Friday, November 13, 2026

No kings makes not sense

Why would any US movement (decentralized or not, grassroots or not) call itself No Kings! Very absurd!

"... The president [Trump] thinks his rule is absolute [???]. But in America, we don’t have kings — and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty. ..."

About No Kings

Microsoft's latest online multiple application and cloud day-long outage turned into a full blown global cloud crisis

This incident seems to be quite unusual, but maybe not for Microsoft!

Is this a Microsoft specific issue or not? Was it an Microsoft internal error that cascaded as reported?

"Microsoft is slowly recovering from its day-long outage after much of the company’s systems were hit by a cascading software issue.

The problems, which started Thursday, were initially flagged as affecting the company’s services in the U.S. and the Americas, but quickly spread around the world, as engineers struggled to recover downed servers.

What began as an Outlook email and Teams video conferencing outage soon developed into a full blown meltdown, affecting the company’s cloud services for both consumer and business email, files, and documents. The outage also knocked out the company’s Copilot AI tools  ...

Microsoft said in its latest status update on Friday that there was “no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident,” and later noted that there was “not related to cyber or AI / agents.” ...

The last major incident affecting Microsoft services was in September, when a days-long outage hit Microsoft’s cloud services. ..."

Microsoft's latest email outage turned into a full blown global cloud crisis | TechCrunch

AI’s ability to ‘autoformalize’ proofs is fundamentally changing mathematics

No doubt! ML & AI will revolutionize and accelerate progress in mathematics!

The queen of science is in for a makeover!

Transformation | Quanta Magazine

TE-exklusiv: Deutschland schafft sich im Automobilbau selbst ab

Empfehlenswert, aber leider schlimm!

Wie werden z.B. die deutschen Zulieferer der Automobilindustrie das überleben?

TE-exklusiv: Deutschland schafft sich im Automobilbau selbst ab "Mit rund 13 Milliarden Euro haben die Bundesregierungen in knapp elf Jahren die E-Mobilität subventioniert, nur um auf Kosten der Steuerzahler viel zu teure Elektroautos auf Deutschlands Straßen zu bringen und moderne Verbrenner zu verdrängen."

Die Gewalt gegen kritische Journalisten eskaliert

Eine Schlagzeile von heute aus der Bananenrepublik D!

Wenn sich das bestätigt, dann sind das schlimme Zustände!

"... In der Nacht haben Unbekannte das Familienauto von Julian Reichelt in Berlin-Charlottenburg in Brand gesetzt. Gegen zwei Uhr rückte die Feuerwehr an. Nach Angaben von NIUS wurde während der Löscharbeiten auch ein Feuerwehrmann von einem Auto angefahren und leicht verletzt. ...

Auch Tichys Einblick ist seit Jahren Ziel massiver Anfeindungen und Einschüchterungsversuche. Roland Tichy erhielt wiederholt Morddrohungen, die Redaktion wurde mit Hasskampagnen überzogen und musste in einen speziell gesicherten Bereich umziehen. Die persönliche Bedrohung von Journalisten gehört längst zum Repertoire jener, die sich selbst als Verteidiger der Demokratie feiern. Wer sich ihrer politischen Deutungshoheit widersetzt, wird öffentlich diffamiert, zum Feind erklärt und eingeschüchtert. Wie weit diese Feindseligkeit inzwischen reicht, zeigen die brutalen Angriffe auf Journalisten, die ihrer Arbeit nachgehen wollen. ..."

Die Gewalt gegen kritische Journalisten eskaliert "Morddrohungen, Prügelattacken, zerstörte Redaktionszugänge, Pranger vor der Haustür. Seit Jahren eskaliert die Gewalt aus dem linksextremen Milieu gegen kritische Journalisten in Deutschland. Nun gipfelnd mit dem Brandanschlag auf Julian Reichelts Familienauto. Welchen Anteil tragen Politik und Medienvertreter an diesen Zuständen?"

An atlas of all the plasma proteins that pass the blood-brain barrier of the mouse

Good news! Amazing stuff!

It is very surprising to read in the abstract of this paper that in the year 2026 "the scale and function of physiological blood-to-brain protein transport remain largely unknown". Hard to believe!

"... Now, scientists have created an atlas of all the proteins that make the guest list for mouse brains—including one crucial to limiting Alzheimer’s onset.

Researchers used protein-labeling chemistry to tag 861 proteins in mouse blood. Of those, only 92 could pass through the blood-brain barrier. The selection included proteins produced throughout the body, especially in the liver.
Once inside the brain, the different proteins were sent to different kinds of brain cells, where they served specific roles such as maintaining connections between neurons. ..."

"... Multiple organs in the body, such as the liver and kidney, release different proteins into the blood at different times. This means the specific mix of protein types in blood plasma—the liquid portion of the blood—can relay important information to the brain about the current state of the body. But with the blood-brain barrier, which of these proteins can the brain sense? ...

Of the 861 proteins the scientists tracked, the blood-brain barrier only allowed 92 to enter the brain. Most of these proteins were produced in distant parts of the body, especially the liver. The findings suggest that the blood-brain barrier acts as a gatekeeper, using specialized receptors to identify and transport specific plasma proteins from the body into the brain. ...

The team also found that, once inside the brain, different proteins are directed to specific types of brain cells, where they carry out specialized functions. ...

For example, a protein made in the liver travels to the brain to support cells known as astrocytes. Once in the brain, the protein—known as apolipoprotein A1, or APOA1—activates a pathway that maintains healthy connections between neurons. Failure of this pathway has previously been linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease ..."

From the highlights and abstract:
"Highlights
• Bioorthogonal chemistry and proteomics map the blood-brain barrier transportome
• Each permeable protein homes to distinct brain cell types to support cell functions
• Blood-brain barrier transport dysfunction arises early in Alzheimer’s disease models
• Liver-derived APOA1 engages astrocyte ABCA1 to rescue Alzheimer’s dysfunction in mice

Summary
The blood-brain barrier (BBB) has been defined primarily by what it excludes, yet the scale and function of physiological blood-to-brain protein transport remain largely unknown.
Using bioorthogonal proteomics, we find that the healthy BBB samples 191 plasma proteins and permits 92 into the brain parenchyma. Enriched for carrier and metabolic functions, these proteins home to distinct brain cell types, such as apolipoprotein A1 (APOA1) to astrocytes and alpha-1 antitrypsin (SERPINA1) to microglia.
This cell-type tropism relies on a BBB-parenchyma receptor hand-off: APOA1 crosses the BBB via SR-B1 and engages astrocytic ATP-binding cassette transporter A1 (ABCA1), a key Alzheimer’s risk gene, driving cholesterol efflux that supports synapse integrity. Unlike LPS-induced nonspecific leakage, early-stage 5xFAD mice show selective BBB transport remodeling, with reduced APOA1 and increased SERPINA1 uptake.
Hepatic APOA1 overexpression restores APOA1 in the 5xFAD brain, rescuing astrocytic, synaptic, and behavioral deficits.
These findings recast the BBB as a selective interface that recruits neuroprotective circulatory proteins for brain health."

ScienceAdviser

Study Rewrites the Rules of the Blood-Brain Barrier (original news release) "Gladstone scientists discover the dynamic barrier—long defined by what it excludes—imports an unexpected degree of protective proteins into the brain, revealing a new blueprint for treating Alzheimer’s disease."


Graphical abstract


Figure 1 A bioorthogonal proteomics strategy to detect plasma proteins within the healthy brain


How FDR Made Andrew Mellon a Scapegoat for the Great Depression

This could be an interesting book review by Amity Shlaes! 

The President and the Oligarch
Roosevelt, Mellon, and the Triumph of Big Government
By Greg Steinmetz

"... Most historians attribute the precipitous decline of the Mellon name to the Great Depression of the 1930s. ...

Because Mellon was the premier financial statesman of the Roaring 1920s. ...

Yet the attempt to uncover business fraud in the Mellon empire foundered: Mellon won his first case; the Bureau of Internal Revenue even determined he was due a refund. Undaunted, his administration assailants next dragged Mellon before the very court he had created, the Board of Tax Appeals. This time Mellon’s tax deductions for his art purchases were the focus. Mellon claimed the deductions were warranted. He purchased his Rembrandts and Vermeers as part of a collection for a national museum he would give to the American people. Jackson claimed the charity was a sham.

This effort backfired too. Mellon produced a trust charter for a charity committed to building a national gallery dated December 1930, a time when Roosevelt was still governor of New York. The trust’s date provided strong evidence of the legality of subsequent deductions. ... liked the idea of Washington getting its own Louvre. Frank Hogan, Mellon’s lawyer, played on that sentiment. ...

Ever after, historians would treat the National Gallery and its pictures as Mellon’s attempt to bribe Roosevelt into leaving him alone. ...

Mellon’s wealth got him the Treasury post. The money surely helped. But Harding considered several millionaires for Treasury, including the wealthy banker Charles Dawes. Mellon likely won the post for his bond-market mastery and vindicated Harding’s choice with stunning management of both European and American debt. ..."

How FDR Made Andrew Mellon a Scapegoat for the Great Depression "A new book recounts how Roosevelt pinned the Depression on a banker-turned-Treasury secretary to hasten the age of big government."


Book cover



Andrew Mellon (left) and Franklin D. Roosevelt


English for trippers: Let lettuce seduce

Lettuce reduced! Bite by byte!

P.S. According to Google, lettuce is the only English word containing tuce.

Bypassing the FDA, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Makes Peptides Easier to Access

Good news! Let the people decide and try! Less government paternalism!

Reducing the control of the medical-industrial complex over medications is a good thing in general!

Hopefully, there will be more deregulation of medications to come!

"... Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a peptide proponent who has stated that he has benefited personally from the compounds, announced on October 28 that he would smooth patient access to six unapproved peptides. ...

In a linked policy, HHS said it would practice “enforcement discretion” around the compounding of six peptides: BPC-157, Epitalon, KPV, MOTS-c, Semax, and TB-500. ..."

Bypassing the FDA, RFK Jr. Makes Peptides Easier to Access | The Scientist "Peptide compounds are marketed for everything from longevity to beauty. Now, despite a lack of evidence, six unapproved peptides will be easier to acquire."

From transvestites to transgender individuals

I have some serious doubts about this official and accepted explanation or exposition of how transvestites are distinguished from transgender individuals. 

The official description (see the Google example below) of the difference between transvestites and transgender individuals appears to be rather artificial and not very substantive.

To dismiss transvestites as mere (occasional) crossdressers appears to be very odd! In the past, it was a lot more dangerous for any transgender individual to come out in the open.

How is it possible that transgender individuals only came out in the late 20th century and not earlier in history? A serious historical analysis of the existence of transgender individuals in the past is necessary and overdue. If we can not find convincing examples of transgender individuals in the past, then perhaps T in LGBTQ is just a modern fashion and modern human exploration or an expression of individualism etc..

Where do drag queens fit in here? Depends on the individual drag queen.

What nonsense is the very popular but nonsense expression "sex assigned at birth" all about? The sex of a human being at birth was determined by the genes!

"The evolution from the historical term transvestite to the modern understanding of transgender reflects a significant shift in how medicine, psychology, and society define gender identity, expression, and sexuality. ...

• German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term transvestite in 1910 to describe individuals who wore clothing associated with the opposite sex. In the early 20th century, Hirschfeld and researchers used it broadly as an early framework for people crossing gender boundaries, though understanding at the time often conflated cross-dressing, homosexuality, and gender identity.

• Evolution of Meaning: Through the mid-20th century, "transvestite" came to refer primarily to cross-dressers—individuals who periodically or conventionally wear clothing of another gender, typically identifying as straight and distinct from living full-time as another gender. ...

• Coining and Popularization: The term transgender developed later in the 20th century. Figures like Virginia Prince and others in publications like Transvestia in the late 1960s helped shape and popularize terms distinguishing cross-gender lifestyle choices from permanent medical transitions. By the 1970s, "transgender" and "trans" grew into umbrella terms.

• Separation of Gender and Sexuality: A core breakthrough in modern understanding—pioneered by early sexologists and later affirmed by organizations like the American Psychological Association—is that gender identity (an internal sense of being a man, woman, or another identity) is distinct from sexual orientation (who a person is attracted to).

• Current Definition: Transgender is an inclusive umbrella term for individuals whose internal gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth [???]. This encompasses trans men, trans women, and non-binary or gender-nonconforming individuals, regardless of whether they pursue social, legal, or medical steps to transition." (Google)

Cholinergic hypothesis of Alzheimer's returns

Recommendable! A bit of history of neurological disorders in medicine and how competing theories come and go.

"A decade before the amyloid hypothesis emerged to explain how Alzheimer’s disease develops, there was the cholinergic hypothesis.
The idea, first articulated by brain pathologists and drug researchers in the 1970s and 80s, was that a set of long neurons in the basal forebrain began to die as people aged, depriving the brain of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter important to learning and memory. 

Experiments in the 1970s, on people and monkeys, lent support to the idea and formed the basis for a class of Alzheimer’s drugs still in wide use today. ...

Meanwhile, new tools, including advanced nuclear and viral imaging and optogenetics, are affording a new generation of researchers an unprecedented look at the form and function of cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain.

As it turns out, these extraordinarily long-projecting, vulnerable cells may be failing well before symptoms start—not just in Alzheimer’s but other neurodegenerative diseases as well.
And cholinergic drugs might be more effective than previously thought. Several, including some whose development was shelved in the 1990s, are now in clinical trials. ..."

"... A rash of research in the U.S. and United Kingdom [in the mid-1970s]  implicated the brain’s cholinergic system, made up of neurons that produce a chemical called acetylcholine. Though this neurotransmitter is normally widespread in the brain, autopsy studies found the brains of Alzheimer’s patients mysteriously depleted of it. Researchers also reported severe damage to the nucleus basalis of Meynert, nestled in a deep brain region called the basal forebrain, from which cholinergic neurons shoot projections into areas important for memory and learning. ...

[A] 1982 paper in Science became the first to articulate “the cholinergic hypothesis of geriatric memory dysfunction.” ...

By the 1990s, the golden age of neurotransmitters was giving way to a fascination with disease proteins—beta amyloid and the tangle-forming protein called tau—and with the areas in the cortex that saw the earliest damage associated with these proteins. ...

They aren’t the only long-projecting neurons Alzheimer’s researchers worry about. ... studies spindly cells that produce the neurotransmitter norepinephrine and originate in a separate deep-brain structure called the locus coeruleus. She has linked specific patterns of Alzheimer’s symptoms to damage to the locus coeruleus and the nucleus basalis of Meynert. ..."

ScienceAdviser

The sideshow "How an unpopular hypothesis linking Alzheimer’s disease to the loss of crucial neurons made a comeback"


In the 1970s, Raymond Bartus developed a device using windows, lights, and a food reward to study the memory of aging monkeys. R.T. Bartus et al., Journal of Gerontology (1978)


Anchored in the basal forebrain of a mouse, a single cholinergic neuron sends bushy projections through the cortex, reaching regions key to emotion, attention, and memory. Cells like this one are among the earliest to die in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Scientists think their outsize dimensions and extreme energy needs leave them—and the brain areas they serve—susceptible to age-related damage.


From airports to droneports in your neighborhood

Some environment related concerns about drones and how it might affect acceptance.

How much noise pollution will drones be producing in urban areas?

How often will drones be buzzing by in your neighborhood or vicinity?

Drone Delivery Noise Shows Limits of Tech Acceptance - IEEE Spectrum "Flying delivery robots prompt concern about noise, safety, and more"




How far would a Big Three or G3 (CN, RU, US) go?

What would an alliance of China, Russia, and the US do or mean for the rest of the world?

The days of leadership of Putin the Terrible and Xi Jinping are counted. Who comes next?

Maybe the future prospects for the Big Three are better.

US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opens 800 MHz spectrum for drone operations

Good news!

"The FCC has opened 50 MHz of low-band spectrum in the 800 MHz band for drone operations, removing a decades-old restriction intended to prevent interference with terrestrial networks. The move is expected to drive innovation and expand the use of licensed spectrum for drones."

IEEE-USA SmartBrief

Texas Democrats File almost two dozen Bills Proposing Sweeping Gun Restrictions

Is this the best the Dimocratic Party in Texas has to offer after their historic win in the midterm elections?

The sooner the Texans find out who won the midterm elections and what they are up to, the better!

"Summary
  • Texas Democrat lawmakers filed at least 23 firearm-related bills ahead of the 90th Texas legislative session. 
  • The proposals include red-flag orders, background checks, age restrictions, firearm-transfer limits, and increased criminal penalties. 
  • The Texas Legislature convenes Jan. 12, 2027, with Republicans holding a slim Senate majority. 
..."

Texas Gun Control Bills: What to Know

Thursday, November 12, 2026

Watters: Jensen Huang turning into the country’s biggest political scandal

Very recommendable! Lot's of good information to the very end!

He also hints that this scandal and its timing was a Dimocratic Party sabotage act!

(259) Watters: This is turning into the country’s biggest political scandal - YouTube


Pete Hegseth Commends Army Sentinel Who Scolded Him At Tomb of unknown soldier at the Arlington Cemetery

Well done by both of them! The American spirit/exceptionalism!

(254) Pete Hegseth Commends Army Sentinel Who Scolded Him At Tomb - YouTube


President Trump warns Mexico: Stop migrant caravan or face double tariffs

Good news! Bravo President Trump! 

The senile, demented and pathological liar 46th President totally failed with respect to these mass illegal immigrants crossing the border.

This time it appears to be a rather small caravan with an estimated 1,000 or more individuals.

Yes, Mexico is certainly guilty of allowing these caravans to cross its country. I am not aware that Mexico has done anything to prevent these caravans in the past.

(254) Trump warns Mexico: Stop migrant caravan or face double tariffs - YouTube


Denmark's Muslims Targeted? Controversial Housing Law Sparks Major Racism Row

Controversial! Denmark apparently tries to prevent ghettos and similar parallel societies. The Danish society generally has been very homogeneous.

(254) Denmark's Muslims Targeted? Controversial Housing Law Sparks Major Racism Row | Firstpost America - YouTube


Russia ditches China's Yuan as US Sanctions Bite | Why the Dollar Still Dominates Global Trade

It is not easy to dump the US dollar, not even for Putin the Terrible!

(251) Russia Rethinks China's Yuan as US Sanctions Bite | Why the Dollar Still Dominates Global Trade - YouTube


DR Congo Sentences 66 Soldiers to Death For 'Cowardice' with Palki Sharma

Bad news!

(250) DR Congo Sentences 66 Soldiers to Death For 'Cowardice' | The Palki Sharma Show | IGR - YouTube


Annoyances

I am seeing this message now almost every day at least once!

Well, I did not melt thousands of commercial freezers in France!

P.S. aei.org (American Enterprise Institute) is what leftists probably consider a right wing entity.



White House counsel Warns Democratic Party Representatives not to abuse subpoena powers

Good news! Good move! Being proactive is often commendable! Put the Dimocrats on notice!

"White House counsel Will Scharf warned incoming House Oversight Chair Robert Garcia in a letter reported Wednesday that Democrat investigations of the Trump administration “may cross the line into blatant criminality.”

Scharf wrote that subpoenas “designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient” could be criminal, pointing to Democrat threats to issue them indiscriminately once the party takes control of both chambers in January. ..."

Thursday, November 12, 2026 - Join The Flyover

Tiny Fingerprints Reveal Children Helped Make Ancient Clay Art in Israel about 15,000 years ago

Amazing stuff!

"Fingerprints pressed into clay 15,000 years ago show that adults and children in what is now Israel made art side by side, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem reports. The study... describes the earliest known tradition of making clay figurines in the Middle East.

The researchers examined 154 clay artifacts... The objects came from three sites in modern-day Israel and date back between about 15,000 and 11,500 years ago ... Some depict birds, mammals and humans. ... The makers belonged to the Natufian culture, a group of hunter-gatherers who formed some of the first permanent settlements in the Levant ...

Archaeologists had believed clay figurines became common in the region only with the agricultural revolution, beginning around 11,500 years ago, according to the study. Earlier Natufian figurines were mostly bone or stone. The new finds push the clay tradition back well before farming villages and the invention of pottery ..."

From the abstract:
"The emergence of clay technologies and their use in symbolic practices marks a momentous techno-symbolic innovation for human societies.
While in North Africa, Europe and East Asia, this innovation was sporadically attested during the Upper Palaeolithic, in Southwest Asia, it has been commonly believed to emerge in full much later, as one of the innovations associated with Neolithic agricultural societies.
Here, shifting back the ‘revolution of symbols’, we report evidence of the earliest clay figurative tradition in Southwest Asia with the discovery of 154 figurative artefacts from three Natufian (15,000–11,650 years cal. BP) sites in the Southern Levant (Israel).
Through a combined multidisciplinary approach, we demonstrate that children and adults manufactured these objects to produce new symbols with new figurative techniques and practices used as their primary media of figurative expression.
Our study provides important original insights regarding the demographics of craft production and the development of symbolic practices at the beginning of sedentism that influenced the Neolithic transition in Southwest Asia."

Tiny Fingerprints Reveal Children Helped Make Ancient Clay Art in Israel "A study of 154 clay artifacts from Natufian sites finds adults and children shaped and colored figurines together."

Stone Age children left fingerprints on ancient art projects "Clay figurines hint at hands-on learning in the Levant"




Fig 1. Sample of Natufian zoomorphic, anthropomorphic and phallic bone, stone and clay figurations from the Southern Levant


Fig 9. Sample of the fingerprints identified on the clay figurines, cylinders and shapings.


The torso of this 14,500-year-old human figurine preserves the fingerprints of an adult (left) and child (right). Researchers think the adult taught the child how to shape the clay.


Nvidia names CFO Colette Kress (age 59) as interim CEO

Did she have a romantic affair with Jensen Huang? Maybe not, she is too old!

Did she have any extramarital affairs of her own?

She has served as the executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) of Nvidia since 2013. (Source)

Nvidia's Jensen Huang resigns, chipmaker names CFO Colette Kress as interim CEO | TechCrunch


Colette Kress (Source)


NATO taps Ukrainian forces as red-team. Really!

Headline of the day! There is some irony in this!

I guess, NATO could not find any Russian forces! 😊

"As NATO races to update its battlefield tactics, a senior official said the use of Ukrainian forces as a “red team” in exercises is meant to “trigger an adaptation cycle” within the alliance. ..."

NATO taps Ukraine as red-team in drills to 'trigger an adaptation cycle' - Breaking Defense ""What we’ve done so far, we took some experience from Ukraine, for example, where we hid some Ukrainian forces and Ukrainian-made USVs, and made them the red team against the blue force of NATO,” Adm. Pierre Vander told Breaking Defense."

Flag of NATO (Source)


Unruhen in Frankfurt: 110 Strafanzeigen, Täter aus elf Nationen

Das war doch nur eine einmalige Entgleisung oder?

Keine Pauschalierungen bitte, beschwichtigen ist angesagt! 😊

Deutschland ist ein Schmelztiegel geworden auch was gewalttätige Demonstrationen angeht!

Ein ein Pole, ein Rumäne und ein Ukrainer war auch dabei!

"... Dass 53 Täter bereits festgenommen worden sind, das wird ebenso bestätigt. Insgesamt setzte es für die Plünderer und Gewalttäter 110 Strafanzeigen. ...

Unter den 53 verhafteten Haupttätern sind nur 22 Personen mit deutscher Staatsbürgerschaft. ...

Unter den Festgenommenen waren auch 16 ausländische Staatsangehörige: Vier Afghanen, zwei Syrer, zwei Tunesier, zwei Türken, ein Bosnier, ein Migrant aus Eritrea, ein Iraker, ein Pole, ein Rumäne und ein Ukrainer. ..."

Unruhen in Frankfurt: 110 Strafanzeigen, Täter aus elf Nationen "Fakten statt Mutmaßungen: Auf Anfrage von Tichys Einblick bestätigt das hessische Innenministerium, dass die Täter bei den Unruhen und Plünderungen in Frankfurt Linksradikale oder Migranten waren. Die Zahl der Anzeigen summierte sich auf 110."

The History and Future of Neuroeconomics. Is there a future? Really!

Economics has been for a long time an already wobbly social science by itself full of peculiarities and anecdotes! I am an economist myself.

Where does neuroeconomics fit in with micro- and macroeconomics?

From the definition cited below I can not really tell the difference between economics and neuroeconomics.

I have a hunch that this pseudoscience called neuroeconomics will fade away and disappear within the next 10-20 years or so.

"In early October, neuroeconomics scholars descended on Pasadena to attend the Society for Neuroeconomics' annual conference and learn about the latest research in the field. ...
Caltech faculty have been at the forefront of the development and growth of neuroeconomics since its formal inception in the early 2000s. ...

So, what exactly is neuroeconomics? The Society for Neuroeconomics website describes as a field that "represents the confluence of economics, psychology, and neuroscience in the study of human decision making." ... the aim of the field is much more profound.

"Neuroeconomics is about understanding human nature: Who is it that we are? Why do we do what we do?" ...

The idea of combining neuroscience and economics research really started to gain some traction and coalesce into a field when the Society for Neuroeconomics was formally established in 2005. How did the organization bring these disciplines together? ..."

The History and Future of Neuroeconomics - www.caltech.edu

Fingernail-sized chip untangles mixed light

Good news! This could be huge!

"In brief
  • Most everyday light sources, such as light bulbs, produce incoherent light. Unlike laser light, their light waves do not maintain a fixed relationship with one another. When different light contributions overlap, separating them into their underlying components has long been a challenge.
  • Combining advanced light-based chips and a sorting algorithm, the researchers created a device that produced separated, pure incoherent beams from a mix of incoherent or partially coherent light sources. They were able to do this with two and three input lights.
  • By allowing researchers to distinguish between different light sources, this advance could help extract more information from light to improve many technologies, such as cameras, microscopes, and telescopes.
... designed a chip that can take a muddled mixture of light from multiple lasers and output clean beams of light.

It’s the first time researchers have demonstrated a device that can take in mixed, or partially coherent, light and sort its photons into a clear set of separate beams. ..."

From the abstract:
"While partial coherence often degrades interference and information transfer, its correlations can be engineered to enhance imaging and optical information processing.
However, approaches based on tomography and numerical reconstruction do not physically separate unknown fields into their coherence modes—that is, their orthogonal and mutually incoherent components.
Here we demonstrate the separation of partially coherent light into coherence modes.
We use variational processing in layered self-configuring interferometers on a silicon photonic circuit.
This process finds the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the coherency matrix, characterizing the state while leaving it intact and separated after optimization.
We show that spatially orthogonal, mutually incoherent beams can be routed to separate outputs even when their intensity profiles overlap.
Our experiment separates the two strongest coherence modes from a nine-input sampling of overlapping fields from two independent lasers; operation beyond two modes is verified in a rank-3 experiment.
The number of physical components scales linearly with the rank r of the coherency matrix, through r in situ gradient-based optimizations enabled by electronic drive-frequency multiplexing of the phase shifters.
We benchmark performance against an on-chip mixture-based tomographic method.
These results establish a scalable framework for programmable coherence analysis and control."

Fingernail-sized chip untangles mixed light | Stanford Report "The chip could advance microscopy, astronomy, and other fields by revealing details that conventional imaging misses."



Fig. 1: An integrated photonic circuit to process spatial partial coherence.


Tiny volcanic crystals could predict future volcanic eruptions

Amazing stuff!

"... Rather than study common precursors such as earthquakes or gas, a team decided to take a peek inside of Earth at tiny crystals that grow within magma.

Magma contains many kinds of crystal minerals depending on how deep it is stored beneath a volcano. Researchers turned to a mineral called plagioclase—one of the most common in the chain of volcanoes known as the Pacific Ring of Fire—that has different appearances and compositions depending on the conditions of the surrounding magma. Plagioclase can therefore provide clues as to what magma was doing before an eruption.

Researchers collected volcanic rocks from the Andean Mountains, one of the most active regions in the Ring of Fire, then analyzed the structures and compositions of the rocks’ plagioclase.
Across seven volcanoes, the team found that the tiniest crystals—only the width of a human hair—form just before a volcano erupts, when hot magma fills in where cold magma used to sit and destabilizes the system. Similar tiny crystals appeared in existing datasets of eruptions. ..."

"... researchers have shown tiny crystals are a window to activity inside volcanoes and could provide clues to when they might erupt. ...

examined a common white crystal called ‘plagioclase’, found in rocks.

The smallest crystals from Andean volcanoes of different ages, eruptive styles and activity levels had the same chemical signature.

“Plagioclase grows in magma only a few kilometres below the surface, reacting to changes in temperature, water content and magma composition,” ...

"Analysing the chemistry of individual crystals rather than whole rocks allows us to reconstruct different stages of a volcano's history and identify the processes that occurred immediately before eruption.

“The smallest, newest crystals – just the width of a human hair – were formed during the final stages of an eruption. ..."

From the abstract (unfortunately, a very technical):
"Arc andesites are hybrids generated by mixing of mafic and silicic magmas. The silicic endmember can contribute to crustal growth or trigger explosive eruptions, yet remains difficult to constrain due to limited representation in the erupted record.
Here, we show that textural, elemental and isotopic records preserved in plagioclase can distinguish between trapped and erupted crystal mush, thus constraining conditions of magma storage vs. eruption in arc systems.
We define the plagioclase eruptibility field, a narrow and recurrent anorthite range (An~61) that represents erupted melt across Central Andes volcanoes upon mafic recharge.
The recycled plagioclase cargo is dominantly An~43, recording prolonged crystallisation and assimilation within silicic mushes. This pattern repeats in continental and composite arcs globally, indicating strong eruptive filtering of arc magmas and widespread occurrence of dormant felsic and mafic mushes that, in most cases, contribute to crustal growth; yet exceptionally, felsic mushes can rapidly remobilise to generate super-eruptions."

ScienceAdviser





Fig. 1: Back-scattered electron (BSE) and transmitted-light images (PPL, plane-polarised light; XPL, cross-polarised light) illustrating the plagioclase textural classification.


Mauersteine aus Stroh soll drei Geschosse tragen, jetzt steht der erste Pavillon

Dem deutschen Ingenieure ist nichts zu schwör! Was bedeutet das Wort strohdumm!

Seltsames oder Gewohntes aus der Bananenrepublik D!

Ein Mauerstein aus Stroh soll drei Geschosse tragen, jetzt steht der erste Pavillon "In Stuttgart wurde Richtfest für einen Pavillon aus fast 400 Strohsteinen gefeiert. Die sogenannten StrawBricks bestehen aus Stroh und Lignin und sollen nicht nur dämmen, sondern auch die Lasten des Gebäudes aufnehmen."


Der StrawBrick-Pavillon in Stuttgart zeigt, wie sich Stroh als nachhaltiger Baustoff für tragende Gebäude nutzen lässt.


Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia chief

A married man and CEO with too many romantic affairs with mature women and a female employee!

Yesterday, it was claimed that he had at least a second affair. I blogged here about it.

Too bad, now we will not learn about other romantic affairs anymore, I am afraid.

Will his wife now get a divorce?

Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia chief - Nikkei Asia


Jensen Huang


From Pixels to Actions--Towards Native Vision-Language-Action Policies

This could be an interesting new research paper by Ziwei Liu and his team!

From the abstract:
"Vision-language-action models are typically built on a simple premise: perception is first compressed by visual encoders, and action reasoning begins only afterwards.
Yet manipulation often hinges on precisely the visual signals most vulnerable to this abstraction, e.g., local geometry, boundaries, depth, and subtle state changes. This raises a fundamental question: should action policies inherit a fixed visual endpoint, or directly access evolving visual computation?
We introduce NEO-VLA, a structurally encoder-free vision-language-action framework.
Images are tokenized by lightweight patch convolutional layers and evolve jointly with language throughout the backbone, allowing a flow-matching action expert to draw from instruction-conditioned visual representations at different depths.
This simple change reveals a consistent pattern. Native architectures outperform encoder-based counterparts under controlled comparisons; full fine-tuning reduces but does not erase the gap, and additional scale alone cannot recover it.
More strikingly, layer-wise probing shows that the action-critical signals often peak well before the final visual representation.
Across diverse manipulation settings and distribution shifts, NEO-VLA consequently achieves stronger and more robust control.
Together, these results suggest that embodied control benefits from access to visual representations across the computational hierarchy, rather than a fixed encoder output."

[2611.06918] From Pixels to Actions--Towards Native Vision-Language-Action Policies




English for trippers: Of Fractions and factions

Nothing but actions!

VFlash: Fast, Accurate Visual Planning via Flash Primitive Decoding

This could be an interesting new research paper by Alan Yuille and Jan Kautz and their team! By the way, these researchers are from Nvidia.

Jan Kautz is the Vice President of Research, NVIDIA Research. Any Chinese spies involved? Just kidding!

From the abstract:
"Models for physical AI tasks, such as robotics and autonomous driving, need not reason solely in language. They can use visual plans--points, bounding boxes, and trajectories--to represent spatial goals and anticipate motion.
However, autoregressive vision-language models generate these plans one coordinate token at a time, making richer predictions increasingly costly.
We introduce VFlash, a method for fast, accurate visual planning through Flash Primitive Decoding.
VFlash exploits the known structure of visual primitives to predict their coordinates jointly, using a lightweight drafter that generates an entire primitive in one forward pass. The layout adapts to the primitive's type, dimensionality, and length, supporting compact boxes and long, variable-length trajectories. Crucially, spatial accuracy need not require reproducing an autoregressive model's exact token sequence.
VFlash therefore trains on annotated primitives and directly accepts structurally valid predictions without target-token agreement. Across the evaluated 2D and 3D robot trajectory tasks, VFlash consistently reduces prediction errors relative to autoregressive decoding.
Preliminary single-rollout measurements indicate approximately 25x faster generation for 3D point motion forecasting.
A world action model conditioned on VFlash plans achieves 70.2% average success across four MolmoSpaces task suites, compared with 62.6% for the baseline."

[2611.08449] VFlash: Fast, Accurate Visual Planning via Flash Primitive Decoding (preprint, open access)




Wednesday, November 11, 2026

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is reported to have had a second extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell,

What a gigolo! He prefers mature women! She is married too!

Ms. Powell is Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare and a direct subordinate.

There got to be at least a third woman! 😊

The famous expression "let the chips fall where they may" gets a whole new meaning! 😊

Kimberly Powell (age 48)



A long list of President Trump administration officials living on military bases due to to security concerns, threats, or harassment

This seems to be extremely unusual! This is not acceptable!

According to Google:
"Several senior Trump administration officials reside or have resided on U.S. military bases in the Washington, D.C., area due to security concerns, threats, or harassment:

Todd Blanche – Attorney General, living on a U.S. military base since early 2026.

Scott Bessent – Treasury Secretary, relocated to a military base following security threats from Iran.

Marco Rubio – Secretary of State, living on Generals Row at Fort McNair.

Pete Hegseth – Secretary of Defense (War Secretary), living on Generals Row at Fort McNair.

Stephen Miller – White House Chief of Staff (and former Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy), moved into military housing after facing protests and harassment at his Virginia home.

Kristi Noem – Former Secretary of Homeland Security, lived in government-owned housing at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling.

Pam Bondi – Former Attorney General, previously resided on a military installation.

Dan Driscoll – Secretary of the Army, shared military housing at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. "