Nanobot (Havana Parody) | A Capella Science ft. Dorothy Andrusiak

My current song pedantry fave is Nanobot , perfected by a video with 18 numbered [refs]: ▶ this video (presumably Brian May would have had his phases of astral matter correct in the first set of lyrics?)

in “Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?” · View on HN

Yup, DNA turned out to not merely be a sequence of triplets telling a dumb matter printer which hard-coded proteins to make - at least according to what little I understand of evolutionary developmental biology[0], DNA is much more like procedural generation in gamedev or demoscene. That is, there's plenty of recipes for various structures and body parts, and then there's lots of DNA that's responsible for conditionally enabling or disabling or modulating those recipes, depending on more DNA that controls when and where and how much to enable them, and then more - a complex network of logic . -- [0] - Didn't get much further than this four-minute intro to the field, but it is a good intro : [link] . (EDIT: It's actually the second part of a trio, that starts with a four-minute bottom-up overview of organic chemistry[1], and ends on a three-minute intro to nanotechnology[2]. I recommend the series together for how well it frames humans in relation to other life and universe as a whole.) [1] - [link] [2] - ▶ this video

in “Ear muscle we thought humans didn't use activates when people listen hard” · View on HN

> could we distinguish engineered vs emergent life? I think we can tell the difference between engineered and evolved (but note that simulated evolution is still evolution) — oddities like the path of the recurrent laryngeal nerve are cited as evidence against an intelligent designer, and I expect it isn't the only such oddity: [link] > But I really like that the answer to a most ancient question such as "what is life" is building up to something like "it's all nanobots controlled by molecular computers"... If you've not already watched it, I recommend this video by A Capella Science : ▶ this video

in “Kurt Gödel, his mother and the argument for life after death” · View on HN

Related to the first answer: Tim Blais on youtube has made a catchy "edutainment" song [1] on molecular machines based on A. Leigh's research (eg [2]) with some cool animations that show how electrochemical "switches" can encode a binary state, which one could (in principle) use to build logic gates. [1]: ▶ this video [2]: [link]

in “Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?” · View on HN

> No one is going to say, “I love lots of footnotes in writing.” I will. Sometimes the footnotes[0] are even the best part. > Otherwise, it would save a lot of time to write in a more informal tone or to not have to use citations. It may save authorial time, but it saves reader time even more by driving it to zero. As a reader (even as a reader primarily for entertainment), I'm aiming to spend my limited attention on things that someone else has thought about for a lot[1] longer than it'll take me to absorb, not just brain-dumps on a whim: ideas, not vibes. [0] eg, those in ▶ this video [1] see [link]

in “Academic-style writing persists because it works” · View on HN

Pleasantly surprised to see a video with footnotes. Up until today, I'd only encountered this practice on A Capella Science: ▶ this video

in “Dynamicland 2024” · View on HN