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David Simpson on PostHuman, TransHuman and The God Killers

2011, I sat down with a young sci-fi writer from Vancouver named David Simpson.

Nobody was talking about AGI at dinner parties back then. There was no ChatGPT. No trillion-dollar AI race. Just a handful of us asking questions most people found eccentric at best.

David had written Post-Human and Trans-Human, novels imagining a world where artificial superintelligence remakes what it means to be human. He was also doing something the publishing industry considered heresy: ditching his traditional publisher to sell his books as 99-cent ebooks, betting that technology would flip the entire business on its head.

Fifteen years later, one of those bets looks obvious. The other one, well, you’ll have to watch the interview and judge for yourself.

We talked about why he writes, what science fiction owes to technology and what technology owes to science fiction, the authors who shaped him, and the meaning behind titles like The God Killers.

What strikes me most, rewatching it now, is not what we got right or wrong. It’s the questions themselves. The best #scifi doesn’t predict the future. It interrogates it. And the questions David was asking in 2011 about #AI, posthumanism, and human purpose are the same ones the entire world is scrambling to answer today.

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Schrödinger’s anthill: Quantum entanglement found in a crystal large enough to hold

Scientists have uncovered surprisingly strong quantum entanglement inside a hand-sized crystal, revealing that even macroscopic materials can behave in profoundly quantum ways. A centimeter-sized crystal has revealed clear signs of quantum entanglement, showing that large, everyday objects can display surprisingly deep quantum behavior. The discovery could help solve the mystery of strange metals while opening new possibilities for ultra-precise quantum sensors and other advanced technologies.

Quantum phenomena are usually associated with extremely small objects such as individual atoms, molecules, or photons that must be carefully isolated from their surroundings. But can those same strange quantum effects also exist in objects large enough to see and hold?

Researchers at TU Wien have now provided compelling evidence that they can. By studying a centimeter-sized crystal made from a type of material known as a strange metal, the team detected a high degree of quantum entanglement, one of the most remarkable features of quantum physics. They accomplished this using a technique from quantum information science called quantum Fisher information.

New topology-based biomarkers may improve breast cancer prediction

For decades, pathologists have diagnosed and graded breast cancer by looking at tissue samples under a microscope, searching for telltale signs of disorder in the structure of cells and tissues. Now, researchers at Columbia and their collaborators have developed a new computational approach that transforms those visual patterns into quantitative measurements, potentially improving how clinicians predict breast cancer outcomes and choose therapies.

In a recent study published in Cancer Research, researchers used mathematical tools known as topology to develop biomarkers quantifying the organizational structure of breast cancer tissue. The approach generated continuous numerical scores that predicted patient survival and treatment response more accurately than many traditional biomarkers, while also showing less variation across racial and ethnic groups.

Blood p-tau217 levels signal cognitive impairment risk years before symptoms emerge

Higher baseline plasma p-tau217 was associated with greater 5- and 10-year risks of cognitive impairment and faster cognitive decline among 2,684 cognitively unimpaired adults. Very high levels corresponded to an estimated 38% risk at five years, but selected cohorts and limited long-term data mean routine screening and individualized prediction remain premature.

‘The mid2000s was the golden era of firstperson shooters’: David Szymanski, creator of Dusk and Iron Lung, discusses the games on his PC

David Szymanski, creator of Dusk and one of the chief architects of the retro FPS revival, grew up playing games like Lemmings and Oil’s Well on the family PC. Among these family favourites was a formative first-person game. But it probably isn’t the one you’d expect: “The most foundational one I can remember is playing Myst for the first time,” says the New Blood designer. “That was the first game I remember really getting super into—being able to enter another world and explore it in first-person.”

Initially a designer of short horror games, Szymanski’s breakout came in 2018 with Dusk, an homage to classic ’90s shooters like Doom and Quake. Following Dusk’s success, Szymanski returned to developing shorter games, including the hit submarine horror game Iron Lung, which was adapted into a movie by YouTuber Markiplier earlier this year.

Self-adaptive catch-up injection of positrons in plasma wakefield acceleration

Efficient positron injection in plasma wakefield acceleration is challenging because it requires a field structure that can both focus and accelerate positrons. Here, we propose a self-adaptive catch-up injection scheme, in which a positron source placed in front of a hollow, positively charged driver is naturally captured as the wake catches up. Analytical modeling and 3D PIC simulations show that positrons with broad initial conditions can be injected into similar accelerating phases and further accelerated to multi-GeV energies. These results provide a proof-of-principle demonstration for a new positron injection and acceleration scheme in plasma wakefields.

Scientists Studying Earth’s Flowering Plants Issue a Stark Warning to Humanity

From the beloved vanilla orchid, whose pods flavor many of our favorite desserts, to the nose-twisting corpse flower, whose gigantic flower draws crowds with every fetid bloom, even the world’s most treasured flowering plants are in grave danger.

And scientists are only just coming to terms with just how much we stand to lose.

In a recent paper published in Science, an international team of biologists warns that we risk losing more than a fifth of the evolutionary history of flowering plants, as a result of ever-increasing human pressures.

Generating red blood cell-like cells from canine induced pluripotent stem cells

Blood transfusions are crucial in human and veterinary medicine, yet human blood reserves are in constant need of donors, while blood bank systems in veterinary care are nearly nonexistent. This leaves canine transfusions largely reliant on donations from healthy dogs, but securing compatible blood remains a major challenge because dogs also have different blood types.

Fortunately, recent advances in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have created new opportunities for producing blood cells in the laboratory. This and the similarities between human and canine health have drawn attention to dogs as translational models that can bring about innovative changes in both fields. However, a method for generating red blood cells from canine iPSCs has not been fully established.

Spotify Doubles Down on AI Slop As It’s Being Flooded With It

On Thursday, the singer Ella “Lorde” O’Connor took to Instagram to share a screenshot of the “About the Song” summary of one of her songs. In the screenshot, the AI feature can be seen declaring that “on her Ultrasound World Tour, Lorde turns Current Affairs,” a song off of O’Connor’s most recent album, “into a full-on performance piece, stripping down to underwear while a dancer pours water over her stomach so the song plays out like the shower scene she talks about on stage.” According to a blurb at the bottom of the summary, it drew information from the Australian outlet The Music, which reviewed O’Connor’s tour.

But according to O’Connor’s Instagram story, this isn’t true — that performance happens in her show, but in a different song. There was an inaccuracy in The Music’s review, and that made its way into Spotify’s AI summary.

“Not only is this inaccurate (not the song I did that in),” O’Connor wrote in the caption of the Instagram story, “but reducing a song to an AI-generated meaning right at the source feels like it limits free interpretation [in my opinion]. At least make it possible for artists to opt out please.”

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