Already more cumbersome than digital techniques, stop-motion animation typically involves sets and characters designed to make subtle movements so that filmmakers can capture minute shifts frame by frame. Directors Jack Cunningham and Nicolas Ménard, of Eeastend Western, have chosen the even more involved process of replacement animation for their recent project.

Popularized by George Pal in the 1930s and ’40s, replacement animation involves creating distinctive models for each movement. Where Pal used wooden characters, though, Cunningham and Ménard opted for 3D-printed figures for their new anthology, TRIPLE BILL.

Comprising a trio of films all under two minutes, the collection spans “three genres to survey the atmospheric potential of the technique,” the directors say. The first is “BLUE GOOSE,” a western mocking the current state of social media, that features an enormous cowboy statue that leaves his post at the gas station. Just to have the figure walk across the set required eight unique models.

The second two are similarly labor-intensive. “CLUB ROW” is a dizzying film noir about data privacy featuring an endlessly spinning staircase, and “MYTHACRYLATE” is a fantastic glimpse at the battles we have with ourselves.

As the behind-the-scenes photos below show, each model had to be cut, sanded, and painted individually before being precisely placed in position. Ménard told It’s Nice That that elements like lighting, sound, and camera angles were particularly important to help convey emotion in TRIPLE BILL, which envelops viewers in a hypnotic critique of technology and its effects.

Find more from Eastend Western on Vimeo. For a similar technique, you also might enjoy these bears on stairs.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A Trio of Stop-Motion Shorts Utilize a Cumbersome 3D-Printing Technique appeared first on Colossal.

Google und BSI arbeiten an sicheren Cloud-Lösungen für die öffentliche Hand

Das war schon vor dem druchdrehenden Präsidenten und seinem Ketamin-Clown nicht klug. Aber jetzt?! Meine Güte ey. Hallo McFly! *klopf* Jemand zuhause?

Aber hey, warte, das BSI hat einen Plan. Man lügt einfach den Leuten ins Gesicht!

Mit einer Kooperationsvereinbarung wollen Google und das BSI die Entwicklung und Bereitstellung sicherer und souveräner Cloud-Lösungen für Behörden fördern.

Genau wie Active Directory nicht sicher konfiguriert werden kann, nur weil Heise ein Webinar anbietet. Oder wie Windows nicht sicher ist, weil Microsoft das verkündet. Oder wie die CDU Wirtschaftskompetenz hat, nur weil sie das behauptet.

Today's links

• Gandersauce: Disruption for thee, but not for me.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, 2024
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Gandersauce (permalink)

It's true that capitalists by and large hate capitalism – given their druthers, entrepreneurs would like to attain a perch from which they get to set prices and wages and need not fear competitors. A market where everything is up for grabs is great – if you're the one doing the grabbing. Less so if you're the one whose profits, customers and workers are being grabbed at.

But while all capitalists hate all capitalism, a specific subset of capitalists really, really hate a specific kind of capitalism. The capitalists who hate capitalism the most are Big Tech bosses, and the capitalism they hate the most is techno-capitalism. Specifically, the techno-capitalism of the first decade of this century – the move fast/break things capitalism, the beg forgiveness, not permission capitalism, the blitzscaling capitalism.

The capitalism tech bosses hate most of all is disruptive capitalism, where a single technological intervention, often made by low-resourced individuals or small groups, can upend whole industries. That kind of disruption is only fun when you're the disruptor, but it's no fun for the disruptees.

Jeff Bezos's founding mantra for Amazon was "your margin is my opportunity." This is a classic disruption story: I'm willing to take a smaller profit than the established players in the industry. My lower prices will let me poach their customers, so I grow quickly and find more opportunities to cut margins but make it up in volume. Bezos described this as a flywheel that would spin faster and faster, rolling up more and more industries. It worked!

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/10/at-amazon-the-flywheel-effect-drives-innovation/

The point of that flywheel wasn't the low prices, of course. Amazon is a paperclip-maximizing artificial intelligence, and the paperclip it wants to maximize is profits, and the path to maximum profits is to charge infinity dollars for things that cost you zero dollars. Infinite prices and nonexistent wages are Amazon's twin pole-stars. Amazon warehouse workers don't have to be injured at three times the industry average, but maiming workers is cheaper than keeping them in good health. Once Amazon vanquished its competitors and captured its the majority of US consumers, it raised prices, and used its market dominance to force everyone else to raise their prices, too. Call it "bezosflation":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

We could disrupt Amazon in lots of ways. We could scrape all of Amazon's "ASIN" identifiers and make browser plugins that let local sellers advertise when they have stock of the things you're about to buy on Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/10/view-a-sku/

We could hack the apps that monitor Amazon drivers, from their maneuvers to their eyeballs, so drivers had more autonomy and their bosses couldn't punish them for prioritizing their health and economic wellbeing over Amazon's. An Amazon delivery app mod could even let drivers earn extra money by delivering for Amazon's rivals while they're on their routes:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

We could sell Amazon customers virtual PVRs that let them record and keep the shows they like, which would make it easier to quit Prime, and would kill Amazon's sleazy trick of making all the Christmas movies into extra-cost upsells from November to January:

https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D54P00007nmv9XSAQ/why-arent-all-the-christmas-movies-available-through-prime-its-a-pandemic-we-are-stuck-at-home-please-add-the-oldies-but-goodies-to-prime

Rival audiobook stores could sell jailbreaking kits for Audible subscribers who want to move over to a competing audiobook platform, stripping Amazon's DRM off all their purchases and converting the files to play on a non-Amazon app:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

Jeff Bezos's margin could be someone else's opportunity…in theory. But Amazon has cloaked itself – and its apps and offerings – in "digital rights management" wrappers, which cannot be removed or tampered with under pain of huge fines and imprisonment:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Amazon loves to disrupt, talking a big game about "free markets and personal liberties" – but let someone attempt to do unto Amazon as Amazon did unto its forebears, and the company will go running to Big Government for a legal bailout, asking the state to enforce its business model:

https://apnews.com/article/washington-post-bezos-opinion-trump-market-liberty-97a7d8113d670ec6e643525fdf9f06de

You'll find this cowardice up and down the tech stack, wherever you look. Apple launched the App Store and the iTunes Store with all kinds of rhetoric about how markets – paying for things, rather than getting them free through ads – would correct the "market distortions." Markets, we were told, would produce superior allocations, thanks to price and demand signals being conveyed through the exchange of money for goods and services.

But Apple will not allow itself to be exposed to market forces. They won't even let independent repair shops compete with their centrally planned, monopoly service programs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/apples-cement-overshoes/

Much less allow competitors to create rival app stores that compete for users and apps:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

They won't even refurbishers re-sell parts from phones and laptops that are beyond repair:

https://www.shacknews.com/article/108049/apple-repair-critic-louis-rossmann-takes-on-us-customs-counterfeit-battery-seizure

And they take the position that if you do manage to acquire a donor part from a dead phone or laptop, that it is a felony – under the same DRM laws that keep Amazon's racket intact – to install them in a busted device:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/27/24097042/right-to-repair-law-oregon-sb1596-parts-pairing-tina-kotek-signed

"Rip, mix, burn" is great when it's Apple doing the ripping, mixing and burning, but let anyone attempt to return the favor and the company turns crybaby, whining to Customs and Border Patrol and fed cops to protect itself from being done unto as it did.

Should we blame the paperclip-maximizing Slow AI corporations for attempting to escape disruptive capitalism's chaotic vortex? I don't think it matters: I don't deplore this whiny cowardice because it's hypocritical. I hate it because it's a ripoff that screws workers, customers and the environment.

But there is someone I do blame: the governments that pass the IP laws that allow Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other tech giants shut down anyone who wants to disrupt them. Those governments are supposed to work for us, and yet they passed laws – like Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act – that felonize reverse-engineering, modding and tinkering. These laws create an enshittogenic environment, which produces enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

Bad enough that the US passed these laws and exposed Americans to the predatory conduct of tech enshittifiers. But then the US Trade Representative went slithering all over the world, insisting that every country the US trades with pass their own versions of the laws, turning their citizens into an all-you-can-steal buffet for US tech gougers:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/31/hall-of-famer/#necensuraninadados

This system of global "felony contempt of business-model" statutes came into being because any country that wanted to export to the USA without facing tariffs had to pass a law banning reverse-engineering of tech products in order to get a deal. That's why farmers all over the world can't fix their tractors without paying John Deere hundreds of dollars for each repair the farmer makes to their own tractor:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

But with Trump imposing tariffs on US trading partners, there is now zero reason to keep those laws on the books around the world, and every reason to get rid of them. Every country could have the kind of disruptors who start a business with just a little capital, aimed directly at the highest margins of these stupidly profitable, S&P500-leading US tech giants, treating those margins as opportunities. They could jailbreak HP printers so they take any ink-cartridge; jailbreak iPhones so they can run any app store; jailbreak tractors so farmers can fix them without paying rent to Deere; jailbreak every make and model of every car so that any mechanic can diagnose and fix it, with compatible parts from any manufacturer. These aren't just nice things to do for the people in your country's borders: they are businesses, massive investment opportunities. The first country that perfects the universal car diagnosing tool will sell one to every mechanic in the world – along with subscriptions that keep up with new cars and new manufacturer software updates. That country could have the relationship to car repairs that Finland had to mobile phones for a decade, when Nokia disrupted the markets of every landline carrier in the world:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/03/friedmanite/#oil-crisis-two-point-oh

The US companies that could be disrupted thanks to the Trump tariffs are directly implicated in the rise of Trumpism. Take Tesla: the company's insane valuation is a bet by the markets that Tesla will be able to charge monthly fees for subscription features and one-off fees for software upgrades, which will be wiped out when your car changes hands, triggering a fresh set of payments from the next owner.

That business model is entirely dependent on making it a crime to reverse-engineer and mod a Tesla. A move-fast-and-break-things disruptor who offered mechanics a tool that let them charge $50 (or €50!) to unlock every Tesla feature, forever, could treat Musk's margins as their opportunity – and what an opportunity it would be!

That's how you hurt Musk – not by being performatively aghast at his Nazi salutes. You kick that guy right in the dongle:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/#franklinite

The act of unilaterally intervening in a market, product or sector – that is, "moving fast and breaking things" – is not intrinsically amoral. There's plenty of stuff out there that needs breaking. The problem isn't disruption, per se. Don't weep for the collapse of long-distance telephone calls! The problem comes when the disruptor can declare an end to history, declare themselves to be eternal kings, and block anyone from disrupting them.

If Uber had been able to nuke the entire taxi medallion system – which was dominated by speculators who charged outrageous rents to drivers – and then been smashed by driver co-ops who modded gig-work apps to keep the fares for themselves, that would have been amazing:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/21/contra-nihilismum/#the-street-finds-its-own-use-for-things

The problem isn't disruption itself, but rather, the establishment of undisruptable, legally protected monopolies whose crybaby billionaire CEOs never have to face the same treatment they meted out to the incumbents who were on the scene when they were starting out.

We need some disruption! Their margins are your opportunity. It's high time we started moving fast and breaking US Big Tech!

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50,000 cash https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/two-americas-one-bank-branch/

• Meet Rayhunter: A New Open Source Tool from EFF to Detect Cellular Spying https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/meet-rayhunter-new-open-source-tool-eff-detect-cellular-spying

• As Bangladesh’s factories turn to surveillance and automation, garment workers feel the pressure https://restofworld.org/2025/bangladesh-garment-factories-automation-surveillance/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago User-created content in Second Life: Ondrejka’s GDC talk https://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/03/cory_o_on_secon.html

#15yrsago iPhone developer EULA turns programmers into serfs https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/iphone-developer-program-license-agreement-all

#15yrsago Stomach-churning details of CIA waterboarding crimes https://www.salon.com/2010/03/09/waterboarding_for_dummies/

#10yrsago #15yrsago Stomach-churning details of CIA waterboarding crimes https://memex.craphound.com/2015/03/08/snowbirds-guide-to-avoiding-corrupt-cops-on-i-75/

#10yrsago Is a reputation economy really an economy? https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/05/01/the-economics-of-social-status/

#10yrsago Imaginary ISIS attack on Louisiana and the twitterbots who loved it https://render.betaworks.com/media-hacking-3b1e350d619c

#10yrsago McDonald’s sues to block Seattle’s minimum wage https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-mcdonalds-sue-minimum-wage-hike_b_6809736

#10yrsago Italy’s Hacking Team allegedly sold Ethiopia’s despots cyberweapons used to attack journalists https://citizenlab.ca/2015/03/hacking-team-reloaded-us-based-ethiopian-journalists-targeted-spyware/

#10yrsago SC Supreme Court: magistrates must be able to tell time and read https://www.loweringthebar.net/2015/03/judge-wanted-must-be-able-to-read-tell-time.html

#5yrsago John Deere is Right to Repair's archnemesis https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/09/pig-pedometer-blaze/#huskerdont

#5yrsago Yanis Varoufakis on how austerity leads to fascism https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/09/pig-pedometer-blaze/#debtslavery

#5yrsago UCSC strike prompts systemwide student and faculty solidarity strikes https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/09/pig-pedometer-blaze/#eattheregents

#5yrsago Shat-out pig pedometer sparks farm-fire https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/09/pig-pedometer-blaze/#flamingpigs

#5yrsago Jesse Jackson endorses Sanders https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/09/pig-pedometer-blaze/#jessejackson

#5yrsago European Right to Repair for phones is finally on the horizon https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/08/ghost-flights/#eurighttorepair

#5yrsago EU airspace is full of empty planes https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/08/ghost-flights/#ghostflights

#1yrago Palantir's NHS-stealing Big Lie https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/08/the-fire-of-orodruin/#are-we-the-baddies

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Austin: Tensions in Creative Labor & Generative AI, Mar 8
  https://schedule.sxsw.com/2025/events/PP149418

• Austin: The Next 25: A Conversation About the Future of Open, Mar 8
  https://www.classy.org/event/creative-commons'-open-house-for-an-open-future/e663144

• Austin: Fediverse House, Mar 10
  https://about.flipboard.com/fediverse-house/

• Austin: Picks and Shovels at First Light Books, Mar 10
  https://thethirdplace.is/event/cory-doctorow-picks-shovels-1

• Burbank: Picks and Shovels with Wil Wheaton, Mar 13
  https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3257/Thu%2C_Mar_13th_6_pm%3A_Pick_%26_Shovel%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#/

• Europa Park: Cloudfest, Mar 17-20
  https://cloudfest.link/

• San Diego: Picks and Shovels at Mysterious Galaxy, Mar 24
  https://www.mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow

• Virtual: Picks and Shovels at Imagine! Belfast, Mar 24
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189

• Chicago: Picks and Shovels with Peter Sagal, Apr 2
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/44853

• Chicago: ABA Techshow, Apr 3
  https://www.techshow.com/

• Bloomington: Picks and Shovels at Morgenstern, Apr 4
  https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorow

• Pittsburgh: PyCon, May 16
  https://us.pycon.org/2025/schedule/

• PDX: Teardown 2025, Jun 20-22
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025

• PDX: Picks and Shovels at Barnes and Noble, Jun 20
  https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/9780062183697-0

• New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

Recent appearances (permalink)

• CBC Bookends
  https://www.cbc.ca/books/bookends/cory-doctorow-writes-science-fiction-to-come-to-terms-with-his-tech-anxiety-1.7477457

• The Futurists
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko0BdEm-Uw4

• Make It Make Sense
  https://open.spotify.com/episode/6XccT3wp6udfiuooYa8jcb

Latest books (permalink)

• • Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books (permalink)

• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

• Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It https://craphound.com/news/2025/02/26/with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshittification-conquered-the-21st-century-and-how-we-can-overthrow-it/

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

ISSN: 3066-764X

Welcome back to the Abstract! 

Let me start this column with a question: Are you a man or a mouse? Or a mammoth? Or a mammoth mouse? Okay, that was more than one question, but in my defense, scientists made a bunch of mammothy mice and I’m getting my taxonomical lines crossed.

Then, hornet guts: What’s in them? The answer will haunt your nightmares (but in a fun way). Next, quench your thirst with primordial supernova water. Last, a heartwarming story about how we averted death by cosmic radiation. I love that for us!  

Introducing: The Woolly Mam-mouse 

Chen, Rui et al. “Multiplex-edited mice recapitulate woolly mammoth hair phenotypes.” bioRxiv.

The last woolly mammoths vanished from Earth 4,000 years ago, but they loom large in our imaginations. The extinct proboscideans have become the main avatar of a push to “de-extinct” lost animals by creating genetic “proxy” species spliced together with gene-editing tools like CRISPR. Yes, this movement is very reminiscent of Jurassic Park—except the proposed attractions are dodos, thylacines, and mammoths instead of T-rexes with a specific taste for lawyers. 

Now, researchers working for Colossal Biosciences, a biotech startup that bills itself as the “de-extinction company” have unveiled a “woolly mouse” chimera, according to a new preprint study. These mice have “exaggerated hair phenotypes including curly, textured coats, and golden-brown hair,” which the researchers claim could shed light into the genetic adaptations of mammoths. The mice don’t have any actual mammoth DNA in them; rather, the team toggled gene mutations that are similar to those found in mammoths, and other mammals.    

“This study establishes a rapid platform for testing mammoth-centric genetic variants while advancing methods for complex genetic model generation,” said researchers led by Rui Chen of Colossal Biosciences. “These approaches inform de-extinction efforts and research into the genetic basis of mammalian hair development and cold adaptation.”

The study was published this week on bioRxiv, a server for biology preprints that are hot off the press and have not yet gone through the peer review process. The team also disclosed competing interests in this statement: “The authors have filed a patent application based on the results of this work. All authors are current or former employees, or scientific advisors/consultants for Colossal Biosciences and/or Form Bio, and may hold stock and/or stock options in these companies.”

In other words, this study has not been traditionally vetted and the authors acknowledge financial interest in the outcome, which are important considerations in evaluating its results. Some scientists have already pushed back on the team’s claim that the mice offer a meaningful step toward a resurrected mammoth. 

Jurassic Park may be a good guide here not only for its literal premise of resurrecting animals, but for its excellent portrayal of how commercialization shapes our conception of scientific breakthroughs. After all, science is very cool, people are often enthused about it, and this makes it easy to market lofty and appealing narratives about its progress. John Hammond (the British dino tycoon) wants to make money off his park, sure, but he also has a grander sense of purpose that he has even sold himself on. “How can we stand in the light of discovery and not act?” he asks his guests over a meal. Hungry dinosaurs bluntly counter this techno-optimism by making meals of several characters.

Of course, it’s just a movie (albeit the best one ever made). Future mammoth proxies are unlikely to go on murderous rampages, though they would be well within their rights to do so. But it will be interesting to watch how this clear commercial interest in de-extinction will materialize in the coming years and, crucially, what popular narratives emerge from it. Are proxies possible? If so, who are they for? Can simulacra of dead things help save living things? Or is it all just a stunt? (Stunts can be very profitable, after all!) 

This study demonstrates an eagerness to prove that the rubber is meeting the road in the journey to de-extinction, but nobody knows where this road leads or what Frankensteinian creatures might show up along the way. For a deeper dive into the thorny dimensions of de-extinction efforts, I recommend Sabrina Imbler’s thoughtful feature on the topic for Defector. 

And while the methods and conclusions of this preprint should be adjudicated by experts, I did want to end on a light note by spotlighting the many luxurious mouse hairdos described in the study, such as “wavy pelage” and “curly vibrissae.” If nothing else, these mice chimeras can serve as inspiration for your next haircut.  

There’s a Party in these Hornet Guts and Everyone’s Invited

Pedersen, Siffreya et al. “Broad ecological threats of an invasive hornet revealed through a deep sequencing approach.” Science of the Total Environment.

In what is hands-down the gnarliest study of the week, scientists rummaged through hundreds of hornet guts to see what they were eating. Why would any sane person want to do such a thing? Because, like Mount Everest, the hornet guts are there. Oh, and also, the Asian hornet (Vespa velutina) is an invasive predator that is wreaking havoc across Europe, and understanding its diet is key to mitigating its ecological impact.

And boy, this hornet did not disappoint: The team found a veritable buffet of 1,449 different species in the bellies of its babies (larvae).

“Through deep sequencing of gut samples from >1500 V. velutina larvae originating from 103 nests, the aim of this study was to provide the first large-scale dietary analysis of V. velutina across European regions,” said researchers led by Siffreya Pedersen at the University of Exeter.

“We evidence V. velutina as a highly adaptable predator with an incredibly wide array of invertebrate prey, spanning the orders Hymenoptera, Diptera, Hemiptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, and Araneae with considerable dietary species variation across seasons and geographical regions,” the team said.

Mitigating the devastating impacts of this predator will clearly be a tough job, as it can apparently subsist on any biofuel it can catch. The Asian hornet is particularly fond of devouring pollinators like the honey bee Apis mellifera, and it is truly chilling to read about their tactics.

“The hornets hunt A. mellifera by ‘hawking’ outside of hive entrances and intercepting returning workers, or by targeting individual foragers at floral patches,” the team said. “Unlike the Eastern honey bee, Apis cerana, which has evolved defensive mechanisms such as killing the hornets through thermal shock (bee balling), A. mellifera has no effective defence against V. velutina.”

Insect studies will just casually mention insane defense moves like “bee balling” that sound like Bioshock plasmids. All in all, the Asian hornet’s gastronomical versatility distinguishes it as “a potential ecosystem-level pressure” in Europe and a threat that must be addressed. But even as we vow to curb its carnage, we must salute this epicurious gourmand. 

A Glimpse of the Cosmic Wellspring

Whalen, D.J. et al. “Abundant water from primordial supernovae at cosmic dawn.” Nature Astronomy.

We now move from the gnarly to the serene. The very title of this study is a slice of zen: “Abundant water from primordial supernovae at cosmic dawn.” Forget “abracadabra” and other incantations. This is the kind of phrase I believe might make you levitate into enlightened transcendence if you repeat it enough. 

Water is the essential catalyst for life as we know it on Earth, and it is the fundamental parameter that we use to assess the habitability of other worlds. For this reason, the origins of water in the universe is a major research area that can shed light on the odds that life has emerged elsewhere in space and time.

Researchers have now simulated the explosions of the first very stars in the universe, known as population III, which were much more massive and chemically homogenous than their stellar descendants. The models predicted that water formed in the cooling haloes that surrounded these inaugural supernovae, hinting that this vital compound has been around for about 13.6 billion years.

“Primordial (or population III) supernovae were the first nucleosynthetic engines in the Universe, and they forged the heavy elements required for the later formation of planets and life,” said researchers led by D.J. Whalen of the University of Portsmouth. “Here we present numerical simulations that show that the first water in the Universe formed in population III…supernovae.”  

“The primary sites of water production in these remnants are dense molecular cloud cores, which in some cases were enriched with primordial water to mass fractions that were only a factor of a few below those in the Solar System today,” the team said. “Besides revealing that a primary ingredient for life was already in place in the Universe 100–200 [million years] after the Big Bang, our simulations show that water was probably a key constituent of the first galaxies.”

Water, water everywhere? More like water, water, every-when. Water has been around almost as long as starlight, which makes it obvious that there are lots of aliens out there who must be just actively ignoring us.

An Update on the Ozone Layer: Earth’s Bullet-Proof Vest

Wang, Peidong et al. “Fingerprinting the recovery of Antarctic ozone.” Nature.

We’ll close on a high note—so high, in fact, that it is located in the stratosphere. If you are an ancient crone like me, you might recall a time called the 1980s when humans realized that many commercial chemicals, especially chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), were eating away at an atmospheric layer of ozone gas that helpfully protects life on Earth from deadly radiation. People were like, “I don’t want to be exposed to deadly radiation!” so they banned ozone-depleting substances (ODSs) in the Montreal Protocol of 1987. 

The Montreal Protocol has often been held up as one of the biggest environmental successes in history, and a study out this week has further bolstered its reputation. While a lot of research has shown evidence of healing ozone, scientists have now adapted advanced climate change tools to check in on the famous ozone “hole” that once gaped over Antarctica.

“We performed a pattern-based fingerprint analysis for Antarctic ozone recovery, analogous to fingerprinting anthropogenic climate change,” said researchers led by Peidong Wang at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We demonstrate that the data and simulations show compelling agreement in the fingerprint pattern of the ozone response to decreasing ODSs since 2005.”

“Our results provide robust statistical and physical evidence that actions taken under the Montreal Protocol to reduce ODSs are indeed resulting in the beginning of Antarctic ozone recovery,” the team said.

Boom! Take the win, humanity, we need all the morale we can get. Indeed, the Montreal Protocol is often cited as an aspirational model of the international collaboration required to combat climate change. This is a bit of an oversimplification—the entire global economy was not built on CFCs, and fossil fuels are a much harder habit to kick. Still, if you’re a person who doesn’t like being bombarded with carcinogenic space particles, rejoice. And if you do like radiation exposure, I have some waterfront property on Mars to sell you.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.