Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 9h

*The South Koreans haven't shut down their goverment, but a lithium-battery fire in a data center just incinerated a lot of it

https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/east-asia/south-korea-state-data-centre-fire-daejeon-b2834847.html

South Korea scrambles to restore services after fire hits government data centre

Officials have apologised after a lithium battery fire paralysed nearly a third of government systems, leaving citizens without key digital services

www.independent.co.uk

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14h

Tech and computer science schools. The USA used to have some pretty good ones.

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17h

*Yesterday's science fiction is today's science, etc

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

*Curing Alzheimer's in mice

*Skeptics will go, "heyn that's in mice," and rightly so, but curing it at all, that's a big deal

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-025-02426-1

Rapid amyloid-β clearance and cognitive recovery through multivalent modulation of blood–brain barrier transport - Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy

Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy - Rapid amyloid-β clearance and cognitive recovery through multivalent modulation of blood–brain barrier transport

www.nature.com

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

*A billion views for Shah Rukh Khan as a dropout Indian intelligence agent who turns into a dancing Balearic hippie #MegaHit

https://youtu.be/YxWlaYCA8MU?si=0ydUuAIar4QTIX3h

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

*There's a historical plaque where the Big Bang took place, and it's seventeen million light-years yonder past Aquarius

https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-where-are-we-located-relative-to-the-big-bang-95707c6caff3

Ask Ethan: Where are we located relative to the Big Bang?

If you think of the Big Bang as an explosion, we can trace it back to a single point-of-origin. But what if it happened everywhere at once?

medium.com

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 2d

" a mind-bending tool to generate impressive AI video slop has diverted the narrative," says Steven Levy, who has learned to speak fluent AI-speak, as, indeed, is his wont

https://www.wired.com/story/sam-altman-says-the-gpt-5-haters-got-it-all-wrong/

Sam Altman Says the GPT-5 Haters Got It All Wrong

OpenAI's CEO explains that its large language model has been misunderstood—and that he's changed his attitude to AGI.

www.wired.com

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 2d

*The musical "asylum seekers phonecard party." That was eleven years ago. They're all much worse-off now.

https://soundcloud.com/bcrevits/asylum-seekers-phonecard-party

Asylum seekers phonecard party

Refugees at the belgian federal asylum seekers center Klein Kasteeltje/Petit Chateau in Brussels were invited to join in a phone card party. The people from Syria, Afganistan, Albania, Palestine, Sene

soundcloud.com

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 3d

*Meanwhile, somewhere in the generated depths of an alternative Italian Renaissance #slop #llm #chatgpt

https://flic.kr/p/2rxfq6e

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 3d

*Well, good for him. And good for Poland, one of those rare countries that can financially support full-time genre writers

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 4d

*If you're a scientist who loves science fiction, it must be really gratifying to quit your straight day-job and just wander around the moors pondering various weird notions until you fall into a hole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 4d

*I wonder if anybody in the world actually does this. Could you make breakfast with this futurist methodology. Could you pick up some cute guy at a bar

https://www.andyhinesight.com/books/thinking-about-the-future/

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 5d

*Everybody's got a "neural net," but if you added an "astrocyte net" then maybe your AI would be able to sleep

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3003376

Cortical astrocyte histamine-1-receptors regulate intracellular calcium and extracellular adenosine dynamics across sleep and wake

While histamine-1-receptor (H1R) signaling in neurons regulates arousal, these receptors are also abundant on cortical astrocytes. This study shows that astrocytic H1R signaling modulates calcium activity, extracellular adenosine and REM sleep, revealing a key astrocyte-driven mechanism in sleep-wake regulation.

journals.plos.org

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 6d

*I agree with ChatGPT that Bruce Sterling fans should read Cory Doctorow novels that don't exist

https://www.tumblr.com/brucesterling/796132113751687168/chatgpt-sci-fi-maven

Post by @brucesterling

💬 2 🔁 3 ❤️ 19 · ChatGPT, sci-fi maven · What sci-fi should I be reading if I like reading Bruce Sterling novels? ChatGPT said: Ah, now we’re talking. If you're into Bruce Sterling, you're lik…

www.tumblr.com

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 8d

*The only problem with UFO cranks is if you elect 'em to office and they start banning vaccinations&Tylenol; otherwise they're not much more of a public nuisance than your average astrologer, and a lot more entertaining

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 8d

*Yes, I know that everyone who dreams that some interstellar comet must be some super-UFO is daft and cranky, but my tolerance for notion-spinning of that kind has always been extremely high

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 8d

*I'd kinda like to see 3I/ATLAS gently settle on Mars, because it's an interstellar craft that was built by long-extinct Martians, and it takes quite a while to get to the stars and back

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Bruce Sterling @bruces @bruces.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 8d

*If you're into technology-art you see a lot of ship-in-a-bottle stunts like this... but a sort-of-functional LLM that's built out of a zillion Minecraft blocks, that's peculiar

https://youtu.be/VaeI9YgE1o8?si=e3ipdNpQcnsvi8-b