this if you’re so inclined. Your taste in quiet, thoughtful drama will, most likely, differ from mine. Sampling Paterson and The Station Agent will not leave you with a sense of regret.
Most likely. I enjoyed this one a lot. Recommended.
A President who’s a publicity hound, and will kill to get it. What to do?
Accuse the left of lying. (Man, is this Roman Senate or what? Not a spec of shame to be seen.) Here’s Erick Erickson’s frantic accusation:
Mark Thompson, the CEO of CNN, has a serious problem that came into sharp view yesterday. His network is suffering from institutional arrogance. We need them, it seems, but they do not need us.
Yesterday, CNN anchors and fact checkers lied to the CNN audience.
A network that once ran “this is a banana” ads and laments disinformation and misinformation, engaged in what amounts to institutional arrogance — an unwillingness to hold itself accountable for getting a story wrong.
On Tuesday, at 2:51 pm, CNN ran an exclusive story that the Defense Intelligence Agency’s preliminary assessment showed the United States only set Iran back by perhaps two months.
The story never noted that the DIA report was rated as “low confidence.”
Elaborately stated. That’s a red flag. What are we distracting from?
That’s right. Whatever the confidence of the DIA report might be, it’s better than the President’s utterances, spewed as he runs in circles trying to claim a share of the glory. He has a long history of disdaining his own intelligence agencies; he relies on his own intuition, always a mug’s game.
I’ve been trying to find the complete speech by the President of Iran, but no luck. Here’s the CNN summary, which is the most concise, yet comprehensible, that I’ve encountered:
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the nation today and claimed the country achieved a “historic victory” following the conflict that was “imposed” by Israel, according to the state-run news agency IRIB.
“After the courageous resistance of your great and history-making nation, we are witnessing a ceasefire and cessation of the 12-day war that was imposed on the Iranian nation by the adventurism and incitement” of the Israeli government, Pezeshkian said, according to IRIB.
Which I suppose might be best interpreted as “We’re not dead, yet.” Sun Tzu, a Chinese philosopher from centuries ago, once remarked that, in order to claim victory in war, the defender must merely survive.
Perhaps that’s the idea here.
But Iran has, if I’m to believe news reports, certainly engaged in provocative behaviors, allying with Hamas, Hezbollah, and other regional militias of dubious nature, so Sun Tzu and his observations may be inapplicable.
While the status of their nuclear energy program remains unclear following the Israeli and American attacks, it does appear that Iran stands alone. None of the other autocratic powers, such as China, North Korea, Russia, or others, came leaping to defend Iran. I wonder if Supreme Leader Khamenei considers that important?
Step 1: Make up a title that has little to do with reality.
Look, this CNNpaywalled article, which means I haven’t read it, not being a subscriber, is entitled
The myth of Iran’s invincibility has been broken, and the fallout could be far-reaching
Maybe some Iranian provincials, with little access to the world, harbored that belief – but they won’t be reading CNN. Everyone else knows Iran has strengths, weaknesses, and elements that function as both.
So why the bizarre title?
Because that’s how one garners clicks.
And I view it as offensive and misleading – even as I clicked on the damn article to see which delusion the author may suffer from. (It wasn’t marked as Subscriber-only material.)
Sorry, sorry. I’m feeling cranky this morning. Even NewScientist is making me cranky. I’ll have to write that up, but maybe for tomorrow. Today, I’m crabby about the importance of honesty in communications in an article I haven’t even read. That may fling poo over my purported earnest nature, maybe.
According to ethics disclosure reports released by the White House, Miller owns between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock in Palantir, Peter Thiel’s data and intelligence software company that has a several lucrative contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track data and conduct surveillance on undocumented immigrants. It’s a pretty clear conflict of interest from the man behind much of Donald Trump’s immigration policy, in an administration that is already rife with corruption.
A lesson in how to take advantage of one’s position. Maybe Mr Miller can take up a senior teaching position after this Administration closes down.
Headed into last week’s state legislative special elections, Democrats were confident about a contest in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The state House race was in a district that Kamala Harris carried by 19 points, and the party’s candidate, Amanda Clinton, appeared well positioned to do at least as well.
The good news for Democrats was that their candidate prevailed. The better news for Democrats was the margin: Clinton won a 69-point landslide, easily surpassing expectations.
Republican voters are either dispirited or switching sides in that particular district. Keep in mind that gerrymandering no doubt packed the district with left leaning voters if it was easily carried by Harris just a few months ago – in ruby red Oklahoma.
I wouldn’t try to extend that to other parts of Oklahoma.
A sock puppet, sock puppet account, or simply sock[,] is a false online identity used for deceptive purposes.[1] The term originally referred to a hand puppet made from a sock. Sock puppets include online identities created to praise, defend, or support a person or organization,[2]to manipulate public opinion,[3] or to circumvent restrictions such as viewing a social media account that a user is blocked from. Sock puppets are unwelcome in many online communities and forums. [Wikipedia]
As political and financial objectives supersede simple honesty, it’s difficult to tell readers that they shouldn’t use social media for their news.
But you shouldn’t.
I’m contemplating a post concerning the corruption that is pervading society; while Fox News has a decades-old reputation for misleading their audience, more recently the failures to reveal the failing nature of President Biden’s cognition has left mainstream and left-wing media similarly disgraced.
So what to do? Use multiple sources; think carefully about who can manipulate a given source, such as social media account.
There was a momentary push in 2017 for stricter social media disclosures in the political realm. The discovery of foreign influence campaigns aimed at the 2016 presidential election set off alarm bells. As a result, the major tech platforms began working to track and close so-called sock puppet accounts operated by the Russian and Chinese government. Yet few reforms were institutionalized, and as more and more Americans get their news from social media, the problem remains largely unchecked.
Time for another check on the price of DJT, the stock of Trump Media & Technology Group, which was priced at $23.60 on May 27. And now?
This monthly chart[1] shows DJT is currently in decline. Since my last casual note, my calculator shows DJT’s dropped 24.4%. Is this disaster?
No, not in my experience. I have observed, and in a few instances, owned stocks that have dropped that much and more, and then recovered. All it takes is patience; the bold investor might even buy more.
But there are no guarantees, folks. DJT could drop 20% tomorrow. In a month, it might go under the waves, never to be seen again. Or it could jump 20%.
Thank goodness I’m not a financial advisor, and readers shouldn’t take this as anything more than an old investor’s observations of a certainly unusual company, a company with a social media product that reportedly doesn’t do well, an American President as its chief draw, and a cryptocurrency on offer.
From Day Zero to today, it appears to have dropped quite a ways. Investors who’ve bought $TRUMP coins are experiencing an unexpected depletion of their core wealth, I’d say, which is rather in line with everything Donald J. Trump touches.
But I do recall Professor Richardson of Letters From An American commenting that $TRUMP experienced a big drop during the week of feud between President Trump and Elon Musk[2]. Such feuds are not uncommon in politics, but inexperienced folks often assume that allies are forever and bonded at a deep level, when the reality is that it’s often an alliance of convenience, and breaks up as goals are accomplished, personalities clash over tactics – or someone decides their slice of the pie isn’t big enough. Consider the fate of former leading Communist revolutionary and Stalin ally Leon Trotsky, exiled and assassinated.
I have to wonder if investors are awakening to the facts of DJT.
And President Trump’s bombing of Iran? I don’t expect that to affect the price of DJT. But we shall see.
1 It also appears to be exhibiting a bug in that the After Hours display replicates the daily trading information of a 3.98% decline, yet the price hasn’t changed.
Comments Off on Patterns! I Don’t Believe In Steenking Patterns!
Remember when the United States invaded Iraq under the excuse that Iraq, under President and megalomaniac Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)? Oh, some readers might be a trifle young.
And President Bush ordered the invasion despite his intelligence services telling they didn’t think there were WMDs? No WMDs were ever found.
And now we’ve hit Iran because President and megalomaniac Donald J. Trump believes the Iranians were only weeks, or months, away from completing nuclear weapons development.
Not an assessment – or excuse – to which his intelligence professionals agree.
So this CNN headline
How Trump quietly made the historic decision to launch strikes in Iran
while technically accurate, ignores the pattern in Republican Presidents to ignore inconvenient advice, making a mockery of running the best Administrations possible in favor of fiscal advantage and emotional preconception.
I wonder how many innocent Iranian citizens will die in this needless conflict?
It starts with a pleasant surreality, and then goes off into … weirdness.
Beckett-King is not a recent, random find. We have, I think, two of his books for children; his whimsical short videos appeal to the nature of both myself and my Arts Editor.
It’s tough to be a chicken. Or maybe that was just a tough chicken.
The Tale Of The Fox (1930?) is a somewhat whimsical, somewhat grim exploration of the animal kingdom of King Noble, a Lion, as taken from the stories of Reynard the Fox. The key feature, I think, is that while the characters are intelligent animals that retain their basic dietary and behavioral natures, they occupy human roles: ruling nobility, the craft class, clerics, etc.
And the primary point comes when King Noble, in frustration with the antics of Reynard the Fox, sets forth the absurd rule that animals must not kill and eat each other, except the King gets a couple of exceptions. While Reynard’s behavior may be almost ridiculously clever, in the end he’s only trying to feed his family.
So now what is he, and the rest of the carnivores of the kingdom, to do? Well, the chickens take it in the shorts.
The King shows his loyalty to his subjects, or maybe to himself, when Reynard is revealed to be responsible for the death of a chicken, and is sentenced to death. Reynard doesn’t hang around, but slips the noose and makes a run for his castle.
Foxes have castles?
Once there, he employs various tricks to defeat the King’s Army, eventually leading to the King leaving the field of battle, blaming the Cock for a betrayal and thus excusing the King from prosecuting his war vow; soon, Reynard goes from imperilment to the King’s top minister.
And there we have the story of what happens when absolute monarchs make absolutely nutty rules: chaos. Only when all sides participate, in this case by Reynard becoming an advisor while representing the people of the kingdom, will prosperity be possible.
Unless you’re a chicken.
It’s a good lesson for today’s America, which has retreated to the fantasy that arrogant leaders are better than leaders that compromise and admit that they may not know the best way forward; instead, the self-regarding wannabe rulers make up edicts without consultation with others or even with reality (abortion, transgenderism), while ginning up gods of the mystical or scientific sorts from their imaginations in order to grasp after legitimization and not engage with Americans who just might disagree with them. It’s a horror show driven by arrogance that should shame them, but won’t: the leaders benefiting their egos will never admit error.
Ahem. Sorry ’bout that.
But this movie is also interesting, even fascinating, because it is a very early example of stop-action. The creators of the movie were also developers of the art, and if the characters aren’t always as engaging as those of, say, Aardman Animations, they do have quirky charm of their own.
But can you cheer on Reynard, who is, after all, eating his fellow citizens? It’s really a serious question. It’s why I’ve never watched The Lion King: it is implicitly ridiculous.
But The Tale of the Fox tackles that problem head on.
A military dictator, especially one ruling in Spain, Portugal or Latin America. [Wiktionary]
That’s a new one on me. I get the impression it’s used to express some disdain. Noted in “The American Caudillo,” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish:
And anyone peacefully protesting this grotesque cooptation of a military parade worthy of Putin or Xi? They will be met with a “very heavy force,” just as they would be in Beijing or Moscow. Yes, that’s what free speech now amounts to in this man’s America. Write an op-ed criticizing a foreign country’s mass infanticide, and you will be deported pronto. Protest this caudillo’s trashing of every American value since the Founding, and his masked thugs will arrest you, deport you, or injure you. Be a US Senator and ask a cabinet secretary some questions at a press conference, and guards will wrestle you to the ground and cuff you. This administration has now praised ICE and Secret Service violence against elected Democratic officials more than once.
