headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

followthebluebell:

champawattigress:

justnoodlefishthings:

The Return of the Dire Wolf

Colossal Biosciences has genetically engineered the first dire wolf to live in over 10,000 years. Here's what that means for other extinct s

TIME

this company is so frustratingly misleading. They did not bring back the direwolf (Aenocyon dirus). They modified a modern grey wolf (Canis lupus) into having some direwolf morphology. There has been no de-extinction. This is pure hype slop. As a friend said “these are dire wolves the same way La Croix is a fruit”.

I still think this tech has the potential to be helpful in a conservation context…. but it says a A LOT that these “dire wolves” look far more like something you’d see in Game of Thrones than any of the most likely reconstructions proposed by scientists who’ve studied the fossil record.

These pups might get more robust as they age, but right now I’m not seeing anything to get excited about. I just can’t help but suspect that this species was chosen specifically bc the public already has the idea of “dire wolf = gray wolf + big”, and that this company is using relatively minor CRISPR editing to give the false impression that they’re recreating anything that might have conceivably lived 10,000 years ago.

Again, I think this tech is interesting and merits further development (and if jurassic park is the only way they can do that, then, I guess that’s what’s happening), but it’s still extremely misleading to parade these animals around like they’ve actually 100% cloned a dire wolf.

Really reminds me of Jurassic Park. In the books, Crichton made it very clear that they didn’t actually clone dinosaurs. They just combined DNA to make an animal that looked like what people EXPECT a dinosaur to look like, because it turned out that actual cloned dinosaurs were really quite dull and spent most of their time hiding.

Aencyon dirus isn’t closely related to modern wolves at all either so it doesn’t make any sense to start with a gray wolf. (According to wikipedia they were isolated from the gray wolf lineage for over 5 million years.) we thought they were in genus Canis but turns out it was just convergent evolution and they are a whole other thing

now that I actually read the article, I realize that the lede was buried– they genetically modified this wolf, and they also cloned 4 critically endangered red wolves

I think the TIME article is really irresponsible in acting like the pups are dire wolves when they don’t contain any dire wolf DNA. The “dire wolf” pups are literally just gray wolve engineered to look more like the creatures on Game of Thrones (literally–one of the pups is named Khaleesi)

I remain cautiously optimistic though, because it seems like they are doing actually useful research for preserving existing animals and then putting a Jurassic Park type spin on it for the media.

The Dire wolf thing honestly might just be an attention-grabber to get money off of people that know nothing about ecosystems, and the red wolf might be the actual real purpose of the research. If they’ve figured out the genetic basis of body size and certain “wolfy” behaviors in wolves, they could make it possible to bring coyote-red wolf hybrids into the red wolf breeding pool without sacrificing the wolf traits

Y'all, just think about guys like Elon Musk. Rich tech bros with a 5 yr old boy’s idea of what is cool. This stuff is perfectly calibrated to siphon off some of those techbro’s billions, while on the side, being helpful to conservation

Just look at the traits of the altered pups that are highlighted in the article: snout, jaw and limb thickness and heaviness, vocalizations, body size. All key traits that separate red wolves and coyotes.

Here’s what the article says:

Recently, Bridgett vonHoldt, a Colossal scientific adviser and an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, and Kristin Brzeski, an associate professor of wildlife science and conservation at Michigan Tech, discovered populations of canids along the coasts of Louisiana and Texas whose DNA included both coyote genes and red wolf ghost alleles. The four red wolves the Colossal scientists created used that natural genetic reservoir to produce what they call the first Ghost Wolf, with an eye to eventually fortifying the red wolf species with more such young carrying a variety of genes.

They’re using this technology to bring genetic diversity from red wolf/coyote hybrids back into the red wolf gene pool. As soon as I read “red wolves” I suspected this might be what was happening, and I was right. This could help fix the genetic bottleneck in red wolves and make a real chance for the species to actually return.

this approach is honestly genius

moonlightbeamu:

Concept art from “Hurricane Touchdown”! Interestingly, Terriermon and Gargomon are both called Gummimon here, and Lopmon is called Chocomon.

aetherograph:

interrogationspecialist:

roadhogsbigbelly:

roadhogsbigbelly:

roadhogsbigbelly:

my issue with the argument that “disliking ai art is inherently reactionary” is that it acts like pro-ai art people are somehow less reactionary on their views on art, when like the majority of defense’s of ai art as like a higher form art are indistinguishable from the arguments people use to defend the art of like. hitler

like the logic is that hitler was actually a great artist, entirely hinges on the belief that “objectively good art” is just art that looks detailed if you’ve never drawn before, which like why ai artists who want to prove their actual artists will just make a pretty looking building or lady, cause it’s all about aesthetics i guess

like i’m not saying your a nazi if you like ai art, i just think it’s silly when people act like anti-ai artist’s are just hysterical luddites, and that ai artists are the ONLY people who actually care about art, when 99 percent of ai artists on twitter only care about art that’s “beautiful” on an extremely superficial level.

Jacob Geller dissected the intersection of Fascism and modern art in 2020, sadly before the AI art boom, and goes into better detail than I can about how abstraction is a threat to fascist ideals. I also want to draw attention to possibly my favorite commentary on modernism.

Comic by Ad Reinhardt, an abstract painter, who’s made multiple comics about art and perception.

AI slop only bring repetition and lack of original idea to the table. it’s an advanced form of stolen art collage. It seeks only to trace and multiply without provoking. It’s the anthesis of art.

The way I explained it to my young cousin was like this:

Back before cameras, paintings were just recording reality, and that’s why painters tried to be as realistic as they could, and only paint things that could exist in the world around them–objects, and people, and animals. Sometimes they did paint things from their imagination, but only to illustrate stories, like stories from their religion.

Then, cameras came along, and painters were free to paint things cameras couldn’t see–things like the artist’s feelings, or ideas, or thoughts, or lots of things. Some artists tried to see if they could paint from every angle at once, and we call that Cubism. Some artists tried to paint very quickly, as quickly as they could, so they could capture one single moment of the daylight, or their impression of a moment, with all the feelings light gives, and that’s why we call them Impressionists. Some artists were more interested in the process of painting, like Mr Rothko; or in finding the most intense versions of a colour, like Mr Klein. Some were more interested in the spaces between things, like Mr Mondrian. But art, after cameras, could suddenly SAY something, say something by itself! And art, as it turns out, has a lot to say!

“I can do that too! I can do that!” You can, little friend! We all can!

My little cousin didn’t get mad looking at modern art; she was excited, and asked her parents if she could have fancy grown-up paints, because she didn’t know Art could be something she could do, could be something about expressing her feelings and ideas. This is a child who can’t yet write very well, and not nearly as fast or as well as she speaks, so you have to understand something clicked for her, that she could express the complex human things inside herself with colour and shapes and images, instead of struggling to learn how to spell “melancholy” or “excited” or conjugate verbs to a degree that could encompass it.

Because words take TIME to master as an art form–I should know, I’ve been practising using them to express MY ideas and feelings artistically for 36-and-a-half years! Paint, however, doesn’t require such mastery in order to begin expressing the artist; certainly it helps to know skills, but it isn’t as required as it is with words. You can just scream and yell with paint, you can experiment more purely with images than with sounds, which after all are regimented into languages before we can begin to use them at all, let alone for the art words make.

And honestly, why are whole-ass adults not understanding that “I could make that!” should be exciting, should inspire you to go and make that! Why are you so mad? “I could make that!” Yes you can! And you get to! And you’re an adult, you don’t have to ask your parents to buy you paint and canvas and brushes, you can go and do that yourself and be expressing your own feelings this very afternoon! Nothing is stopping you! You don’t NEED that plagiarism machine, you can do better art yourself! And nobody else in the whole world, now or in the past or in the future, is EVER going to be able to make the art YOU can make, the art YOU have inside you! So go make it!

thegreenleavesofspringinsunlight:

not-avril:

The trope I appreciate very much

Hey OP? I want you to know that this post changed my life. I have seen it three times now, and while life is still pretty hard, I have focused on increasing my calories and gaining some weight because you know what? You’re right.

mmocc123:

mareastrorum:

sp8sexual:

fuck it homebrew boop button. reblog this post to boop the person you reblogged from.

wizardnuke:

chilewithcarnage:

halfheldsky:

papayajuan2019:

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”

-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

“Evil is boring. Right? I kinda believe in the banality and mundaneness of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It’s easy to understand why people do bad things. It’s like “yeah, ok, you’re selfish and scared and cruel, I get it”. Being good is complex and beautiful and hard.” - Brennan Lee Mulligan

teaboot:

I don’t mean to be old but computer used to just have games. U didnt have to pay for em either but if u wanted u could get a little CD that put the game onto the computer and you could play it forever and ever even if the company that made it went to hell and shit. You didn’t even need the internet or wifi or anything. And it was pretty neat

tlirsgender:

Being sensitive to changes in barometric pressure is crazy what do you mean my problem is that the wind changed direction. What do you mean it’s the fuckin clouds