Nostalgia night

Last night, I was going to clean up a junk drawer in my office — you know, one of those places where you toss all the odds and ends you don’t quite know what to do with, and over a decade or two they accumulate a terrifying quantity of doodads and knick-knacks and geegaws that need to eventually be sorted. This is a perilous job because the drawer is stuffed with distractions, making it nearly impossible to make any progress in cleaning it up.

This time was no exception. First thing I found was a sheet of 35mm color slides, taken in 1988. Slides are annoying, I don’t know why I was shooting in that format, because the image is so small that you can’t really see anything that well, unless you have a slide projector and screen. I do not.

But the second thing I found was an old cheap slide scanner (I tell you, this drawer is full of strange things from an enchanted universe.) It wasn’t a great little gadget. I bought it once upon a time for cheap thinking I’d be able to get rid of those stupid 35mm slides, but it didn’t produce great output, so I gave up on that project and hurled it into the void of my junk drawer.

So. I’m standing there with a bunch of old slides and a slide scanner while I was trying to defeat that cluttered void. You know what happened next…I had to sit down and start feeding slides into the scanner to see what I had.

I was sucked back into 1988, when I had finished up grad school, was transitioning into a post doc in Salt Lake City, and all my beloved relatives were still alive. These slides were shot on a vacation to my parents’ home, while I was oblivious to what I was going to lose in a few short years.

This was my uncle Ed.

Ed was a bachelor who was full of stories. He was an MP in Germany at the end of WWII, which involved far less gunfire and far more shuttling around the country on trains. He then signed up for the merchant marine, and sailed around the south Pacific, collecting tattoos and bad habits. When he finally settled down with our grandmother, he was incapable of holding down a job, went on frequent benders, and threw away most of his money at the racetrack. Our parents warned us that he was a bad influence, and my father in particular was sometimes furious with him for his wastrel life style, especially when he showed up falling down drunk at our house.

But his nephews and nieces loved him (and so did my dad, actually), and he loved us back. He was the uncle who would take us to the drug store to buy comic books, or to the cheesy awful horror movies that our parents had no interest in wasting their money on. On weekends we’d spend the night at Grandma’s house with Ed, and we’d stay up late sprawled on the floor, reading comic books and watching Batman or The Avengers until the late night horror host would fire up some delightful Godzilla flick or something with Bela Lugosi or an unnaturally large creature, while Ed would fall asleep on the sofa. I can’t watch a Hammer film without once again hearing Ed snoring in the background.

And now he’s long gone.

This is my maternal grandmother, with my boys, Connlann and Alaric.

Grandma did not have a particularly happy life. She was trapped in, I think, a loveless marriage with my grandfather, who was a dysfunctional alcoholic who spent his days slurping down cheap beer and puffing constantly on cheap cigars. The cigars eventually killed him, giving him a bone cancer that required removal of his jaw, and grandma stood by him and tended him through an agonizing ‘recovery’ in which he was going through the screaming DTs and chemo. She was good to me while I was growing up, and I felt so sorry for what she was going through.

She lived for her grandchildren and great grandchildren. We should have visited her much more often, because as you can see even in this terrible photo, she lit up when the kids came to visit. We’d all go out for a treat — either to Arby’s for roast beef sandwiches, or to Dairy Queen for soft serve ice cream. She had a lot of great grandchildren, so I hope she got lots of visits and attention. We lived so far away it was rare for us to get up to Kent, Washington, but we always made a point to drop in with a couple of kids to cheer her up.

Grandpa did not survive the cancer, and Grandma is also gone now.

The junk drawer is not empty, not anywhere near it. I think it’s mostly cables and obsolete computer gear, but I fear that it has acquired a survival instinct and knows to bubble some terrifying nostalgia to the top if ever I should try to remove its contents. That’s how it has survived as long as it has.

IT

Consider this: ICE agents smashed in a car window in Minneapolis, and dragged a pregnant woman through the snow and ice on our cold hard streets, the week before Christmas.

Minnesotans on the scene reacted by shouting and throwing snowballs and ice at the thugs, because you must do whatever you can to stop the violence, and sometimes that means fighting back. The commenters online are full of hate for the helpless pregnant woman.

@chuckkugler1646
Why would a pregnant woman put herself in that situation? Wow is this a protest manipulation?

Blame the woman for existing.

@dianehaines1220
Unbelievable how the news will AlWAYS tell you that the illegal was pregnant, has autism, is breast feeding a 2 yr old, has cancer, has diabetes, has no criminal history (they committed a crime by being in the USA illegally), etc. Why, Media, do you always side with illegal aliens that have no authorization to be in the USA, and you give a Bleeding Heart story? Certainly you can do better!

I’m sarry, Diane, but most of us haven’t as thoroughly dehumanized “illegal aliens” (being in the US is not automatically a crime) as you have. These are human beings, and some of them will be pregnant, have autism, be breast feeding a 2 yr old, have cancer, have diabetes, have no criminal history, and a host of other human traits. They are people, not plastic mannequins lacking in all humanity, as you wish.

@DeannaEstrada-ki2ug
Get those criminals 🧊⛄🧊⛄🧊 ICE 🧊⛄🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸💯❤️🤍💙🦅👍😂🤣😂

There’s the mindless, hateful creature Diane was looking for.

Then I found this: WHEN IT HAPPENS by Tom Ellison. It made me feel a little better. I’m stealing the whole thing because I need this.

It’s been so long, you sometimes forget that eventually, IT will HAPPEN.

It’s impossible to say when IT will HAPPEN. But it can’t be too long until IT HAPPENS. Looking at the data (age, high-stress job, cardiac history), it is statistically plausible that IT will HAPPEN in the next thirty-six months.

Eighteen, if you factor in hamburger consumption and all the weird bruising.

Of course, it doesn’t feel right to want IT to HAPPEN. And it’s obviously not okay to try to make IT HAPPEN. That’s not what this is ABOUT, just to make things CLEAR LEGALLY as far as VARIOUS AGENCIES are concerned.

But regardless, IT is going to HAPPEN. So you’re allowed to think about IT.

Theoretically, some longevity breakthrough could happen that would enable IT to NEVER HAPPEN. Just the idea is PSYCHOLOGICALLY COMPLICATED. But realistically, IT will HAPPEN. After all, the medical research apparatus will shortly be fully dismantled, unless IT HAPPENS soon.

So, it’s fair to say that IT will happen. But you also prepare for the possibility, even if unlikely, that IT won’t HAPPEN for a long time. Some of you may not last long enough to see IT HAPPEN, which is RICH.

But you imagine where you might be, eventually, when you learn IT has HAPPENED.

Maybe you will wake up, anxious and scared and angry (i.e., normal).

Walk past the armed men and the protesters and the destitute.

Then, out of nowhere, the push notification from THE NEWS: “Breaking: IT Has HAPPENED.”

What will you feel like? When IT HAPPENS?

When IT HAPPENS, it will probably be FEELING. Just a huge, overwhelming sense of FEELING, the kind where you didn’t even realize how starved you were for FEELING. Punctuated with alternating waves of SECOND FEELING, as well as SENSATION.

Plus, a sudden absence of THIRD FEELING, which makes you realize the toll of A CONSTANT BASELINE OF LOW-GRADE THIRD FEELING for ten goddamn TIME PERIODS straight, even though you were still plenty aware of THIRD FEELING, trust me.

How might IT HAPPEN?

It may be morbid, but as it happens, there are many ways IT could HAPPEN.

Heart attack.

Golfing mishap.

An especially frightening NEWS SEGMENT on COASTAL CITY, which is generally not a statistically likely cause of IT HAPPENING, but is not out of the question, in THIS SPECIFIC CASE.

You may consider other WAYS IT might HAPPEN, especially when you are overwhelmed with THIRD FEELING.

You might then feel EMOTION, but don’t beat yourself up.

You wonder how THEY will react. When IT HAPPENS. It will probably be a complete SITUATION. It will be hard not to feel some amount of perverse SENSATION, watching THEIR POLITICAL FORTUNES.

And of course, you will have to tread carefully around RELATIVES, who will probably throw an absolute REACTION when IT HAPPENS. But WE can be MAGNANIMOUS in this new, post–IT HAPPENING world.

Still, you wonder what you’ll do, right after IT HAPPENS. Perhaps you will clutch your loved ones and watch TV, as the news anchors ACT APPROPRIATELY.

Perhaps you will SCREAM, out of OTHER FEELING.

Perhaps you will pop open a SPECIFIC BEVERAGE.

Perhaps you will scroll post after post.

Posts of INCREDULITY.

Posts of ANALYSIS OF WHAT COMES NEXT, WHICH CAN WAIT.

Posts of JOKES THAT EVEN YOU WOULD FIND TO BE IN POOR TASTE, NORMALLY, BUT NOT IN THIS CASE.

Posts SCOLDING THE PREVIOUS POSTS, AND POSTS REPLYING “WHATEVER MAN.”

Posts ABOUT OTHER TOPICS, AND IT’S LIKE, DON’T THEY KNOW IT HAPPENED?

Perhaps you will think of the countless people whose lives might have been DIFFERENT, if IT had HAPPENED sooner.

The important thing to remember, though, is that IT will HAPPEN.

I will not be magnanimous after IT HAPPENS. I want every enabler and apparatchik who went along with this tyranny to be torn down from their perches and deported in disgrace. I want to see the Potomac sanctified by the desecrated corpse thrown into it, as has been done with the Tiber and Thames. I want every wanna-be autocrat to know that there is nothing but shame and disgust awaiting them in the history books.

Let IT HAPPEN soon.

AI is a notorious confabulator

Chuck Wendig is a well-known author, and unsurprisingly, people are curious about him. He’s the subject of various harmless inquiries, and he has discovered, entertainingly, that AI makes up a lot of stuff about him. For instance, you can ask Google Gemini the name of his cat.

Unfortunately, Wendig is catless.

Well! That answers that. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, I actually do have a cat, as the *checks notes* Wengie Wiki will tell you. This isn’t unusual. Cats are very often little hide-and-seeky guys, right? Dear sweet Boomba is probably just tucked away in some dimensional pocket inside our house.

That leads him down a rabbit hole to discover that he has had and has multiple cats, swarms of cats, that have died and been replaced by other named cats, and he also has more dogs than he expected.

It’s a trivial example, but it illustrates a general problem with our brave new world of AI.

Generative AI is a sack of wet garbage.

Do not use AI for search.

DO NOT USE AI FOR SEARCH.

AI can’t even do the basic math right. Meanwhile it hallucinates endless nonsense things! So many false things! It would generate new false things if I gave it the same question string twice. This is only the tip of the iceberg for the weird things I got it to assure me were true.

I’ll pass the word on to my writing class next semester.

Then I was curious about what chatGPT thinks about my cat, so I asked it, even though I’m nowhere near as prominent as Chuck Wendig. Of course it had an answer!

“Mochi”? Wait until the evil cat finds out. It will be shredded.

I couldn’t resist clicking on the button to find out more about PZ Myers’ pets. I got a whole biography!

That’s a grade-school level essay, full of generic nonsense written to be bland and inoffensive, and could be applied to just about anyone. I’d accept it if it were written by someone in 3rd grade, but I’d still ask them where they got the information.

Notice that it doesn’t mention “spider” even once.

I repeat: DO NOT USE AI FOR SEARCH.

Try it. Tell me all about AI’s fantasies about your pets in the comments.

I envy them their coats

It’s unpleasantly cold this morning, and I was reminded of this old photo from the early years of the 20th century. That’s my great-grandfather Peter on the far left, with his sisters Karen and Marie, and his brothers Ole and Iver. I’m just impressed with their coats; I’d take any of the men’s coats right now. They knew how to dress for a Minnesota winter!

Let’s talk on Saturday

I’m a terrible YouTuber — uncharismatic, dull, lacking in visual skills, and incapable of maintaining a consistent schedule — but heck, I’ll try again. Tomorrow (Saturday, 20 December), I’ll go live around 3pm Central time. I’m open to talking about just about anything, but will center the discussion on this paper:

Christopher J. Kay, Anja Spang, Gergely J. Szöllősi, Davide Pisani, Tom A. Williams & Philip C. J. Donoghue (2025) Dated gene duplications elucidate the evolutionary assembly of eukaryotes. Nature, 3 December 2025, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09808-z.

If you don’t want to read an 11 page technical paper, just contemplate this figure:

Or you can just tune in and maybe I’ll explain it.

DDT causes polio???!?

I think I’m trapped at home today — I tried walking to work, and didn’t get beyond my driveway, because we had a thaw and a refreeze and it’s slick as snot out there. Then we’re supposed to get more snow this morning, with temperatures plummeting down to -15°C with 50mph wind gusts, so I’m cowering at home today. The spiders will go hungry for a day (they are opportunistic feeders, they can handle it).

If you’re similarly stuck at home, here’s an hour long video that I thought was very good. It rips into a couple of self-styled “science” based influencers who are anything but.

The most shocking bit was seeing Joe Rogan getting furious at any push-back on his anti-vax views, and basically shutting down the conversation by claiming that the polio epidemic was co-incident with they years of heaviest DDT use. He also made the standard skeptical claim that vaccines were a late response to an already fading plague, which is sort of true. There are multiple approaches to a serious disease: behavioral shifts, like self-quarantine, and improved hygiene can reduce the incidence and severity of infections, but it takes efficacious medical responses to deliver the coup de grace. And Joe Rogan doesn’t understand science at all if he falls for the correlation equals causation canard. DDT does not cause polio.

The video also jumps on Bill Maher. He’s got this canned response to any claims, saying that we don’t know 100% of everything, more like 20% or 10%, so his weird fads might be true. It’s nonsense. Of course there is much left to learn, but we can say with 100% confidence that you shouldn’t eat cyanide, or that the earth is spherical, or that vaccines don’t cause autism, because smart, skeptical people have studied that stuff and have objective data to back up their arguments. We don’t even quantify knowledge as a percentage fraction of everything, so that’s a bogus metric anyway. I’m willing to go along with a claim that we only know 0.00001% of everything, but that the bits we know, we know pretty damn well, so please, Bill Maher, don’t jump off the roof of a New York skyscraper to test your ‘theory’ of gravity.

Another good topic was about what having a PhD means. It’s not a free pass to make everything you say valuable, important, and true. It just says you passed an apprenticeship. You presumably got some training in critical thinking which the Joe Rogans of the world lack, but you have to demonstrate your skills throughout your life. There are also some really bad theses out there — there is some pressure to get students out the door so you can get a new crop started, and some bad PIs who will let garbage pass as long as they get a publication out of it.

(By the way, I think my PhD thesis holds up. Not only did multiple researchers build on it afterwards, but it wasn’t even just mine — it was the product of a collaboration with several absolutely brilliant mentors and colleagues, which is how every thesis ought to be.)

Avi Loeb is nuts

I’ve been watching the trainwreck named Avi Loeb for a while now, and it’s become obvious that he’s shredding his own reputation, that of Harvard astronomy, and of good science in general. He really ought to step down and retire to pursue his weird hobby — maybe he could get a special on Netflix? Anyway, Rebecca Watson summarized his current record for triumphant farts, and that’s a good thing, because I’m too tired of him to do it myself.

Hey, while I was thinking of YouTube, I figured maybe I’d do a livestream on Saturday afternoon. Would anyone be interested?

The spiders will feast tonight!

When I become an evil overlord, that will be my catchphrase: “The spiders will feast tonight!”

I got to the bait shop this morning shortly after they got a bulk delivery, and just before they parceled them out into smaller batches, so I was able to buy a whole tub of 20 dozen (240) waxworms for $15.99. That’ll take care of feeding supplies for the next few weeks, right through Christmas, so mission accomplished.

Look at all that squirmy cold protein in thin casings! I was tempted to pop a few in my mouth, but that would be taking food from my babies, so I didn’t.

A good use for AI

You can use AI to spy out AI!

GPTZero, the startup behind an artificial intelligence (AI) detector that checks for large language model (LLM)-generated content, has found that 50 peer-reviewed submissions to the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) contain at least one obvious hallucinated citation—meaning a citation that was dreamed up by AI. ICLR is the leading academic conference that focuses on the deep-learning branch of AI.

The three authors behind the investigation, all based in Toronto, used their Hallucination Check tool on 300 papers submitted to the conference. According to the report, they found that 50 submissions included at least one “obvious” hallucination. Each submission had been reviewed by three to five peer experts, “most of whom missed the fake citations.” Some of these citations were written by non-existent authors, incorrectly attributed to journals, or had no equivalent match at all.

The report notes that without intervention, the papers were rated highly enough that they “would almost certainly have been published.”

It’s worse than it may sound at first. One sixth of the papers in this sample had citations invented by an AI…but the citations are the foundation of the work described in those papers. The authors of those papers apparently didn’t do the background reading for their research, and just slapped on a list of invented work to make it look like they were serious scholars. They clearly aren’t.

The good news is that GPTZero got a legitimate citation out of it!