Mmmm…hot soup

We all know that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a massive meteor strike, 65 million years ago. We know where it struck: off the Yucatan peninsula, forming the Chixculub crater. What I didn’t know was that the impact was so fierce that the site was burning hot for millions of years afterward.

The collision was intense enough to cause deformation far beneath the surface. Subterranean effects reached 35 km (almost 22 miles) down, and included the melting an immense amount of rock. Exposure to seawater made that rock porous. As hot water seeped into the pores, a hydrothermal system formed. The hot water gushing into an isolated region of the freezing depths could have attracted microorganisms and possibly other life forms that were otherwise struggling to survive.
…
Traces of argon found inside a rock are indicative of potassium decay. Since the gas will also escape from molten rock, this provides a measure of when the rock solidified. How much time has passed since that rock melted can be determined from potassium-argon dating, which involves measuring the amount potassium-40 isotope present relative to the argon-40 it decays into. Levels of argon meant the hydrothermal system stayed heated from 66 million years ago, when the asteroid first hit, to 58 million years ago.

With 8 million years of heat and nutrients, life had more than enough time to colonize the hydrothermal system in the Chixculub crater. Pickersgill also ran computer simulations of hydrothermal activity in that location. Results suggested that cooling to 90° C (194° F) took between 1.5 and 2.3 million years after the impact at depths of one kilometer. Cooling to below 50° C (122° F) took up to 5 million years, still enough heat for colonies of microbes to thrive. After 6 million years, significantly less hot water was flowing, and by 8 million years, the flow had ceased. These results matched the rock age found by isotope analysis.

The impact had consequences for millions of years — it killed the world and set a pot to simmer for long ages afterwards.

It’s only an El Niño

This is the time of year when we start prepping for winter — we put away the window air conditioner, I’ve got to go drain all the garden hoses, we’re just waiting for all the leaves to drop off the trees. Looking ahead to the winter predictions, I see that we’re expecting a mild winter, because it’s an El Niño year. Just an El Niño! Maybe we’ll be a little wetter, a little less frigid, it could be an easy winter, we hope.

Just this little El Niño, in an unexceptional year:

So far, that doesn’t look so unexceptional. That looks dangerous in unexpected ways.

The peak is widely expected to be about 4° C anywhere from November to February, the most powerful El Niño in at least a thousand years. It is so far beyond Super size that scientists are using highly unscientific terms for it: jaw dropping, mind blowing, Godzilla-like.

The boy child? No, this is El Niño Diablo, the devil boy.

Uh-oh. So what do I do now? I’m going to drain the garden hoses, is that not enough?

Plenty of articles offer estimates of how many people will die because of this due to heat, hunger or extreme weather events.

But the truth is that nobody really knows what El Niño Diablo will do.

We know what climatologists’ computer models predict, but it is going beyond what the models are designed to handle. If the models are missing some interactions anywhere—ocean currents, glacial melt rates, atmospheric water vapor load, cloud cover, anything—that leaves us more blind than we are accustomed to being with climate forecasting… and therefore less able to prepare for specific impact on us.

“What do you think of this El Niño?”

El Niño Diablo is a major turning point. I think we will regret it.

BUT WHAT DO I DO?

Goofballs with clout

Last week, social media (at least, that side I’m interested in) was buzzing with hilarity at a conference announcement. The Kairos Christian Alliance had proudly advertised a weekend event, titled “Muscular Christianity”, and just the title was enough to clue everyone in on what it was going to be about: a domineering religion full of tough guys who were going to put women, Muslims, and brown people in their place. Little did we expect how cartoonish these people were going to be until we saw the poster.

It was going to be a bunch of white male dweebs strutting around, thumping their chests. These were all losers, and I hadn’t heard of most of them, except for Sean Davis, who was a founder of The Federalist, so I didn’t post anything. It looked predictably stupid. I figured I’d wait until after the conference and look for some reviews.

There weren’t any. This conference wasn’t at all newsworthy.

However, someone did an analysis of the speakers. She goes through each of the men on that poster, and they were, without exception, deplorable Christian nationalists who hate immigrants and think women should shut up, stay home, and take care of the kids. Follow that link if you’re curious about who they are.

For instance, David Schrock:

Conspiracy theories are also at the heart of some of the scheduled speakers, especially with David Schrock. Schrock is the editor in chief of Christ Over All. His X feed is filled with how to minister to Muslims, critical analysis of Islam and anti-Sharia laws in America, anti-vaccine posts, concerns that the church is too effeminate, and celebrations of the Southern Baptist Convention further restrictions on women in pastoral roles.

They’re all that pathetic. For a short summary of the whole group, consult this revised poster:

And here’s a more serious summary:

What we find in the speakers under the misleading title of muscular Christianity, is instead a MAGA Christian nationalism, whose men are the victims of progress, feminism, LGBTQ2SA, and democrats. The speakers are a convergence of conspiracy, racism, hate, extremism, and anti-LGBTQ2SA, hoping to mobilize Christian men to support their metapolitical movement. In the past when we have dismissed these movements it has been to the detriment of society, as distasteful as these groups are, they are having an impact. We may make fun of them, we may meme their posts, but we have to be aware and respond to them.

We do have to closer eye on these people, because the media won’t do it for us. These are jokers who have managed to work their way up into the highest levels of power.

The incredible self-annihilating creationist argument

This is an amazingly stupid argument.

This guy claims that he can disprove abiogenesis. He has two arguments:

  • Hydrolysis. All the molecules would be soaking in water, and water breaks down chemical reactions. He compares this to monkeys with typewriters, with the addition complication that they have to type in the rain.

  • Chirality. The typewriter has to be twice as big to accommodate both the left- and right-handed molecules, and if the monkey types the wrong handedness, the whole paragraph it’s typing is ruined.

I trust you can see the colossal flaw in his claim. If true, then no chemical reactions could occur in modern, living cells — all that water would be dissolving everything. If chirality was a problem, then no protein could be assembled without picking amino acids having the wrong handedness. The thing is, hydrolysis and condensation reactions are going on continually in the cell, and the whole system pivots on maintaining an equilibrium of disassembly and assembly. As for chirality, enzymes have extremely specific chirality requirements, and will only process molecules of one handedness — and only synthesize molecules of the necessary chirality.

To refute him, I only have to point out that he is mostly made of water, yet he isn’t dissolving in front of me, and that before he self-liquidates, his proteins are made up of only L-amino acids, and not a random mix of L- and R-enantiomers. This is basic biochemistry, and he doesn’t understand it.

Somebody may have confronted him with these facts, compelling him to slump into slimy racemic puddle years ago. H e hasn’t posted in over 3 years, and didn’t have more than 200 followers. Poor dumb creationist.

Infinite Thread XXXXI

Behold, the Ugly Palace (il Palazzaccio, aka The Palace of Justice in Rome).

It’s nice to know we aren’t the only country that throws away money on hideous, grandiose buildings with terrible cost overruns and rumors of corruption. Of course, if it were built here, it would be excessively gilded, and would be a deathtrap.

Talk among yourselves about construction projects. Or whatever.

Previous thread

Illinois has a real winner

The Republicans in Illinois must be desperate — they’re running a creationist, who runs a private school for creationists, against Governor JB Pritzker. This guy, Darren Bailey, is pathetic, and the Pritzker campaign keeps hammering him with dinosaurs.

Were you there? Straight from the mouth of Ken Ham.

Bailey won the Republican primary, which is no surprise, but the polls currently show Pritzker in a comfortable lead, 54-34.

The intellectual pick-pocket

Imagine I were invited to join a lab, and was given access to their data. I frequently talk with lab members, and I help them with writing up their results. Then, suddenly, I publish a grand paper summarizing their work, claiming that any novel insights were entirely my own, and didn’t give any credit to that generous lab.

Would you accept my claim to full credit?

That’s precisely what Anthropic has done!

When Anthropic, the artificial intelligence giant, unveiled findings from its new biology lab last week, its scientists claimed to have used A.I. agents to discover new enzymes with promise for biotechnology.

Some scientists were quick to cast doubt on the achievement. Then Mario Rodríguez Mestre, a computational biologist, said this weekend that he and his colleagues had been studying the enzymes and their associated molecules — which Anthropic calls ARTs — for four years.

Dr. Mestre and his colleagues have yet to publish their findings. But for the past three years, they have regularly used Anthropic’s A.I. models as they have written code, drafted manuscripts and performed other tasks.

In doing so, Dr. Mestre said he and colleagues shared key findings about the enzymes with Anthropic.

I don’t understand how they can claim that they didn’t suck evidence and arguments from a human science lab — that’s their whole business model! What’s not good for their business, though, is stealing credit, which has a natural consequence.

Dr. Mestre had become increasingly enthusiastic about using A.I. for his science. Just last month, he began using Claude Science, a new Anthropic A.I. tool tailored to researchers.

But after Anthropic’s announcement last week, he is winding down his projects with Claude and shifting to other models.

“I’m shutting down everything,” he said.

Why would anyone type their hard-earned evidence directly into a machine that will blithely steal it?

Building Better Men

I went through rush, the campaign to enlist new students into a fraternity/sorority, my first year at the University of Washington. They attempted to lure me in with alcohol, which I drank, and gambling, which I rejected as stupid, and with overly friendly women, which I was too addled by the aforementioned alcohol to have a coherent conversation with. I quickly concluded that fraternity life offered me absolutely nothing of interest, and would have just been a wasteful distraction. I’ve never liked the whole fraternity philosophy ever since — they are places for young men to gather and learn terrible lessons about the world.

I was not surprised by the news from Cornell. In short, a young underage woman was given alcohol at a bar. She drank it, and was probably not at all accustomed to it. She drunkenly staggered off to the Chi Phi fraternity, where “friends” gave her ketamine, and she stupidly consumed it. Then they took her to a back room, raped her repeatedly for 7 hours, and even got on snapchat and invited their fellow frat brothers to join in the gang rape. This was not something she chose, or could even choose, being zonked out of her mind on drugs and alcohol.

This was a crime, plain and simple. The 7 rapists should have been arrested and faced severe criminal sentences, greater than mere expulsion. They were not. When the reputable university of Cornell heard about this atrocious, outrageous criminal act, they held an internal investigation, and kicked two of the criminals out of the university, without passing them on to civil authorities. The others were told to write essays.

Essays. I had no idea that writing was such a dreadful punishment.

The university is not supposed to be a bubble where horrific crimes are diminished to the point where you can rape a woman and expiate your crime by writing words. Being a student shouldn’t be a state of privilege, but apparently in this time when being a student is associated with being a child of a rich family, it has become a mark of belonging to an elite who can be excused for criminal actions.

No. I reject that. They must face the consequences. The students should be arrested and tried for rape. The bar that willingly served alcohol to underage women should face severe criminal penalties, their liquor license should be at risk. The Chi Phi fraternity should be shuttered permanently. Or at least that’s what I thought until I read the national headquarters statement on the incident.

The sexual assault allegations involving parties at Cornell University are deeply concerning. Anyone who reports sexual violence deserves to be heard and treated with compassion, dignity, and respect.

Chi Phi unequivocally condemns sexual violence. Our founding principles of Truth, Honor, and Personal Integrity, and our mission of Building Better Men, call on every brother to demonstrate character through his actions and respect for the dignity and safety of others. Sexual violence is fundamentally incompatible with those expectations.

Oh god. Platitudes. How is the fraternity system at all about Truth, Honor, and Personal Integrity? How does drunkenness and notoriously wild partying Build Better Men? It’s all a lie. Burn every chapter to the ground.

And shame on Cornell. They’ve built a safe space for the rapist sons of wealthy donors. They (and many other universities) need to change the university culture, but they won’t. The system is built with layers of privilege maintained by fat cats on managing boards, and they don’t care.

Am I naive to believe a university should be a place of learning?

Don’t forget these names: Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar. They’re the ones who drugged and raped a helpless woman. That should be on their CVs, at the very least. I also hope their mothers know what their boys have been accused of.

Revisiting Whalefall

I didn’t believe the hype nonsense about Whalefall, but I’m not a marine biologist. Maybe a marine biologist would see a way that a whale could swallow a man who would survive for an hour? I’m willing to be persuaded.

This sane, sober, well-informed video doesn’t do it for me.

I am interested in the tactics the defenders of the movie take. One event is improbable, unlikely but well, maybe possible; another event could only happen under rare circumstances; yet another event could happen if a confluence of different conditions occurs; add them all up, and presto, declare it could happen. That’s not how things work.

I learned something I hadn’t really thought through. Whales have a complex ruminant stomach that is muscular and crushes and tears food before passing it on to an acid-filled forestomach. I don’t care how many faint “maybes” you stack up, once you hit a single “impossible,” you’re done.