Georeactor Blog

RSS Feed

AFK Post



Tags: bioseriessark

Sark

Unicode 16.0 is published. 🇨🇶

Bio + LLMs

Shortly after my bio + LLM post in June, I learned that jBrowse uses HTTP range requests to load small sections of DNA from S3. It was easy to put on Netlify! I uploaded the quinoa, kaniwa, and huazontles reference genomes. Some awkward points:

Tatta Bio released gLM2 with both nucleotide and protein level sequences in one 'multimodal' model: https://github.com/TattaBio/gLM2 . I want to do something with this or PlantCaduceus.

I tried to quantize Evo and gLM2 models, and looked at a Mamba embeddings/RAG paper, and this hasn't gotten anywhere so far. I kept thinking that I'd use my downtime to do experiments and post updates to the HuggingFace /posts feed, but failures in bio and job stuff have instead undermined my interest in individual contribution to LLMs.

Other Open Source

I'm also losing steam on adding the Burmese calendar to Unicode ICU. The library isn't set up for a lunar sidereal format with leap / overage months, and no one wrote anything to help explain the testing and error messages. I've closed the PR, probably I'm a disappointment. Maybe just for now.

My former redistricting job developed a React / TypeScript / NextJS / MapLibreGL reboot. I've maintained a "hands-off" "kill your darlings" philosophy about this because it's time for something new. Ahead of my upcoming redistricting presentation at FOSS4G NA, I got some PRs into the new codebase =) and did a review of other tech stuff.

History and Science

A Reddit post about Thomas Paine said there was anti-Semitic content in his Common Sense, and it does trace the concept of monarchy in Europe to the Old Testament's example, but blames it on copying from barbarian groups and is not super bloodline y. Interestingly Paine says that in early history, most people were governed by:

a kind of Republic, administered by a judge and the elders of the tribes

Drinking Lake Michigan water vs towns that use wells https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/1f97co5/how_far_outside_of_chicago_would_you_need_to_go/

A tangential post led me to watching a lot of Dr. Angela Collier's astronomy videos. I learned a lot about dark matter, why people don't do string theory anymore, and science communication. The video about Avi Loeb's many alien preprints finally dug into the weirdness which I was picking up in my "Aliens of Arxiv" posts.

Extras

OK, I have seen posts about thousands of TikTok Youth discovering check fraud, and this is likely Nyquil Chicken level BS. Who are these kids with paper checks in their pocket, who think nothing of writing a bad check from their real account? Or did these kids learn about printing fake checks, too? Wasn't there a similar story that they were all doing check kiting?
Bruh, take one minute to look at the TikTok, and it's all fake aftermath screenshots and 2-second videos of people in line at a bank. Where is one video from when this was originally going viral?

Fugitive former mayor Alice Guo was arrested by Indonesian authorities near Jakarta around midnight Sept 3/4. Rumors were that Indonesia wanted to exchange her for Gregor Haas, an Australian who would face the death penalty for drug trafficking. Failing that, Indonesia pointed out the limited Interpol notice and set a deadline when Guo would be released. Top Filipino authorities "called in a favor" and took a private plane to recover her. https://www.rappler.com/philippines/how-marcos-jr-administration-officials-arranged-alice-guo-deportation-indonesia/ These authorities faced criticism for taking selfies and acting jovial.
I wanted to say "the Senate will decide her fate", but they've already held her in contempt.
Also she was officially questioned about having a decoy or doppelganger? https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1981978/nbi-chief-not-ruling-out-use-of-alice-guo-doppelganger-to-mislead-govt
Then the immigration chief got fired (some believe that the Guo team went through the airport without being photographed or stamped, even though they testified that they escaped by boat).
If I were on the legal team, I'd argue that Alice was trafficked to the Philippines as a teenager and became straw owner / fall guy for this group. Maybe the government has proof of her direct involvement? The newest rumors are that she wants witness protection and/or can help the current president (Marcos) discredit the previous president's family (the Dutertes).
There was an article about anti-Chinese sentiment around the Alice Guo case: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/why-the-loyalty-check-chinese-filipinos-fear-prejudice-fuelled-by-alice-guo-case-south-china-sea-dispute
After POGOs were banned, Twitter users in the Philippines reported a month+ without spam texts. This hints at scam call centers spending resources on local scams.

After 3–4 years, Reddit linked the longtime lost media mystery "celebrity number six" to a specific photo. It was found less than a week after someone posted that the image resembled a Spanish model (they had colored in the image and tried an image search from there). Many men and women have been suggested matches before, and I wonder if this could be studied as a face-recognition / face-matching human neuron thing because these were somewhat plausible before now, and the initial photos of this new model didn't immediately register for me, but someone out there could eyeball it.
Because of AI, there are fears that someone merely generated a match (a moderator posted skepticism of the hair and buttons, and then quit). The hoaxer would either have to fake this model's past career, or to regenerate them in this pose. The model is aware of this attention and gave a short interview.

Kaos is a new Netflix series with the Greek pantheon in modern times. Jeff Goldblum plays Zeus. From the trailer I thought the setup was "Greek gods are back and they are mad!" but this world still worships them and has a king and Amazons and so on. The time period might be 90s (after a scene with a film camera, I went back and looked for phones). About each episode has a sudden violent moment which was jarring enough I'm not bringing it to Thanksgiving tho.

I keep thinking that I should try making cute maps like on Etsy. Think Settlers of Catan version of Cyprus.

Interesting interview on the Armchair Expert podcast with Marion Jones, track and field Olympian, about getting dismissed from the sport and going to jail (though subreddit comments argue that she smooths over a lot of her story) https://www.reddit.com/r/ArmchairExpert/comments/1ehaos9/marion_jones_olympic_trackandfield_athlete/