A common dye used in Doritos and other foods can make skin transparent, new research has found. CC-licensed photo by Mike Mozart on Flickr.
You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.
A selection of 10 links for you. Why is my stomach transparent? I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Google search monopoly US case remedies to come by December • Reuters
Jody Goday:
»
The US Department of Justice plans to issue an outline by December on what Alphabet’s Google must do to restore competition after a judge earlier found the company illegally monopolized the market for online search, prosecutors said at a court hearing in Washington on Friday.
Prosecutors did not detail what remedy they will propose, but Justice Department attorney David Dahlquist said it should be comprehensive and take into account how Google plans to integrate artificial intelligence into search.
Since the case was brought, Google has rebranded its Bard AI product to Gemini, Dahlquist said.
“What else are they thinking about? What else is beyond that?” he said at the hearing.
Prosecutors could seek to have Google divest certain business units, such as its Android mobile device operating system, or end billions of dollars in annual payments to smartphone makers and others to ensure that its search engine is the default on devices and browsers.
Google’s attorney John Schmidtlein said at the hearing that the company needs a detailed proposal from prosecutors, and will likely seek information from Microsoft (MSFT.O) and OpenAI to prepare any counter-argument on AI search.
Google has said it plans to appeal the judge’s ruling.
US District Judge Amit Mehta said he could hold a hearing in the spring and would like to rule by next August.
«
August! That’s August 2025 – nearly a year away. Then again, the US v Microsoft trial began in May 1998, the judgment (findings of fact) came in November 1999, the conclusions of law in April 2000, and in June 2000 the district court recommended a Microsoft breakup. Which of course didn’t happen. But it does show this stuff runs slooooowly.
unique link to this extract
Wind and solar farms power Great Britain’s grid to greenest ever summer • The Guardian
Jillian Ambrose:
»
Great Britain’s electricity system has recorded its greenest ever summer after growing numbers of wind and solar farms cut the need for gas power plants to fresh lows.
Analysis of energy generation data, commissioned by the Guardian, revealed that Britain’s reliance on gas generation fell in August to less than one-fifth of all electricity, or 4 terawatt hours (TWh), its lowest ever level for a one-month period.
This allowed the carbon intensity of the power grid to plummet to the lowest level recorded for a single month, at 144g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour in August, 40% lower than in the same month last year, according to the analysis.
The data, analysed by the energy thinktank Ember, showed that the record lows were sustained even when averaged over the summer months from June to August, meaning the grid experienced its greenest summer ever.
The Labour government aims to run the UK’s power grid on virtually zero carbon electricity by 2030 thanks to a surge in new wind and solar farms. Its flagship auction this week for renewable energy subsidies awarded contracts for 131 new projects, or enough new clean electricity projects to power 11m UK homes. However, it secured just half the offshore wind capacity needed every year for the rest of the decade if the government is to hit its net zero target.
Frankie Mayo, an analyst at Ember, said: “Having the lowest monthly fossil fuel share on record shows that homegrown wind and solar can reduce reliance on imports. This is a great starting point on the path to clean power by 2030 for the new government.
“But gas in the mix still threatens energy bills. Clean power is delivering cheap, low-cost power – ramping up deployment at scale can’t come soon enough.”
«
That 2030 target looks like it will be missed. But it does at least provide something to go for. (Note how we call it a “greenest ever summer”, yet the Green Party is against all the infrastructure needed to support this. Strange how the politics gets unmoored from the word.)
unique link to this extract
Common food dye found to make skin and muscle temporarily transparent • The Guardian
Ian Sample:
»
Researchers have peered into the brains and bodies of living animals after discovering that a common food dye can make skin, muscle and connective tissues temporarily transparent.
Applying the dye to the belly of a mouse made its liver, intestines and bladder clearly visible through the abdominal skin, while smearing it on the rodent’s scalp allowed scientists to see blood vessels in the animal’s brain.
Treated skin regained its normal colour when the dye was washed off, according to researchers at Stanford University, who believe the procedure opens up a host of applications in humans, from locating injuries and finding veins for drawing blood to monitoring digestive disorders and spotting tumours.
“Instead of relying on invasive biopsies, doctors might be able to diagnose deep-seated tumours by simply examining a person’s tissue without the need for invasive surgical removal,” said Dr Guosong Hong, a senior researcher on the project. “This technique could potentially make blood draws less painful by helping phlebotomists easily locate veins under the skin.”
The trick has echoes of the approach taken by Griffin in HG Wells’s 1897 novel, The Invisible Man, in which the brilliant but doomed scientist discovers that the secret to invisibility lies in matching an object’s refractive index, or ability to bend light, to that of the surrounding air.
When light penetrates biological tissue, much of it is scattered because the structures inside, such as fatty membranes and cell nuclei, have different refractive indices. As light moves from one refractive index to another, it bends, making tissue opaque. The same effect makes a pencil look bent when dropped in a glass of water.
«
Since you’re wondering: tartrazine, commonly found in Sunny D and Doritos. Though I don’t know, my fingers have never gone transparent while eating them.
unique link to this extract
When bats were wiped out, more human babies died, a study found • CBC News
Emily Chung and Benjamin Shingler:
»
White-nose syndrome is a deadly fungal disease that kills an average of 70% of bats it infects, and has been spreading to new areas since it was first reported on the continent in 2006.
The disease wakes bats during their hibernation, often causing them to freeze and starve to death.
Ecologists know that bats play a crucial role in eating up and controlling insect pests. Because of that, Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, decided to look at what happened when white-nose syndrome spread into new counties in the eastern US, decimating bat populations.
He found that farmers responded to the resulting insect outbreaks by increasing their pesticide use by 31%. Pesticides are toxic, and often associated with human health impacts such as increases in infant deaths.
Frank found that infant mortality went up 8% after the arrival of white-nose syndrome in a county, according to his study published in the journal Science.
“At first I was surprised,” Frank said, noting those increases are “big effects.” But he noted that in regions affected by white-nose syndrome, bat populations don’t just decline, but plummet, and are often wiped out altogether. “This is really turning off the switch on biological pest control in some of these counties,” he said.
That forces farmers to compensate with “a lot more insecticides,” which he notes are toxic by design. Frank also found evidence that not only were the pesticides expensive, but they weren’t as good as the bats at controlling insects — farmers’ revenue from crop sales fell 29% in areas hit by the bat pandemic.
«
The higher infant mortality is in the counties where the pesticide was used, which would imply some sort of atmospheric spread – which the paper does allude to. It doesn’t examine whether that higher mortality is among the babies of agricultural workers who might be directly exposed, though.
unique link to this extract
The NSA has a podcast—here’s how to decode it • WIRED
Steven Levy:
»
Why an NSA podcast? The spokesperson explains that the NSA has the world’s best cryptologists and cryptanalysts, all of whom work in silence, and the agency wanted to talk about their critical and amazing work. “The podcast,” the spokesperson says, “is a medium that allows for good storytelling and conversation that is distinct from things we already engage in. It provides a different level of connection.” I later received a statement from Sara Siegle, the NSA’s head of strategic communications, echoing that point: “NSA believes in showcasing the incredible, dedicated work of our diverse, expert workforce. No Such Podcast extends our existing efforts into a new and growing medium.” Got it.
I suggest some secondary motivations. Some of the NSA’s social media posts solicit workers, and this podcast seems likewise designed to appeal to STEM graduates who might place patriotism over working for Google or a startup. My source acknowledged that this was the case. “Recruitment is not the number one goal of the podcast, but we are certainly hoping that by showcasing the work we do here, and the real people on the show who work here, listeners might say, ‘Oh, that sounds like a really cool job—and that person seems pretty normal, right?’”
The NSA also apparently sees the podcast as a chance to answer some critics who charge that the agency is a Big Brother-ish snooping operation that threatens our privacy. In the very first episode, guest speaker Natalie Laing, the NSA’s director of operations, speaks at length about how the NSA limits itself to information relevant to national security and similar imperatives. “Compliance is our number one focus,” she says. By hitting this note so hard that my Apple Watch sent me a volume alert, the NSA seems to be using the podcast format to address suspicions that it violates privacy—especially after the shocking revelations from Edward Snowden about how much stuff the NSA does grab.
«
Snowden’s name is never mentioned by the NSA in its podcast, of course. It’s called No Such Podcast, an in-joke referring to its past identity cloaking as “No Such Agency”.
unique link to this extract
Teens are making thousands by debating Trump vs. Harris on TikTok • Rest of World
Viola Zhou:
»
On the afternoon of August 19, Democrat Liam Keyes entered a TikTok battle. Against a blue background, the 19-year-old lashed out at his Republican opponent, fellow TikToker “Jackson,” who donned a “Trump 2024” cap and spoke in front of a Donald Trump portrait. More than 150 viewers joined the room.
“She listens to us, bro. She is not self-centered!” Keyes, in a black hoodie, hollored from one side of the split screen. “She puts the people before herself.”
“Just wait until she gets into an actual debate,” Jackson, livestreaming from the other side, fought back. “You’re gonna see how much of an idiot Kamala Harris really is!”
The showdown took place through a niche TikTok feature called “live match,” which originated in China and has grown in popularity in the U.S. since 2022. As the 2024 presidential election approaches, a group of creators, known as “political battlers,” have adopted the format to stage political debates.
Keyes started doing live matches in the spring, after noticing how many gifts streamers received for debating politics. As a liberal, he reached out to conservative creators on TikTok, inviting them to live matches. The hustle paid off quickly. Keyes makes $100 to $1,000 from one night’s battling. In a good month, he could make up to $7,000.
Each round lasts five minutes. During a match, spectators pump up the scores of their favorite hosts by sending them virtual gifts with cash value — popping up on the screen as ice cream cones, a whale, or a lion. The side with the higher score wins. The losing creators often take on comedic punishments on camera, such as pouring milk on themselves and eating raw eggs. Keyes shaved his head after one match.
«
As the article points out, it’s an increasingly popular model – Putin V Zelensky, (Brazil’s) Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva against Jair Bolsonaro. The money that sloshes around these social networks is weird.
unique link to this extract
Poliovirus that infected a Chinese child in 2014 may have leaked from a lab • Science
Kai Kupferschmidt:
»
Researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris working under strict biosafety conditions recently opened an old box that contained a virological time capsule: four poliovirus samples, each with a handwritten label on the vial, sent to the institute more than 60 years earlier by Albert Sabin, a giant in the field of poliovirus research.
The viruses had to be destroyed, as part of a global campaign to get rid of old poliovirus samples. But first, the Pasteur team would sequence them to preserve their genetic information.
Now, a paper about those sequences, published in Virus Evolution in July, has raised an unexpected and troubling possibility: a poliovirus that infected a four-year old child in China in 2014 may have originated in a research laboratory or a vaccine production facility.
The exact source of that virus is unclear, as is the route by which it infected the child, and the authors are careful not to point fingers. But the paper underscores the fact that accidental releases of poliovirus are remarkably common.
“It is an interesting detective story,” says Mike Famulare, a systems epidemiologist at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who has studied polio but was not involved in the work. And because the child’s virus was analyzed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the finding has, inevitably, become politicized: on social media and in conservative outlets, advocates of a lab-leak origin of the COVID-19 pandemic have seized on it to suggest WIV had “another” lab release—even though there is no evidence the virus came from that institute.
«
Multiple possible scenarios for how the infection happened; no way to weigh them up.
unique link to this extract
Interview day at Thiel Capital • Astral Codex Ten
Scott Alexander:
»
You look up from your massive mahogany desk.
“Tom, right? Thank you for coming…hmm…I see you’re applying for the role of Vice-President Of Sinister Plots. Your resume looks very impressive – I didn’t even know any of the masterminds behind the Kennedy assassination were still alive.”
“That’s what we want you to think,” says Tom.
“Of course. Then just one question for you. What’s something you believe, that very few people agree with you on?”
“I think we’re in a simulation.”
“Hm, yes, that was very shocking and heterodox back in 2012. But here at Thiel Capital we’re looking for something – “
“Let me finish. I think we’re in a simulation, and it’s a porno.”
“What?”
“Bostrom’s original simulation argument said that if future generations simulated the past, there would be far more of these simulations than there were actual pasts. He thought maybe people would simulate the past to learn about the branching pattern of history. That’s the kind of mistake only a philosopher could make. If we look at existing media consumption – whether it’s videos, RPGs, or incipient VR properties – by far the most common category is porn. Even if you limit your search to historical media, there are a hundred bodice-rippers for every sober investigation of Victorian lifestyles.”
“But . . . people aren’t having sex all the time!”
“Maybe not at Thiel Capital. But go outside, and you’ll find that people are, in fact, having sex all the time. Tindr. Hinge. Grindr. Young people are going out and having casual sex every weekend.
«
Very funny and entertaining little riff on “something off-beam, but further off-beam than that”. There are multiple interviewees and answers to the question. You wish for this much imagination.
unique link to this extract
YouTubers are almost too easy to dupe • The Atlantic
Charlie Warzel on the YouTubers who were (allegedly) paid millions for a sinecure to parrot Russian talking points:
»
That some of MAGA world’s biggest influencers should find themselves connected to a Russian disinformation operation makes perfect sense. Their incessant posts and rants, attacking Democrats and fearmongering about migrants, transgender Americans, and “wokeness” run amok, track with a brand of divisive rhetoric that foreign governments wish to inject into the bloodstream of American media.
“This idea that Americans are deeply divided, that things are getting worse, that you can’t trust the government—the things that seek to destabilize American society—are a natural fit because of the content,” [Jared] Holt [a senior research analyst who studies the far right at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank] told me.
One does not just become a useful idiot for Russian state media only by being greedy. Should the allegations be proved true, the incident will serve as a cautionary tale of what happens when you chase and optimize for engagement at every available opportunity. Pool and Rubin, for example, made their names as disaffected liberals who came to the realization that their peers had evolved away from rational liberalism toward dangerous leftist ideological values.
This notion, that lifelong moderate liberals have no choice these days but to support right-wing causes, is a common trope among far-right activists (see: Elon Musk). To defect to the right is a proven lucrative path and, just as important, a way to find a highly engaged audience who’s ready to leap to your defense online. Johnson, an alum of BuzzFeed, Independent Journal Review, The Daily Caller, and Blaze Media, is also an inveterate poster and engagement optimizer whose apparent quest for audience has led him deeper down the pro-Trump rabbit hole. (As a point of disclosure: Johnson and I overlapped at BuzzFeed News, before he was fired for plagiarism.) His online biography proudly declares that, “with +5 billion views and +7 million followers across his social media platforms, he is a veteran when it comes to viral content!”
This type of engagement-based worldview—the constant optimizing for maximum attention, regardless of substance—is inherently corrupting, a fact that the Kremlin appears to understand.
«
Missouri’s first human case of bird flu makes national history • KSDK via MSN
Hunter Bassler:
»
The first human case of bird flu in Missouri was confirmed by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday.
The patient was hospitalized on Aug. 22 and tested positive for influenza A, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) said. The adult reported no known exposure to animals. They have since recovered and were discharged home. Due to patient privacy, the department did not release any further information.
The Missouri State Public Health Laboratory conducted additional testing to determine the specific type of flu the patient was infected with, DHSS said. The tests identified the subtype as H5, also known as bird flu or avian flu. The specimen was forwarded to the CDC, who confirmed the lab’s findings and are undergoing additional testing.
The case made national history, as it is the first-ever human bird flu case that was detected as part of the general flu surveillance system, rather than a targeted bird flu outbreak-specific surveillance that has previously been conducted on animal outbreaks. The latter system has detected the previously identified 15 human bird flu cases in the U.S. since 2022, 14 of which had been in 2024.
“The risk of sustained transmission or infection among the general public remains low,” DHSS said in an emailed release. “DHSS continues to closely monitor available data from influenza surveillance systems, and there has been no sign of unusual influenza activity in people, including no increase in emergency room visits for influenza and no increase in laboratory detection of human influenza cases in Missouri.”
«
Watching brief! Nothing more!
unique link to this extract
| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 