The scientist who pioneered the “extreme male brain” theory of autism has said he regrets characterising the condition in this way because the phrase lends itself to misunderstandings.
Prof Simon Baron-Cohen’s theory that autistic people tend strongly towards systemising over empathising has been hugely influential in shaping the popular perception of autism over the past two decades. The underlying science had stood the test of time, he said, but he now views the “extreme male brain” label as unhelpful.
“Some of those terms were very easily misunderstood and so I do regret that,” he said. “It can lead to simplistic headlines like ‘autistic people lack empathy’, which is not true.
“Some of that language, like male brain and female brain, I just don’t think it’s useful today.”
I’m not sure it was useful then either, especially not when it came to female autistic people…
I feel like the mild frontal headache is from the lobotomy… Personally I had no idea COVID-19 had the power to change time itself, that’s quite impressive… wonder how Ivermectin coped with that? Also, I’m slightly con-cern-ed (HAHAHA get it? Get it yet? Oh, fuck you) by the news that the next stage of the LHC begins in 2030. With the number of conspirachuds already panicking about the Great Reset and 2030 supposedly being the date that happens, rhey don’t need CERN giving them “evidence” like that…
There was an interesting interview with John Coulthart a couple of weeks ago, where he says some things about AI I thought were worth preserving here:
We’re still waiting for all these developments to settle down so it’s foolish to try and prognosticate too much but it’s obvious that much of the argument in favour of AI art has been lost. The term “slop” became widespread at such a speed that it’s going to be difficult for the slop merchants to popularise their products in any other way, although I’m sure they’ll continue to make the attempt. I also think getting anyone to respect AI art will be very difficult. […]
On a more abstract level it’s been interesting seeing how quickly so much AI art has achieved a kind of mannerist sameness, a digital mulch that makes so much of the stuff look as though it’s extruded from the same pipe. “Slop” is very apt in this context. […] The slop machines don’t know about this because they don’t know what art is, and neither, it seems, do the engineers who program them. They’re asking people to accept the replacement of boundless human creativity with the world’s most expensive clip-art generator.
I think that last line is the real killer here, plus he’s equally dead on about that sort of sameness AI has attained. Which isn’t really surprising, though, cos AI was bound to feed off its own productions along with all the other stuff on the Internet it devours to make those productions in the first place… it’s not so much how quickly the term “slop” caught on so much as it is how quickly it became slop that is surprising.
I think I actually have seen the theory before that the Earth actually won’t get swallowed up by the Sun, but it seems to be gaining traction:
Scientists say the Earth may not be engulfed by the expanding fireball of the dying Sun, which has long been assumed to be our planet’s ultimate fate.
This is not expected to happen for another five billion years, long after all life on Earth has been wiped out.
When the Sun burns through all of the hydrogen in its core, it will go through two immense expansion phases: first becoming a red giant, then, when its helium is spent, an “AGB” star. […]
As the Sun expands and its blistering surface approaches our planet, intense tidal waves will stir within the star.
When they dissipate, it will pull the Earth into its doomed embrace.
However, the growing Sun will also lose a lot of its mass due to stellar wind, which pushes our planet further away. […]
Advances made in modelling these tides over the last 15 years have enabled the study’s authors to show that “the dissipation is lower than previously expected”, an astrophysicist at the CEA Paris-Saclay centre in France .
To estimate how much mass the Sun could lose, the team focused, in particular, on a nearby star – called L2 Puppis – that is like the Sun’s “old cousin”, the study’s co-author Stephane Mathis said.
“A better understanding of tidal physics and the most advanced constraints we have on mass loss allow us to say that – in the current state of knowledge – Earth could move away from the Sun, contrary to what was predicted before,” Mr Mathis said.
According to the new modelling, Mars also escapes a death spiral into the Sun.
But the two planets closest to the Sun – Mercury and Venus – are not so lucky.
They will be inexorably swallowed by the expanding fireball.
Well, at least THEY’RE still fucked, but I’m sure a lot of people will be disappointed that the Earth might actually escape after all…
Perhaps needless to say, the Artemis mission did bring out the cranks and fuckwits denying the reality of the whole thing. It also brought out this special lad a Facebook friend posted, whose main issue was the way the whole thing ended:
To be honest, when I first heard about the Artemis II mission, I was like: the US is going back to the Moon? Under TRUMP? Astonishingly, the whole thing actually did begin under his aegis in 2017, when the first proposals were made, but it didn’t actually really get going until 2022 when the first unmanned Artemis mission took off under Biden. Then the manned second mission also began under Biden, who was probably expecting to still be the president when it actually happened. That’s kind of why I’m surprised Trump didn’t cancel it; apart from all the other things he’s demanded an end to, this was something that Biden could claim credit for, and I couldn’t imagine him tolerating that.
But—despite all that, Artemis II went up and returned safely to Earth. I was holding off writing about it until it did that, which it did earlier today… it set a number of milestones along the way, most notably the four people on board travelled further away from the Earth than anyone has before (as well as being the first people to do so in over half a century), but I think the fact that it happened at all is the amazing thing. Artemis II went to the Moon and came back. It proved NASA could pull it off. It almost feels like a fuck you to Edolf, doesn’t it? “Look at that, we managed the job without blowing up on the launch pad”…
I saw that online, and it’s an… inelegant way of putting it, but there’s so much truth in it. Because the important thing about Artemis II is that it worked. A US government body—part of THIS particular US government, lest we forget—carried out a major operation for the benefit of science, sending four people into space as far as the Moon for the first time in over half a century, then bringing them back to Earth (good thing there was still an Earth for them to return to, eh); not only was it a useful thing, it was a successful one. A US government body got something RIGHT. And I don’t think people expect that now, especially not from the current mob. We are starved for this sort of competency in recent years, at least when it comes to things that aren’t evil.
And I don’t know what it all cost, but I have seen complaints about the no doubt vast amounts of money being spent on it rather than on things like healthcare. And I mean… Trump was never going to spend that money on healthcare or anything good for the American people in the first place, but also none of that money got spent on anything bad either. It didn’t blow up schools and so forth in Iran, for example. And yeah, obviously America should be putting itself in order and there are other, higher priorities… but that money was going to be spent on something. Better going on something that adds to science and knowledge rather than takes away from life, something actually good and useful at a time where we can no longer count on the US to do that sort of thing.
I’ve been maintaining a blog on Tumblr in some form or other since 2010 as a bit of a side thing. The current version is almost as old as this thing, cos Tumblr in their usual infinite wisdom decided the previous one must be destroyed for some reason or other. Accordingly, I haven’t posted anything to it myself, only reposts of other people’s stuff. Let other people take the risk.
And I thought Tumblr had started being a bit more reasonable about adult content; after the infamous (and not altogether effective) porn ban of late 2018, I thought it was making at least some progress by introducing “mature content” tags that users could apply themselves. Not the best solution, but better than outlawing the stuff entirely, which was what they tried in 2018…
Unfortunately, as I’ve seen tonight, Tumblr seems to have decided to go back to 2018 and start applying those tags themselves according to their own judgement… meaning that I’ve now got a bunch of stuff tagged as “potentially mature” and, as in 2018, at least a certain amount of that is actually bugger all of the sort… but I’m more bothered by the things they’ve flagged as definitely “mature”, cos they’ve apparently gone beyond what they did in 2018; back then they replaced the dirty dirty smut with a note that the post had contained dirty dirty smut but had now been hidden to protect everyone (including the blog owner), but now it looks like they’re not even doing that… not only do you have no option to request a review, the content is completely hidden now. Not even a sign that it was there at all. The odd thing is, those things are still visible in the mass post editor, but when I click on them from there, Tumblr just gives me the “not found” page.
So, not for the first time, I’m querying the whole point of me being on Tumblr; feels like a slightly pointless enterprise not just because I’ve got this thing now, but because the whole point of me making it a reblog-only thing was so I wouldn’t be affected again by Tumblr’s decisions about this stuff and, well, here I am affected anyway. I just liked the idea of having a corner of the Internet that people who actually know me in real life don’t know about (apart from one, I think). Mind you, no one who actually knows me in real life ever remarks to me about anything I post here, either, so I’ve kind of got that obscure corner anyway…
The famous arch of the sea stacks at Sant’Andrea in Melendugno, Puglia, Italy, popularly known as Lovers’ Arch, collapsed on Valentine’s Day after strong storm surges and heavy rain swept across southern Italy.
The rocky arch, one of the best-known natural landmarks on the Adriatic coast, got its name as it served as a backdrop for wedding proposals, selfies and postcards, and was one of the most recognisable symbols of the Salento, one of Italy’s most heavily visited tourist areas. […]
According to local authorities, strong winds, rough seas and intense rainfall in recent days progressively weakened the rock structure until its final collapse on Saturday. It is the most significant damage inflicted by coastal erosion on the landscape of the Salento. […]
Mediterranean cyclones, known as medicanes, include Cyclone Harry which struck in January, have been devastating ports, homes and roads, reshaping the structure of coastlines. Medicanes are warm-core systems that are becoming increasingly frequent in the Mediterranean, driven by rising sea temperatures linked to the climate emergency.
“With the Mediterranean [experiencing] among its hottest years on record in 2025, warmer seas are supercharging the atmosphere and fuelling extreme events,” said Christian Mulder, a professor of ecology and climate emergency at the University of Catania in Sicily.
Is it just me or is the symbolism in this story ever so slightly on the nose? Obviously not a funny situation on the whole, of course, cos obviously climate change is having bad effects, but something about the timing of this particular bad effect was kind of marvellous…
Given that we should’ve been to Mars by 2021, forgive me if I’m sceptical about us getting a city on the Moon by 2036. I’m willing to be proven wrong about this, but I somehow doubt that I will be.
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