#evolutionary computation

[danieldavidreitberg]

🌟 Evolutionary Computation is shaping the future of AI! 🚀 Dive into Daniel Reitberg's insights on how algorithms evolve and innovate. Don't miss it! #AI #EvolutionaryComputation #FutureTech #Innovation

[noxvincitchaos]

This is extremely interesting:

Computational capacity of life in relation to the universe

Kurian (2025)

The paper highlights the efficient and substantial computational capacities of biological systems, especially in comparison to current quantum computing capabilities. It also estimates when quantum computers might reach a level of computational capacity comparable to that of the universe itself. The researchers link how life processes information to the fundamental physical laws that govern the universe, at both cosmological and Planck scales.

I've been following developments in research on quantum effects in the brain. The concept discussed in this paper that interests me the most is the observed superradiance in networks of aromatic amino acids, such as tryptophan, and how this might facilitate coherence despite substantial thermal noise.

The information presented has significant implications for advancing quantum computing through the application of biological qubit architectures. I'm excited to see how research into quantum effects in neuronal function may illuminate (pun intended) our understanding of learning and memory, as well as the potential for developing diagnostics and therapeutics for neurological disorders.

[thursdayisbetterthanfriday]

Do Artificial Neural Networks Dream of Discretised Sheep?

Part 1 - How did we get here?

In Max Bennett's book, A Brief History of Intelligence, the author investigates the evolutionary history of intelligence across the animal kingdom and how humanity has evolved into it's current state. One of the stages of intelligent evolution that Max Bennett ascribes is the act of simulation in mammals. Using rats as an example, Bennett describes how rats, as opposed to what we'll call lesser intelligent creatures, can visualise and simulate possible futures. This allows them to make better decisions, and to think through problems in a way which gives them a better chance of future success. Anyone who has attempted to capture a rat, over a simpler dormouse will understand this intuitively. So how can this information be applied to creating more intelligent AI systems? In my own AI research, I've been exploring some of these ideas. Instead of telling you about these concisely, and precisely, you're going to get a deep tangential, essay instead. As an eternal student of Earth and Computer Sciences, looking at the evolutionary history of our ancient ancestors, and of the rich variety of intelligence in life is key in understanding what intelligence, and consciousness, truly is. Alongside modern advances in neurology, allows us to better understand what intelligence might be, and how to replicate it to benefit society.

Or teaching rats how to play DOOM. Don't worry, this will be relevant later...

Early Simul-scene: DeepBlue and the Intelligent Chess-Maker

Computer science has long used simulation to attempt to solve problems. Like many computing stories, simulation was used in computing terms in the Second World War. The Monte Carlo method was the king of the simulation methodologies - used by the Manhattan project to simulate particle physics calculations in order to produce a nuclear bomb. These were done mainly on analog computing machines, but were later done using IBM digital computers.

The fingerprints of John von Neumann were to be found across this entire chapter of computing history. These kinds of simulations are known as "expert systems". These are systems hand-crafted by experts which can then perform well at specific tasks. For the Project Manhattan scientists, that was particle physics, but these often had other mundane functions such as for accounting, artillery trajectory calculations or book-keeping. To illustrate the pros and cons of this approach, let's take a look at a later expert system, which is less existential. In the 1990s, IBM was involved in "solving" chess. To create a system that could beat grandmasters was an excellent chance for R&D and a brilliant marketing coup. They came up with Deep Blue.

This device contained an opening playbook over 4000 potential openings, along with a dataset of 700,000 grandmaster games. It used a combination of opening playbook moves, matched with grandmaster plays, to search for optimal, winning, moves and playstyles which it used to form its decisions. In a highly publicised match with Gary Kasparov, the over-all methodology proved to be a success - making the IBM team famous in the process.

But there are issues with such approaches, very apparently. In order to make systems capable of simulating other possible problems you have to not only collate expert information across multiple domains, but also expertly code such systems together. You must have a team of intelligent "chess-makers" who can create these machines for different tasks and functionalities. That, in fact, was what ended up happening across multiple industries in the time period.

But what if you want a system that can simulate multiple situations? A generally intelligent system? Expert systems creators tried, and tried, over the years. Getting ever closer, but getting ever further away. This paved the way for a return to form for a 20th century school of thinking that could help solve this problem.

Middle Simul-scene: Revenge of the Connectionists

Let's go back in time for a moment to understand the next chapter in world simulations.

In Chapters 1 and 2 of Max Bennett's book, we look at the evolution of bilaterian beings and the creation of the first nervous systems in life on earth. What would you do if you didn't have a front or back?

We take such things for granted today, but more than 500,000,000 years ago, this was a significant issue life had to grapple with. Life, of course, uh, found a way. Bilateralism evolved as a successful life strategy - allowing organisms to orient themselves and better control their locomotion. Crucially, what also developed were some of the first nervous systems. Key to the definition of a bilaterian is "a nervous system with an anterior concentration of nerve cells from which nerve tracts extends posteriorly" . These biological neural networks allowed the transmission of information across the animal such as stimuli and conditions of different parts of the organism. Most importantly was the ability of neural networks to process this information in a centralised location to inform decisions of an organism. Now we jump back to the future. The connectionists were a loosely connected (hah!) group of biologists, computer scientists, psychologists, mathematicians and neurologists who believed the best way to make intelligent machines was to copy nature. Specifically using neuronal structures as a way to inspire intelligent decisions. The first attempts at this were in the mid 1940s with what is now commonly called the Perceptron. This ignores the original creators, so we'll mentions its original name, The McCulloch–Pitts neuron, after Warren Sturgis McCulloch and Walter Pitts.

Their theory created what we know now as Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) - mathematical systems which replicate the structure of biological neural networks. These theories were tested in the 1960s with real-world devices, such as the Mark 1 Perceptron Machine - devised by Frank Rosenblatt at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory.

This monstrosity filled half a room and consumed a significant amount of power. Its descendants live on your phone, consuming an alarmingly insignificant number of Watts as they make your face look like a dog on TikTok.

While connectionist theories were explored across the 20th century, they were more often overlooked to focus on the "expert" systems such as those in Deep Blue. The expert systems were more controllable, more reliable and, to be honest, produced better results. This, however, began to change around the turn of the Millennium. More powerful hardware, and further research into types of connectionist models has lead to a renaissance in the field.

Contemporary Simul-Scene - Can you run DOOM on Electric Sheep?

This is the video-game DOOM. It was released in 1993 and defined the future of many first-person shooters. It is also a meme, where hackers attempt to get it to run on every electronic device known to man.

DOOM can run on an electric toothbrush. DOOM can run on some pregnancy tests. DOOM can run on network switched. DOOM can theoretically run on a significantly large number of crabs locked into specific gates.... The first sentence of this section is, in fact, a lie. The video is from an AI world model which generates new 2D frames of the game DOOM and can react to user input. There is no game model. There is no physics engine. There is no original game code. Only a neural network, running on a powerful TPU, able to "play" a version of DOOM until its predictive ability eventually collapses. While, unfortunately, the paper's researchers seem to think it's a useful tool to put videogame developers out of work, and promoting job losses in the creative industries, there are better use cases for such technology.

This model shows the potential to create simulated futures that AI systems can use to predict the future. Systems which can not only "imagine" what the future might hold to make more informed decisions, but also "imagine" potential future situations and be able to plan for future scenarios before entering situations. This kind of system, in fact, already exists in practice.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley were able to implement a similar system into a robotic quadruped combined with reinforcement learning methods. This system works by creating a simulated world model using video, the robot's internal idea of position, and other inputs. In return, it predicts variable future situations which it uses to determine the best course of action This allowed the quadruped to learn how to stand up, walk, roll over and resist being pushed over within just 1 hour. Comparable in a limited way, to a horse foal.

While the researchers in the video above are somewhat mean to the robot, they do demonstrate its ability to recover from being menaced by men with large poster tubes. They would make fine cinema box-office assistants! What this does demonstrate, however, is that giving machines the ability to simulate future outcomes improves their ability to make better decisions compared to their less advanced algorithmic cousins. A lesson which, no doubt, researchers will explore further in the years to come.

Futuro-Simul-Scene

In the 1986 film, Short Circuit, S.A.I.N.T 5 is a robot designed for military use which is hit by a lightning strike, giving it sentience. Number 5. escapes and ends up encountering an animal trainer who teaches the robot language and various life lessons. He becomes Johnny 5 - a sentient robot with a quirky personality. It's a fun, quirky, film which is an entertaining watch but also raises some questions for us.

One of the key points of the film is that Johnny 5 learns by interacting, and observing, Stephanie Speck, the animal caregiver. This is a form of "imitation learning" - another key sign of human intelligence which Max Bennett also discusses in chapter 4 of his book. The methods above only use simulation. What if you could imitate others in the world around you? After all, if we did not imitate neurons we couldn't have gotten so far.

Google researchers have, indeed, studied this very thing and have created AI systems that can copy human tasks and replicate them in one shot. In other words, in one take, a robot can replicate the actions of a person.

Another, perhaps more important social and practical point: Do we want robotics which have to be trained, like animals or children, how to do tasks? Will we actually want them to have their own "personalities" as it were, or will we have a varying mix of "lobotomized" servants and "social" caretakers? For some it would be an intriguing research possibility for robots to have significant autonomy, but for many commercial applications it would be unwise to have a nuclear capable military robot decide to destroy half the state of Ohio due to a misunderstanding.

While the connectionists appear to have won, and research is better for it, have they actually? While these advances are impressive, these models are currently notorious for being unreliable and having their apparently logical decisions break down over time. The expert systems engineers, have a chance to shine yet again - creating neuro-symbolic systems to attempt to gain control over AI systems in a controlled way for specific use cases. A car manufacturing robot that also throws pipes around the factory in an "efficient" way isn't safe after all.

Researchers such as Nils Jansen, of Ruhr University investigate this kind of AI safety research, developing techniques to prevent unwanted behaviours. One of their techniques uses a neuro-symbolic technique of a Shield function which can be used to compare active states of AI systems against safety specifications to prevent AI systems from deviating from safe protocols. The future may, indeed, use a combination of these methods to further improve the general intelligence of human oriented AI systems. A robot that can learn from watching, or by basic exploration, would be a very powerful tool indeed. Controlled by AI systems that can govern curiosity, when to imitate, when to explore on its own and when to reward itself, we have the potential to create immensely powerfully intelligent machines.

Is This Truly Intelligent?

As remarkable, and sci-fi futuristic as new technologies and advances are, we should also always make sure to ground ourselves in reality. As much as we would like to have truly cracked what intelligence is, we still cannot be sure that what we have discovered is that. Many of the methods described in later paragraphs suffer from major design limitations which prevent certain tasks from being undertaken. Or they prevent certain resolutions of information from being accessed (eg. the tokenisation of words in large language models). Neurology, for all its advances, is still limited in many ways. While we still do not have answers, or fine detail, on the function of the brain of many animals, we can only hope to advance our knowledge in future to create better models and better working imitations.

Unfortunately, those who hold financial and actual control in society seem to view many of these questions as irrelevant as they seek to use such advances to justify mass layoffs. The creative industries, and many others, are on the front-lines of these battles for control between established interests and ordinary citizens. When the apparent rationale for making such intelligent machines is to gain control of higher market share, and impoverish people across the world, are we truly witnessing intelligence, or a kind of subconscious hijacking of the minds of those with plenty with thoughts of famine and penury. Our evolutionary origins run deep within us.

In the 18th century, French automaton makers catered to the richest in French society, creating some of the most wonderfully complex creations known to man - but only accessible to the wealthiest. French aristocrats were compared to automatons, beautiful machines who uncaringly destroyed the lives of others through the cold apparatus of the state. Perhaps in the world of tomorrow, we should instead create intelligent systems for all to enjoy and benefit from, before our modern day aristocrat equivalents become synonymous with machines.

Sources:

Max Solomon Bennett. (2023). A Brief History of Intelligence. HarperCollins. Knowledge discovery in deep blue | Communications of the ACM Evans, S. D., Hughes, I. V., Gehling, J. G., & Droser, M. L. (2020). Discovery of the oldest bilaterian from the Ediacaran of South Australia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(14), 7845-7850. Baguñà, J., & Riutort, M. (2004). The dawn of bilaterian animals: the case of acoelomorph flatworms. Bioessays, 26(10), 1046-1057. Rosenblatt, Frank. "The perceptron: a probabilistic model for information storage and organization in the brain." Psychological review 65.6 (1958): 386.

Valevski, Dani, et al. "Diffusion Models Are Real-Time Game Engines." arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.14837 (2024).

Wu, P., Escontrela, A., Hafner, D., Abbeel, P., & Goldberg, K. (2023, March). Daydreamer: World models for physical robot learning. In Conference on robot learning (pp. 2226-2240). PMLR.

Safe Reinforcement Learning via Shielding under Partial Observability Steven Carr, Nils Jansen, Sebastian Junges, and Ufuk Topcu In AAAI 2023

Fu, Z., Zhao, T. Z., & Finn, C. (2024). Mobile aloha: Learning bimanual mobile manipulation with low-cost whole-body teleoperation. arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.02117.

[sokolygrandaananeva]

Supra-Gender. Kali-TRANSHUMAN. ANARCHO JOURNAL OF RADICAL Possibilities.

[horsesarecreatures]

Horses are among the world’s most elite athletes: When galloping, they can consume twice as much oxygen per kilogram as the fittest humans. All that oxygen supercharges horses’ cells’ energy-producing compartments as they crank out ATP, the chemical needed to power their impressive muscles. But making so much cellular fuel so quickly comes with a catch: the manufacture of pernicious byproduct molecules called reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can wreak havoc in cells.

How horses dealt with this biological trade-off and evolved into premier endurance athletes has long intrigued biologists. Researchers report today in Science that they have uncovered a big part of it, identifying a key mutation that lets horses safely produce so much ATP. The trait helped pave the way for horses to go from dog-size critters millions of years ago to the high-endurance athletes we know today.

The study’s detailed molecular work makes it “exceptional,” says José Calbet, an expert on the cellular responses to exercise at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria who wasn’t involved with the study.

The mutation in question occurs in the gene that encodes a protein called KEAP1, which acts as a biochemical bouncer, binding to a different protein called NRF2 to prevent it from entering the cell’s nucleus, where it would otherwise activate stress-response genes that help blunt cell damage.

But ROS can help NRF2 sneak in by causing KEAP1 to release its bind on the protein, allowing it to enter the nucleus and trigger the cell’s stress-response genes.

Johns Hopkins University ophthalmologist and clinician scientist Elia Duh, a senior author of the new study, didn’t set out to study horses. Initially, Duh was interested in the KEAP1-NRF2 system because its role in activating stress-response genes makes it a tempting target for treating inflammation—and aging-related conditions, such as blinding retinal diseases, irritable bowel syndrome, and neurodegeneration.

Duh wondered whether any insights could be gleaned from studying the evolution of these proteins in different animals. So, he teamed up with Gianni Castiglione, an evolutionary biologist and biochemist at Vanderbilt University. Together, they scanned hundreds of vertebrate genomes looking for notable mutations to the gene for KEAP1.

The team’s genomic work revealed birds had almost completely lost the gene, presumably an adaptation to the extreme demands of flight. When they looked in horses, researchers noticed what initially appeared to be a DNA sequence that encoded an unusually short—and therefore presumably nonfunctional—version of the KEAP1 protein. But when Duh’s and Castiglione’s team grew horse cells in culture, it discovered the protein was very much there and working. “Naturally, I was worried I was doing something wrong,” Castiglione says. “Then one day, a light bulb went off.”

As it turns out, the computer algorithm scientists had used to scan the horse genome had made a mistake. The algorithm had spotted a specific kind of mutation in the part of the KEAP1 gene that changed the messenger RNA from CGA—which codes for the amino acid arginine—to UGA, which is what’s known as a “stop codon.”

Normally, the cellular machinery interprets UGA as a sign to stop translating the RNA into a protein. But instead, the horses’ genetic machinery recodes the stop codon into a different amino acid, cysteine, causing it to ignore that order. This phenomenon, known as a stop codon read-through, is common among viruses but rare in multicellular organisms.

“The identification of this evolutionarily significant UGA recoding event represents a potentially seminal finding, offering a model for uncovering other yet-unidentified cases of stop codon read-through,” says Hozumi Motohashi, a biologist at Tohoku University who has studied KEAP1 and NRF2.

That the replacement is a cysteine is particularly notable, Castiglione says. KEAP1 senses cellular stress through its cysteines, which contain sulfur atoms whose reactions with ROS, induce the chemical changes that cause KEAP1 to let go of NRF2. The mutation the researchers had identified adds another place on KEAP1 for ROS to interact, which makes the protein more sensitive to stress—and lets horse cells respond much faster to the cellular stress of intense exercise. “It does make complete sense [that] by introducing another cysteine, another sulfur, you would have heightened sensitivity,” Castiglione says.

What’s more, this tweaking of KEAP1 is a “[key] genetic component to the puzzle of the evolution of horses,” Duh says. “Once they figured out how to run, they could occupy all kinds of ecological niches,” Castiglione adds.

The finding could also point the way toward new kinds of drugs to treat diseases by targeting the specific parts of the KEAP1 protein that help horses hoof it. “By looking at what evolution has figured out, we know this is a viable strategy,” Castiglione says.

Source

[smallestapplin]

If it is alright- could you do the Elite trine (Thundercracker, Skywarp, Starscream) or the terror twins (Sideswipe n Sunstreaker) with a human reader who cracks their neck, knuckles, back- just their bones as a stress response or if their uncomfortable??

Cause all I can think of is the poor bots FREAKING because they think their little, fragile human just broke something.

I really like your writing!! It’s so.. smooth and nice to read, if that makes sense??? But anywho! Have a lovely timezone! Small reminder to care for yourself. :]

🥺💞 you’re too kind and sweet, thank you! I will do my best to do your request Justice!

I went with the trine, I am weak 😔

-

-

The first it happens is when the three are arguing, it’s getting heated, Starscream is yelling louder and louder while Skywarp is rasing his voice to match his volume, Thundercracker tries adding in at a reasonable volume but his voice booms loudly on occasion.

You can feel the anxiety coursing through you, your fingers twitching and eyes trying to find a safe exit, but you’re stuck on the decepticon ship due to these three in the first place. First it was your fingers, which cracked too softy for them to hear over their own yelling, but your neck cracked it was uncomfortably loud, even if it made you feel a little better.

But you look up after they went quiet, their optics are wide and staring at you. You blink and suddenly they are upon you, their voices once more over top of the others but this time with worry.

“Scrap, fleshie, are you okay?”

“I told you humans were too delicate! I can’t believe their neck cables made such an awful sound, should we take them to a medic?”

“Hey, hey, are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you? Come here, little buddy.”

Thundercracker gently picks you up, cradling you in his servos while Starscream and Skywarp peer over you, red optics darting all over as if trying to find a wound or injury of some kind. For cons who claim to not care, they care a lot and very deeply.

Their wings all twitching up and down clearly frantic and nervous, while you’re trying not to laugh at how worried they are.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to worry you! My bones just popped, that’s all!”

It doesn’t help, in fact they are now staring at you in even more panic.

“Bones can pop!? What evolutionary trait does that serve??” Starscream is losing his mind, already walking away to the large computer to try and look it up, looking up human anatomy and trying to figure this out.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Thundercracker’s rough voice spoke lowly, not trying to spook you.

“Yeah, I’m sure, i just get antsy easily and it’s kinda relaxing to pop my joints.”

Though he doesn’t understand it a lot he looks soothed and more relieved. But Skywarp is still looking over you curiously.

“Can you do it again?” The seeker asks with a lopsided grin and a head tilt.

“Skywarp!”

“What? I’m just saying that’s kinda cool!”

And there they go again, bickering over their precious human. You are going to have a lot of time to pop your joints you fear.

[sparrowlucero]

would life as a larrow suck? like if you could choose to be isekai'd as a larrow rn would you take it up? what about the other way around, would a larrow want to be us

It doesn't really suck anymore than life as a human does, but a lot of humans would see it as bad or stressful in certain ways:

Larrow imago usually only live about 30 years, and it's not super abnormal for them to die before 20. They're also very tiny (like on average the size of a button quail or a smallish parrot) so compared to humans they seem pretty fragile.

Their society doesn't consistently exist; eggs are produced, hatched and grow up at roughly the same time, and all the larrow of a single generation usually die off entirely before new ones emerge from the ocean (with an occasional outlier). That next generation isn't exactly the same culture as before, just formed through similar needs and off of the technology left behind by the last. their whole 'rome falls every few decades' set up would probably be very offputting to most alien cultures

They have next to no health care; larrow learn medical care by themselves, for themselves, and they practice surgery and similarly extreme procedures on themselves quite regularly.

Larrow are basically fine not socializing and will sometimes go years without talking to one another; it's to a degree where even anti social humans may be stressed and lonely. They also don't really show a ton of concern for other people and animals, empathy is more of a philosophical idea than this totally innate thing.

The world they live has very extreme storms; their average low winds would be difficult for a human to walk around in. They don't have houses but public access "storm shelters" which, from a human perspective, look woefully incompetent as they're full of holes and look more like animal nests than a "real" building

On the other hand:

Larrow are adapted to live in an environment with constantly moving air and are instinctively adverse to areas with stagnant air, as they struggle to breathe in it and it can make them really sick. Human buildings seem really gross to them in the same way rot or mold does to us

The way humans are constantly trailing each other and actively trying to initiate touching and interaction all the time feels both animal-like and weird/scammy/aggressive to them, our social behavior is their "about to get mugged" behavior

complex nest building in constant storms was like their main evolutionary pressure to Get Good with the brain power, so they're very technologically minded in a way humans just aren't. They could open up a human car or computer (or indeed a body) for the first time and understand how it worked back to front. This is all just architecture to their lizard brains. Which means humans needing to go to school to study this stuff sounds like, really stupid to a larrow.

the whole idea that humans will bribe other humans to knock them out and operate on them sounds like a horror show. What if the doctors got bored and left? What if it turned out they wanted to hurt you while you were asleep? If letting other people chop you up is a normal cultural quirk why do they keep making scary movies about it

the way humans have all these complex daily networks of giving things up and gaining them is confusing and stressful. they're kind of like that boar in this tumblr post

This is all to say many humans would see larrow as living short lonely survivalist lives in ramshackle houses in a dying culture too selfish to care about each other, where many larrow would see humans as spending most of their lives in gross little prisons being so incompetent at everything that they'll die of minor ailments like "tumors" and "internal bleeding" if other humans don't randomly take pity on them.

Not to say some people wouldn't be interested or jealous about aspects of each other's lives... "what if you could just fly alone for weeks at a time and work on the first draft of your novel" would obviously be appealing to a lot of humans, and getting to root through a world of completely alien tech and biology would make a larrow feel like it was one of these caddisflies

[danieldavidreitberg]

🔥 Evolutionary algorithms are shaking up AI innovation with some extra flavor! Discover how they're evolving smarter solutions in Daniel Reitberg's latest article! 🚀💡 #AI #Innovation #EvolutionaryAlgorithms #Tech Daniel Reitberg

[foone]

I really don't know how Tumblr's search manages to be this bad.

Like, I know I have at least 5 posts mentioning FOOBAR (FOOBAR here is a placeholder word).

Tumblr finds 2 of them.

I can totally see how you might have a search engine that doesn't find any of them, but only finding some of them? How?

Are you trying to do an evolutionary algorithm crossed with a chaos monkey where you randomly delete entries from your full text index, figuring that 99% of posts will never be searched for?

Because computers are usually binary! They work or they don't. This half-working is so strange that I can only imagine how Tumblr got it this twisted.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

hi hello! hopefully what im asking for isn't too obscure, but do you think i could i get resources/tips on how to write a being that was synthetically made/and or coded? Much thanks in advance/for the chance!

Writing Ideas: Synthetically-Made Characters

some character tropes

Artificial Human: A human being who was created artificially rather than born naturally.

Artificial Animal People: Human-like animals or animal-like humans created through science.

Artificial Intelligence: In fictional works, AI most usually refers to artificial general intelligence — a sapient, self-aware computer system capable of independent thought and reason.

Bioweapon Beast: You create your own attack animal, genetically engineering existing organisms or creating your own. Maybe this new organism would rather just be left alone, and refuses to actually fight. Maybe it goes feral and becomes a dangerous monster roaming the wilderness. Maybe it actually works perfectly, but those in charge of it are far from ethical.

Clockwork Creature: May be purely mechanical, or, if in a fantasy setting, there may be a blend of mechanical and magical elements.

Mechanical Lifeforms: A race of robots or robot-like creatures that are also considered a honest-to-goodness species of living things. They're just like your everyday living organisms, except they happen to have metal for skin, wires for nerves, and so on. They're often silicon-based as well. These may be robotic animals, plants, micro-organisms, or sapient creatures. If they are sapient, they would never wish to Become a Real Boy because, as far as they can see, they are as real as that boy. The origin of such creatures is often never elaborated on or unknown to the characters. It's not uncommon for them to have creators Shrouded in Myth and mystified or outright denied in a sort of reversed creationism that are later further explained in plot-relevant and shocking revelations, similar to precursors for organic species. Sapient mechanical lifeforms tend to react as one would expect when they learn the nature of their origin, usually in some kind of denial and anger. There has been a trend of portraying mechanical lifeforms as formerly organic races that roboticized themselves either as the next Evolutionary Level or simply to survive some world-ending catastrophe that affected them in the past. However, it's also common for such creatures to simply arise without a creator in a process comparable to evolution.

Puppet Permutation: A person changes into a living puppet. They sometimes can control themselves, but this is usually not the case. These puppets are often controlled by outside forces.

Examples

Frankenstein's Monster is one of the most classic and well known examples. While it is stressed at certain points through the original Frankenstein novel that the monster is an entirely unique species, he certainly has a human intelligence and personality. It is left ambiguous whether creating the creature was actually a bad thing or not. The creature suffers (and subsequently causes suffering to his creator), not because it was created but because the creator abandoned it afterwards.

Celtic Mythology: Blodeuedd, the woman created from flowers to be the wife of Lleu Llaw in Medieval Welsh mythology.

A Greek myth tells the story of Pygmalion, a man who shunned real-life women but craved that his beautiful sculpture of one would come to life. He loved it so much that he prayed to Venus/Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, to grant him that wish. After he kissed the ivory-carved statue's lips, Venus worked her magic and it came to life. This is seen as a literal "Breath of Life".

Pandora in Greek myth was a sculpture that the Gods made and brought to life.

Japanese Mythology: Any non-electronic item can become a Tsukumogami if it's cared for and becomes old enough, which are Animate Inanimate Objects. This can also happen to toys, giving rise to the Living Toys trope.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: An alien civilization created at least one sentient supercomputer, Deep Thought, for the purpose of answering philosophical questions regarding the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

The Hunger Games: During the rebellion which led to the creation of the titular Games, the Capitol bred a number of genetically engineered animals called muttations (commonly abbreviated to mutts) which were used as living weapons against the districts. From the Tenth Hunger Games onwards, they became a regular feature in the arena, with the Gamemakers using them either to kill the tributes directly or to drive the tributes together and force them to fight each other. Examples of mutts seen in the Games include poisonous snakes which are programmed to attack anyone whose scent is unfamiliar, carnivorous squirrels which attack in packs and werewolf-like creatures which have been created to resemble fallen tributes.

Victor Frankenstein (2015): Victor proclaims to Igor that they will create a man after their own image. The process involves stitching together dead body parts and reanimating the corpse with lightning.

Isaac Asimov often averted this trope quite harshly in his Robot Series and related works, preferring to think of robots as tools rather than people. He only imagined robots being roughly humanoid when they needed to be able to perform tasks which human tools for already existed and it wouldn't make sense to replace every piece of equipment when one robot could be made to use them. They were always built to the job, and sometimes that job made for very unusual designs instead.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

Hi, here are some related tropes you can use as inspiration. More examples and information on these in the sources linked above. Hope this helps with your writing!

[deadhands69]

In The Stacks Part 1: Thunder, Rain, & a Boy Who Doesn't Know His Name

Tomura Shigaraki x Reader

A mysterious library patron catches your eye, seeking information about his past life. You help him, stirring up your own past in the process. Contains: gn/afab reader, SMUT, cussing, mentions of injuries/violence, obsessive/yandere leaning behavior, spoilers.

this is part 1 [next] [series masterlist]

"Do you understand the violence it took to become this gentle?"

- Nitya Prakash

The storm rages outside, rain pummeling the old windows. In contrast, it’s a quiet night at work. Nearly everyone was sent home early, with the exception of you and your manager who is covering the circulation desk four floors down. Floods are expected to block bus lines for most of the night, but that’s fine. You live two blocks from here anyways so you offered to stay until closing in case anyone comes in. 

Barely anyone does. It’s not just the staff missing, the library is also void of most patrons tonight. You figure that’s to be expected with weather like this. A sudden crack of thunder nearly makes you jump out of your skin, but you keep walking. There’s someone you need to find and you get the feeling he’s not so easily put off by a storm.

The orderly rows of books on one side of you stretch from floor to ceiling in their carefully constructed places. They're in stark contrast with the rain flowing organically down the windows to your left. Another clap of thunder shakes the floor beneath you, but this time you're not so easily startled. You take a deep breath and focus on your task.

In his usual spot sits a man with long white hair and deep red eyes. The oversized hood of his sweatshirt is pulled up, nearly obscuring his face. He’s a bit odd in a way you find absolutely fascinating. For the past month he’s been spending time here, he has never checked out a book or used one of the computers. The books you do see him reading jump between genres almost daily and he never seems to finish any of them. He’ll skip from books on prison design one day to Shakespearean theater the next. You still aren’t sure what he’s doing here all the time. 

Yet you see him every day, like clockwork. He arrives fifteen minutes after you’ve punched into your shift at four pm. Sitting in the same spot on the fourth floor until ten minutes before closing, when he promptly leaves and disappears into the night.

After watching him from afar for so long, you were ecstatic to have an excuse to finally talk with him last week. You were shelving books, as you typically would at that hour, when a gravelly voice spoke behind you.

“Hey, uhm” he said tentatively, waiting for you to turn around, “I, uh, need help finding the next book after this. I forgot where I found it.”

You were surprised to see him on that floor. It was the fifth floor when he usually sits on the next one down. In any case, you jumped at the opportunity. Setting the book you were shelving back on the cart, you gave him your full attention. 

“Absolutely, which one is it?” 

He handed you a book. A very dry looking text on evolutionary biology, part one of a five part series. Gesturing to a shelf, he continued “It should be here, right? It’s not though.”

“Oh, I see what happened,” you reply. “It’s confusing, but you were close. You see these numbers on the bottom line? They don’t work the way the ones above do. Instead of being one full number, they’re separate digits. So, we find six, then eight, then four, then five. It’s not very intuitive. This means the next part should be,” you drag your finger over the shelves to the bottom, “right around here.”

“Huh,” he adds, standing remarkably close to you for someone you’ve never seen speak to another person before. “You seem to know a lot about this.” 

Then he smiled at you, stretching the scar that splits through the side of his lips. A pretty smile. One that would certainly make its way into your dreams for the rest of the week. Blushing slightly at the compliment, you leaned down to the bottom of the bookcase, busying yourself more than necessary. 

“How long have you been working here, anyways?” he continued.

“As long as I can remember,” you mumbled.

“As long as you can remember,” he repeated. “That’s a while to stick with a job. You must really like it here.”

“Yeah,” you said, coming to your feet again.

“Ever think about doing anything else?” he asked, likely just trying to keep the conversation going.

“No, just this,” you replied, a little too cheerfully. It’s a lie but you weren’t about to tell him you switched jobs after an injury stopped you from being able to continue at the last one. That’s not a conversation you wanted to have, at least not yet.

“Interesting,” he smirked, staring through you. You got the feeling he knew you weren’t telling him the whole truth, but he didn’t say anything else about it. You suddenly remembered why he was talking to you in the first place and shoved the book in his direction with a little too much force.

“Sorry,” you laughed awkwardly. Wanting to keep the exchange going, you scrambled at the next topic of conversation you could find. “Interested in protostomes?” you ask, glancing at the book in his arms.

“Not really.” Pink dusts over his cheeks as he scratches the side of his neck through the fabric of his sweatshirt. “I uh. I mostly just wanted an excuse to talk to you.”

His eyes continued to pierce through you as you processed what you just heard. He wanted to talk to you? 

“I’m y/n,” you said with a smile, “what’s your name?”

He stared at you for a moment, chewing the rough skin on his bottom lip. His eyes fell to his feet for a moment before his mouth parted. Looking back up at you, he stated matter of factly: “I don’t know.”

The mysterious man talked to you a few more times in the days that followed. Little things like asking where he could find a water fountain or re-explaining how call numbers work. A few days ago, he left an address with you, asking for more information.

“I remember this and know it’s important, somehow,” he explained. “But when I went there it’s a vacant plot. Can you help me find more about it?”

“Of course,” you said without hesitation.

And now, here you are. Copied article in hand, searching the library for someone who doesn’t know his own name. Your hands shake slightly, nervous about what he’ll do or say when you finally hand him the story of a family mysteriously disappearing in their demolished house, but you’ve put it off for days now. Maybe it’s for the best that you waited to do this while the library is practically empty.

However, when you approach him in his usual spot and hand the article to him, he has almost no reaction at all. He glances over it blank faced, folding the page neatly and tucking it into the front pocket of his backpack.

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

“No problem,” you reply. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Okay,” he replies. 

Not knowing what else to say, you leave – going back to organizing the books on this floor. A few rows over, you find the wooden tab you marked your place with. Starting at the book before, you begin reading through the call numbers. 

Three-hundred fifty five point oh two…

“y/n?” a familiar voice grates behind you.

You turn to find him walking towards you, his backpack slung over one shoulder. Your heart pounds in your chest. His presence is enough to fill the whole room and he's not even trying. He approaches you, once more standing closer than most people typically do. His forehead tips towards yours as his stark white hair hangs on either side of his face. You can practically feel his breath on your skin as he quietly speaks. 

“Thanks,” he says, the corner of his mouth quirking into half a smile that makes your heart skip a beat. “As a thank you, can I–” An untimely clap of thunder rings out, shaking the whole building. You jump, startled, straight into his arms. He feels warm. Everything about him envelops you and before you know it your body is leaning in closer, without thinking. 

He is too. 

His beautiful red eyes flutter shut, chapped lips smashing into yours without hesitation. They're much softer than you expected and less fragile than they look. His backpack drops to the floor, immediately forgotten. One of your hands slips into his hood, tangling your fingers into his hair. The other grips his sweatshirt, desperately pulling him in closer. You've been waiting for this moment for so long, now you need every bit of him you can get. 

His lips move with yours, rolling his tongue over your own with confidence. One of his knees slides between your thighs, further intertwining the two of you. It's been a while since you've done anything like this, but you jump back into it quickly enough. With him, it's easy. Of course it is, you've never wanted anything more in your life than kissing him right now. 

His mouth moves down your jaw. Every breath you take is filled with him, something like fallen leaves but sweeter. You grip his hair harder, eliciting a gasp. He looks up at you while sucking in a breath, pale skin flushed and pupils blown wide. He's so hot like this and you certainly know what you'll be dreaming about tonight. 

Moments later, his teeth graze your neck. Not biting, but he kisses you with so much force that you feel it in the rest of your body. One of his hands cups your face while the other wraps around your lower back, holding you as he presses you back into the bookshelf. Wrapping your leg over his hip, you pull yourself in.

Footsteps echo up the stairs. Someone's coming. 

It takes everything in you to pull away, pressing him back. He goes willingly, grumbling slightly as he takes a step away. For a moment, his hands linger on your hips as he stands in front of you, eyes closed. He takes a few deep breaths to pull himself back to reality. His lips are swollen and his nose is pink from kissing you so hard, it's cute. 

The footsteps continue up a few floors, but it's close to closing time anyways. He steps away, picking up his backpack and adjusting his hoodie. 

Say something, you think. You know you're supposed to but your brain is elsewhere and slow to find the words. “Uhm, I’ll see you around…”

“Tenko,” he says, patting his backpack where he stashed the article.

“Tenko,” you repeat. He moves a strand of your hair behind your ear before giving you one last kiss, pulling on a mask, and turning for the stairs to leave.

Shortly after, your manager calls for you. The other floors are all clear of patrons, you’re free to go home a few minutes early while she turns off the lights.

“Get home safe,” she says, back turned to you as she gestures at the tree branches bending in the wind outside the window.

“You too,” you yell up the stairs before grabbing your belongings and exiting into the storm.

The rain is falling so heavily, you’re drenched through your jacket before you make it to the end of the block. There’s a thick layer of water over the sidewalk which you wouldn’t mind if you weren’t also in a thunderstorm and at risk of being electrocuted. You start to run.

On the way to your apartment, you can see the signs above the bus station in the distance. All of them are all flashing ‘delayed’ with at least a three hour wait on them. Tenko walks just ahead of you. Wherever he’s going, he won’t make it far.

“Hey,” you shout after him, “Tenko!”

He turns, white hair in clumps from the rain. “Hey, y/n,” he smiles back at you, as if the bad weather is nothing. 

“You should come with me until the storm dies down a bit, I live near here.”

Tenko looks surprised then considers the offer for a moment before responding, “yeah, sounds great. Thank you.”

You run a little to catch up to him, before pulling him through the door into your building half a block down. The warm air surrounds you, invitingly. 

“Come on,” you hit the elevator button and it dings immediately. “You can warm up in my apartment until the buses are running again.”

The sight of yourself on the reflective elevator wall is almost alarming. Your hair’s a mess, lips puffy, and your neck is reddened where he was kissing you. All that on top of being drenched from the downpour. Still, you feel almost giddy. 

As Tenko enters the elevator, you notice the way his sweatshirt clings to him under his backpack. The fabric stretches over the muscles in his back and chest, flexing as he moves. Everything in you wants to jump on him again. But you've waited too long for this and don't want to fuck it up by making him think that's all you want from him. Plus, you invited him back to your room to warm up and don't want to make him feel uncomfortable if the two of you have different expectations. 

You tap your keycard before hitting the number 16 to your floor. Taking advantage of the sliver of self control you have left, you continue. 

“Uhm,” you clear your voice, “about earlier. I-I don’t usually do things like that. I mean, I do, just not that fast.”

“Oh,” Tenko’s eyes widen, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you or anything. I don’t either. Usually. It’s just… you’re different. I feel like I’ve known you for a while, even if it’s just been a week.”

“Yeah,” you agree, “I feel like that too.” 

“We can slow things down though. I don’t expect you to make out with me every time you see me. Especially when you're at work. That would be ridiculous," he adds, sounding more like he's reminding himself than talking to you.

Slow it is then, you think to yourself. It’s a nice thought, but you wonder how long it will last. Now that you know touching him is an option, slowing things down will be a whole lot easier said than done. 

The elevator dings and the doors open to your floor. He walks out ahead of you, turning down the hallway towards your apartment. “It's this one,” you point at a door halfway down before unclipping your keys from your backpack and letting him in. 

For a moment, your hand hovers over the light switch when you remember the state your apartment is in. The space is small, a one bedroom that feels more studio sized. In spite of this, it’s still pretty barren. Like many people, your last home was destroyed in the final war. Some fight between fire and ice, you were told. Your old job helped you get back on your feet to an extent, which is lucky – that’s not a privilege most people had. Still, you haven’t had a chance to buy new furniture or decorate. It's not quite the first impression you'd like him to have. At least it's clean.

You also have a kettle, time to lean into what you can offer. “Do you want a cup of tea or something?” 

“Sure,” he says, kicking his shoes off and peeling away his soaking wet sweatshirt. You try not to notice the way his v-neck underneath still clings to him. “Anywhere I should put this? I feel bad dripping all over your apartment.”

“No, it's totally fine! I am too. Uhm, just hang it on the doorknob.” He does so, adding to the puddles you're both creating in the entryway. You've taken off your outer layers and thrown them to dry over the backs of the two small dining room chairs you own. You'll definitely need to mop tomorrow, but that's okay. 

“What flavor of tea do you want?” you ask from the kitchen. 

Tenko joins you, still standing closer than most people comfortably would. Sifting through the options while the water heats up, he eventually lands on chamomile. The two of you settle down onto the floor of your living room in front of a heating vent, both wrapped under a shared blanket. He doesn't seem to notice your lack of typical household amenities or if he does, he's doing a great job of hiding it. Everything feels normal with him.

“What made you move here anyways,” he asks, between sips of tea. “To this area?”

“Convenience, mostly. It's close to work and everything is within walking distance. How about you?”

“I guess I just ended up here, but I stayed because,” Tenko blushes from behind your mug.

“Oh, come on.” You urge, “it can’t be that bad.” 

He raises what little eyebrows he has at you. 

“Really,” you insist. “I won't judge.”

Tenko looks at you skeptically but continues anyway. 

“Uh, this is stupid but I stayed because I liked someone and thought I’d have a chance with them.” Suddenly you regret asking.

“Oh,” you say, voice a little higher than you mean for it to be. “I uh, is that–”

“No, no, no. Sorry, uh, that’s not like– you don’t have to worry about anything. There’s not like someone else in my life or anything,” Tenko frantically scrambles to clarify. “No one will be upset with you for kissing me.”

“Well, still. I’m sorry that didn’t work out.”

He smiles, “no you’re not.”

“No,” you laugh, “I’m not. You’re right. I just hate that something didn't work out for you. I don’t want you to be upset.” It still stings a little having heard that he’s just here because he had feelings for someone, but he’s here with you now, not anyone else, and you tell yourself that’s what counts. “I can’t believe anyone would ever miss a chance with you.”

Tenko’s cheeks turn a deeper shade of pink, he tries hiding behind the mug as he takes a sip, eyes glued on you, but you can still see how flushed he is. It’s adorable.

“Really,” he drops the cup from in front of his face, “I’m okay. I really am. It's not like that.” He smiles bashfully. His spare hand meets yours, pinky rubbing lightly over your knuckles. “Besides, I kissed someone today and I’m pretty excited to see where that goes. I couldn’t be better.”

Tenko’s eyes meet yours and it feels like he’s staring into your soul. Setting his empty mug aside, he moves yours too. Once more, he leans in to kiss you – this time much sweeter and less hurried than the last. 

“Hmm,” he mumbles, as he pulls away, “and then I kissed you today too.” You scoff, hiding a laugh pushing him back. In response, he wraps his arms around you, pulling you to the floor with him, blanket still tangled around your limbs. 

“There’s no one else,” he whispers into your ear, “you don’t have anything to worry about. I'm all yours, I promise.” Tenko smiles and everything you’ve been trying to hold together crumbles apart. 

[next part] [series masterlist] [bnha masterlist]

taglist: @shigarakislaughter @dance-with-me-in-hell @minniessskii @vaval3ntin @ykyouluvme 

@dummi666 @lotus-flower420 @nonominchan @softnfuzzy @mysticalhills 

@reireitaka @crwavee @baby-pink-flowers @drlucichen @frieren-imposter

 @lou-the-naga-queen @multifandomidk @love-for-yoosung-kim @kitkat13001 @kennys-partner

@amira-44820 @its-evee16 @itsameyermaw

[alexanderwales]

I think somewhat often about the end of plastic.

In theory plastics could be broken down by bacteria, and the only reason that they haven't is that it's been about 70 years since we've had plastics, and there isn't all that much evolutionary pressure at the moment. But in areas with heavy plastic pollution, it's possible that there will be some bacteria that will evolve, and even if that doesn't happen, it might be the case that someone attempting to solve plastic pollution might engineer a bacteria with the proper enzymes.

And look, I can't speak to feasibility, I write speculative fiction. Maybe there's some clear and obvious thing stopping this from ever happening. Obviously there are tons of different types of plastics, and plastics are probably not "nutritionally complete" for even a hypothetical engineered bacteria.

But a world where you have to worry about plastics rotting, where warehouses have to be carefully checked and scrubbed to make sure that conditions aren't right for plastic rot ... I think that's cool, maybe not for a story, but for a minor detail in a near-future story. It would obviously be a complete disaster if it happened and wasn't able to be controlled, partly for the supply chain, but also for the medical profession, and for computers. If plastics could suddenly rot, you'd get an even bigger division between "cheap crap" and "made to last", because now in addition to being flimsy garbage, a lot of the cheap crap would be at risk of falling apart even without the stress of daily wear and tear.

I have tried to research feasibility for this, but it's the kind of research that takes a lot of time and finds only incomplete answers. There exist some bacteria that can break down certain types of plastics, particularly PET, and there's been at least one demonstration that it's possible to get bacteria to generate the enzyme in saltwater at room temperature, which I think is just one of a few steps toward success. Possible? Maybe, eventually. Plausible enough for scifi, anyway.

[polutrope]

As TRSB reveals approach, a few reminders to creators based on past experience:

Hundreds of long fics are about to drop in one fandom at the same time.

It is not realistic to expect comments and kudos on a 5k+ word fic in the first few hours, or even days, of posting. Be patient.

Be so so careful about the downward spiral of speculating on why your fic isn't being read first, why something else is more popular, etc etc. You don't know. You can't know. Conserve that mental energy.

Yes, it's exciting and you probably want to read all those new fics! But if you're finding it too hard to read without also comparing and fixating on your own fic, it's okay to walk away from the computer/phone and do something else. Your friends and favourite authors will be delighted to hear your reactions when the initial period of engagement has petered off and you feel more resilient.

Relatedly, you are not a bad person for comparing or feeling envy. This is a normal human emotion and a rational evolutionary reaction to feeling unnoticed/left out/unprotected by "the group". We evolved this way. Acknowledge that feeling, take time to consider why you're having it, and be nice to yourself.

And to readers:

It is NOT WEIRD to leave a comment after 24-48 hours. Please, please, please internalise this. I know it feels "wrong" in our culture of rapid-fire "content" but it's NOT. The most disappointing/defeating thing to me as a creator is passing that 24-hour mark and accepting that that's probably all the comments I'm going to get. Prove me wrong, please.

And please no one send anon messages complaining about unsolicited advice. If it doesn't apply to you, ignore it.

[xtruss]

Billions of Cicadas Are Emerging, From Cape Cod To North Georgia – Here’s How And Why We Map Them

— Thursday May 22, 2025 | The Conversation

Three Cicadas in North Carolina During the 2003 Brood IX Emergence. Chris Simon, CC BY-ND

If they’re in your area, you’ll know it from their loud droning, chirping and buzzing sounds. Cicadas from Brood XIV – one of the largest groups of cicadas that emerge from underground on a 13-year or 17-year cycle – are surfacing in May and June 2025 across 12 states. This large-scale biological event reaches from northern Georgia up into Indiana and Ohio and eastward through the mid-Atlantic, extending as far north as Long Island, N.Y. and Massachusetts.

Through mid-June, wooded areas will ring with cicadas’ loud mating calls. After mating, each female will lay hundreds of eggs inside small tree branches. Then the adult cicadas will die. When the eggs hatch six weeks later, new cicada nymphs will fall from the trees and burrow back underground, starting the cycle again.

We are evolutionary ecologists who study periodical cicadas to understand questions about the natural history, genetics and geographic distribution of life. This work starts with mapping where they appear.

We’ve been doing this for decades, updating a process begun by entomologists in the mid-1800s. Our latest maps are published online and searchable.

Periodical Cicadas Emerge on 13- or 17-Year Cycles in Enormous Numbers, Which Increases Their Odds of Finding Mates and Avoiding Predators Long Enough to Reproduce.

Mapping the presence of such a noisy species might seem straightforward, but it’s actually complex. And accuracy matters because there are seven species of periodical cicadas — four with 13-year life cycles and three with 17-year cycles. Different broods can share boundaries, and some cicadas that emerge this year may be members of broods other than XIV, coming out early or late.

A lot of work goes into verifying the data in our maps so that they show the status of these unique insects as accurately as possible. Here’s a look at the process, and at how you can contribute:

Refining Past Records

We first started creating our maps on paper by collecting all known specimen records of 13- and 17-year periodical cicadas from past scientific studies and museums large and small across the eastern U.S., where these broods are located. For centuries, museum specimens have been the gold standard for documenting the presence of a species.

But past standards for labeling specimens were different. Many old museum labels simply noted very approximate locations where specimens were collected. Sometimes they just recorded the city, county or state.

Today we collect our records along roads. We listen for species-specific songs and then record the cicada species identity on computers, with their GPS locations. Often we’ll stop to examine a patch of forest. If the cicadas are singing, we note whether the chorus is light, moderate, loud or distant.

If stormy weather damps down the cicada songs, we look for signs of emergence, such as cast-off skins, adult cicadas on plants, or egg scars on branches.

Dozens of Small Brown Cicadas Climb Grass Stems During a Brood VIII Emergence in Rector, Pa. Chris Simon, CC BY-ND

Connecting The Data Dots

In some regions, such as the U.S. Midwest, roads are arranged on a grid that reflects land survey lines. Networks like these can be ideal for mapping species distributions. Delineating an area that’s occupied by a specific cicada brood may be as simple as connecting the dots that represent our positive sightings.

In other places, such as Appalachia, roads often follow ridges or valleys and miss many areas. Here, it’s harder to infer where cicadas are present between data points, especially when those data points are located on different roads.

Drawing a boundary that contains every data point in a survey area usually will end up overstating the area where periodical cicadas are emerging. We intentionally design our maps to be conservative, so we display our information as point data and do not attempt to draw brood boundaries or generalize our data to counties.

It’s equally important to record absence points – places where no cicadas are present. Otherwise, an area might be blank either because a species is absent or simply because no one looked for cicadas there.

A Cicada Nymph From Brood X Sheds Its Skin During an Emergence in Herndon, Va. Chris Simon, CC BY-ND

We have been verifying periodical cicada records and updating maps since the late 1980s. Our more recent maps include geographic information for data collection points.

Where our maps show the presence of cicadas, a senior member of our project has verified that cicadas were present at that place and date. The insects may have been just emerging, singing loudly, or on their way out.

Where our maps show the absence of cicadas, that means that one of us or a collaborator visited that location under appropriate conditions and verified that no cicadas were present. Where our maps show no records, we have no information on presence or absence.

Each Color on this Map Represents a Different Periodical Cicada Brood. Brood XIV is the Darker Green Extending From the Midwest to Eastern Massachusetts. University of Connecticut, Used with Permission., CC BY-ND

Crowdsourcing The Emergence

In recent years, citizen scientists – members of the public collecting data for scientific research – have revolutionized mapping efforts, using apps and the internet. Apps such as iNaturalist and Cicada Safari allow users to submit geolocated photos, sounds and videos with a few clicks.

When we receive these records, our colleague Gene Kritsky, an emeritus entomologist at Mount St. Joseph University, vets them with his team. Then they are uploaded to a map on Cicada Safari.

Citizen science maps have different biases from those that are created by our expert teams. Members of the public tend to collect their data in areas where residents are familiar with cicadas, there is good internet connectivity and media stories have piqued volunteer reporters’ interest. These maps don’t show absence records or all localities, especially in sparsely populated areas.

Even records supported by sounds or photographs may not be accurate. They may capture “stragglers” from broods that are not part of the current year’s cycle but are emerging one to four years early or late.

This phenomenon may become more commonplace in response to changing climates. Warming temperatures create longer growing seasons, which can enable at least some fraction of a periodical cicada population to develop faster and be ready to emerge earlier.

For this reason, maps based on citizen science reports are most valuable if the same observers report back from the same locations repeatedly over several weeks. The longer-term presence of periodical cicadas indicates that what’s being tallied is a non-straggler population, or a straggler population on its way to permanently shifting the timing of its emergence.

An Evolving Story

Maps are valuable tools for understanding how species fit into their environment, how they interact with other species and how they respond to change. However, it is important to be aware of any map’s biases and limitations when interpreting it. Research requires dedication and repetition over many years.

Our research suggests that climate warming has resulted in more four-year-early straggling events that are increasingly dense, widespread and likely to leave offspring. The result is a mosaic of broods that makes the jigsaw puzzle of periodical cicada distribution more complicated, but more interesting. Understanding how these four-year shifts are encoded in cicadas’ genes is a mystery that remains to be solved.

[transgenderer]

music is fundamentally mysterious to me. visual beauty feels fundamentally explicable. like…evolution has all sorts of reasons to make the organism feel positively towards visual stimuli. visual stimuli is their main way of forming a world model! obviously hearing HELPS but it's evolutionary function is subtler. the main thing is i guess…threat detection, prey detection, and mate detecting? you dont really form a world model with it. i mean a human does. but if youre like, a cat, or a monkey. i guess theres also social aspects. so those are the aspects: prey, threat, mate, social

when we think about visual things that are really beautiful, what are the typical examples? like, nature, or the human body. both of which have an obvious evolutionary interpretation. and music isnt like this! music does not resemble prey, threat, mate, social. i mean. obviously lots of psychological stuff is mysterious in origin. but the beauty of music is so important, and so inscrutable

maybe the natural comparison is abstract art? i mean, this is a classic observation. ornamentation is typically nonrepresentative. but it RESEMBLES desirable stimlu, just abstractly. its often vegetative, for example. i guess the origin of the aesthetic appeal of abstract ornamentation is strange to. modern asbtract art is yknow, trying to be INTERESTING, its easy to justify the aesthetic appeal there. but traditional ornamentation isnt interesting, conceptually. but its still often beautiful. so...why, whats going on there. i mean i know no one knows. but i think its significant that we don't know

the usual answer is something something simple structure. the human brain likes structure, and relationships. or whatever. but like...come on. theres clearly something else going on. a good melody has a better "structure" than another one. cmon man.

maybe the best explanation is that its just a weird edge case of stimulation, its not a straightforward result of any evolutionary pressure. its like...fuzzing the human brain, in the computer science sense. throw a bunch of weird data at the system, eventually some of it will strike it weird and you can get it to do nonstandard behavior. and a composer is someone who gets a sense of the structure of this "backdoor access", and so can actively craft tools to poke around back there....

but then, is visual art like that? it doesnt FEEL like that, to make visual art. but maybe im just not a good enough artist. maybe composers arent getting a sense of the shape of the keyhole in the backdoor, theyre just learning how to simulate their own response to music. so then their brain can just combinatorially search melodies step by step until it finds one that tickles itself, and it puts that in the music

[eightyonekilograms]

I went to the Apple Store yesterday to try the scripted demo of their VR headset. My overall impression is that it's the best possible execution of what might be a fundamentally flawed idea.

The passthrough video is pretty incredible. It's somewhat dimmer than reality, and the color accuracy is just OK, but it's more than good enough to feel like you're looking through clear displays at the real world. I'm told the passthrough on the Quest 3 is even better, but haven't tried that and can't comment. One thing is that there is a weird motion blur effect when you turn your head, I'm not sure if that's a display tech limitation or introduced deliberately by the software as a workaround for a different display tech limitation.

The resolution is 4K per eye, which, as mentioned, is more than enough for a powerful sense of presence in the real world. One of the nifty bits of the demo was when you turn the dial to tune out the world and suddenly you're sitting by a mountain lake, and the feeling of actually being there is overwhelming. The dystopian implications of needing a VR headset to sit at a mountain lake aside, it would be cool to have one just to have your office be anywhere you can imagine. Not $3500-before-tax cool, but cool.

Wow sports leagues are going to love this thing. I don't give a shit about sports and even I was thinking, "If the NBA put a stereoscopic camera courtside and sold you games for $50 a pop, I'd absolutely buy that"

But 4K per eye is not enough to do work, not even close. The experience of using normal computer-y applications on this was not unlike plugging your laptop in to a TV that's at the normal TV distance. You can do it, it works, but it's not anyone's preferred way of working. Text is amazingly legible, but only at sizes that are equivalent to having a single webpage take up your entire 4K monitor at normal monitor distance.

It is not particularly comfortable. Part of this might be that the store demo makes you use the "catcher's mitt" strap, which only goes around the back of your head and so gravity has to be countered only by the pressure of the thing against your face. Reviewers have said that if you use the other band that goes over your head the situation is better, but still.

A lot of early comments were making fun of Apple for having the battery be an external thing you put in your pocket and attach with a wire, but I think that's just fine: we all walk around with giant batteries in our pockets anyway, and anything you can do to have less weight on your head is a Good Thing. But then Apple took all those weight savings and spent them on making the stupid thing out of metal and glass instead of polycarbonate. It's nuts! It's like if you made a car that was 500kg lighter because you invented magical tech for keeping the engine somewhere else, and then went "great! with all the weight savings now we can build the body out of lead". Apple, you don't need to fear plastic. Plastic is good! Plastic built modern civilization.

You control it with a combination of eye tracking and pinch gestures. This is the main piece of evidence of my "best version of a bad idea" thesis: it works really, really well; so well that I can tell this is probably an evolutionary dead end. It's just fine— miraculous, even— for dragging windows around and doing the basic stuff the in-store demo has you do. It's amazing that you can more or less have your hands anywhere, including on your lap, and the recognition works perfectly (by contrast with the HoloLens I tried 5 or so years ago where the gesture recognition was total crap). But it's immediately obvious that you can never do serious manipulation of your computing environment with this.

The takeaway is that it's incredible for passive consumption of specifically-made media, assuming that ever exists at scale. But it will be a long time before we're gogged in like Hiro Protagonist to do our office jobs this way.