This nation has lost it's way ...

An information packet and an American flag are placed on a chair at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Miami Field Office on Aug. 17, 2018, in Miami. Wilfredo Lee/AP

Vicious says it all. Nosferatu, aka Stephen Miller, does a number on folks wanting to get a green card
because they must now leave and apply in their home country.

Just another insult from the administration from hell. Let's puts the screws on people with legal status, already in this country, and force them to go thru a senseless drill that might preclude them from ever coming back given just how craven this administration truly is. This act makes me ashamed to be a citizen of a country I love because of the bastards residing in the White House.

WASHINGTON — Foreigners in the U.S. who want a green card will need to leave and apply in their home country, the Trump administration announced Friday, in a surprise change to a longstanding policy that sowed confusion and concern among aid groups, immigration lawyers and immigrants.

Marena Guzman, a 2022 Ph.D. graduate in molecular biosciences, recently moved back in with her parents to restart her DACA out of concern it could lapse.

For over half a century, foreign nationals with legal status have been able to apply for and complete the entire process for permanent residence in the United States — including individuals married to U.S. citizens, holders of work and student visas, and refugees and political asylum seekers, among others.

The announcement from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said foreigners who are in the U.S. temporarily and who want to apply to become lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, have to return home and apply there, except in "extraordinary circumstances." USCIS officers would decide whether applicants meet those.

It gets "better".

It is the latest step by the Trump administration making legal immigration more difficult for foreigners already in the U.S. and for those hoping to come here.

Hundreds of thousands apply for green cards from the U.S. each year

"The goal of this policy is very explicit. Senior officials in this administration have said over and over that they want fewer people to get permanent residency because permanent residency is a path to citizenship and they want to block that path for as many people as possible," said Doug Rand, a former senior advisor at USCIS during the Biden administration, who added that about 600,000 people already in the U.S. apply each year for a green card.

USCIS did not say when the change would come into effect, whether individuals would be required to remain in another country throughout the entire process, or whether the policy impacts foreigners whose green card applications are already underway.

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"[12]

"The New Colossus" Emma Lazarus (1849–1887).

This nation has lost it's way ...

The Timber Doodle @ work. :)

The groove never disappoints. :)

Going sideways ...

Going sideways ...

The Democratic National Committee on Thursday released a nearly 200-page draft of an internal autopsy of what went wrong in the 2024 campaign, ending months of speculation that had emerged as an embarrassing public spectacle for the party as it seeks to regain control of Congress.

The report places blame for Kamala Harris’s defeat partly on former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s political operation, arguing that it failed to position her for success in the race after he dropped out. It also critiques the Harris campaign for failing to distance itself from Mr. Biden, and for failing to mount an effective strategy to make a dent in Donald Trump’s rising approval ratings.

Biden lied about being a one termer, period. Had he adhered to his promise, it would have been an open convention and whoever got the nod would have been POTUS. It's that simple. 

A second life :)

Photograph: Feifei Cui-Paoluzzo/Getty Images

A second life for dried up gas & oil wells looms. If the science works out, it's logical and cool to the max. :)

As states seek out much-needed supplies of clean, reliable energy, some are looking to an unconventional source: abandoned oil and gas wells harnessed for geothermal heat.

Millions of inactive wells are littered across the United States, the relics of earlier eras of fossil fuel production. A large number of the sites have no official owner, and many are still polluting groundwater and leaking heat-trapping methane. The country has barely scratched the surface in dealing with this problem.

Policymakers in both Republican- and Democratic-led states are exploring whether these sites could instead be converted into new wells for producing geothermal energy. The holes are already drilled in the ground, after all. And regions with widespread oil and gas development have rich subsurface data that geothermal firms need in order to determine where and how to build their carbon-free systems.

The concept is relatively new and largely untested, though scientists and startups are working to change that. States are also laying the groundwork for action by lifting regulatory hurdles and launching in-depth studies.

Something positive for a change. I needed that. :)

Law of the jungle???

China’s President Xi Jinping, left, and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, right, are meeting in a push to secure energy and business deals © Maxim Shemetov/POOL/EPA/Shutterstock

The CF in the WH says it all. War on a whim, the US owned by Israel, science and tech compromised, voting rights gutted, healthcare a mess and corruption to the max applies while Xi looks at a once great nation and laughs.
WWIII could happen knowing what America has as a president.
Something wicked this way comes.

Xi Jinping has told Vladimir Putin the world is in danger of regressing to “the law of the jungle” as he sought to portray China as a force of global stability just days after hosting Donald Trump in Beijing.

The summit between the Russian and Chinese leaders on Wednesday included talks aimed at reaffirming Sino-Russian ties as global energy markets and supply chains have been disrupted by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Speaking to reporters after their meeting, Xi said the two sides should promote co-operation in energy and technology, including in artificial intelligence, and work together to “improve global governance”.

“Unilateralism and hegemonism are deeply harmful, and the world faces the danger of regressing back to the law of the jungle,” Xi said in a veiled criticism of the US.

The title is taken from "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes",
a line said by the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Dirty Laundry

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios.
Photos: Jim Lo Scalzo/Bloomberg and Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Dirty laundry and an expose of two entities bent on accruing ever more power and money with no regard for the public good applies. Tawdry says it all but is anyone surprised? Yours truly certainly isn't.

The biggest tech trial of the AI era — which ended anticlimactically Monday on procedural grounds — revealed a sector consumed by the same power struggles and profit motives its leaders once warned would corrupt artificial intelligence.

Why it matters: The trial cemented a growing public fear about AI: that the people racing to control the world's most powerful technology are driven less by humanity-saving ideals than by money, power and personal rivalries.

The big picture: OpenAI's founders originally positioned themselves as an alternative to Google DeepMind, fearing a single tech giant would monopolize transformative AI systems.

But testimony and internal documents showed the organization's leaders quickly became consumed by power struggles.

OpenAI executives worried in 2017 that Elon Musk "could become a dictator" and sent him an email with the subject line "honest thoughts." Musk responded saying "I've had enough" and later suggested the company be folded into Tesla.

Among the court documents were texts Sam Altman sent during his brief 2023 ouster, including him pleading repeatedly to attend board meetings and being rejected. The trial also confirmed reports that OpenAI met with Anthropic to discuss a potential merger at that time.

What they're saying: "Does anybody really believe that love of humanity is driving any of this? It's power," Anthony Aguirre, CEO of the Future of Life Institute, which focuses on AI governance, told Axios.

In essence, this was both a nothing burger and an airing out of dirty laundry at the public's expense.

10% vs 90% :)

A photo showing raised human hands.

Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels

Handedness, yours truly is a lefty, 90% of the human race are righties but it seems it's baked in:)

About nine out of every ten humans on Earth are righties. This strange imbalance stretches across cultures, continents, and history itself. No other primate species comes remotely close to showing such a strong population-wide preference. 

Now, a new study from researchers at the University of Oxford suggests the answer may lie in two evolutionary changes that transformed our species more than any others: walking upright and growing unusually large brains. 

The researchers propose a two-stage explanation for human handedness. First came bipedalism. As early human ancestors began walking upright, their hands were freed from locomotion. 

This likely created new evolutionary pressure for specialized hand use during tasks such as carrying objects, manipulating tools, or gesturing. The study found that locomotion strongly influences handedness patterns across primates. 

The second phase came later with brain expansion

Using evolutionary models, the researchers estimated handedness in extinct human relatives. Early hominins such as Ardipithecus and Australopithecus likely had weak right-hand preferences similar to modern apes. 

However, the bias strengthened in species such as Homo erectus and Neanderthals before reaching its modern extreme in Homo sapiens. “It is with the emergence of the genus Homo, and particularly the onset of significant encephalization, that we observe a marked increase in MHI values,” the study authors added.

The significance of these findings

The study suggests human right-handedness may be deeply rooted in the same evolutionary changes that transformed how our ancestors moved and interacted with the world. 

However, some important questions remain unanswered. For instance, scientists still do not know why left-handedness survived throughout human evolution, or how much human culture helped strengthen right-hand dominance over time.

The study is published in the journal PLOS Biology.

But thereare other variables. Chirality and the handedness of the weak nuclear force
as it only works left handed. So does life. 

Two enantiomers of a generic amino acid that is chiral

Scaling it up ...

The Primitive Node ...

The initial stages of human embryonic development (embryogenesis)

How the Node Breaks Symmetry

The connection between the node and "left-handedness" relates to embryonic left-right asymmetry (how our internal organs are arranged) rather than hand preference.

• Nodal Flow: The ventral surface of the node contains hundreds of microscopic, rotating hairs called cilia. These cilia tilt and spin in a specific clockwise rotation, creating a leftward flow of extracellular fluid. This fluid movement pushes signaling molecules to the left side of the embryo.
• Gene Activation: This leftward flow triggers the localized expression of specific genes—most notably the Nodal gene and the Pitx2 transcription factor—strictly on the left side.
• Biological Outcomes: This chain reaction dictates that the heart, liver, and other asymmetrical organs develop in their proper anatomical positions.

In essence ...

Embryonic asymmetry: The left side gets all the best genes

This is why lefties like yours truly are still around. :)

Not so simple ...

Specimen "Sue", Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago (with some bones reconstructed)

T Rex was an 8 ton version of an Ostrich and moved like one. Agile, precise and not lumbering
as seen in movies like Jurassic park. As proof ...

A new study provides new information about Tyrannosaurus rex locomotion and gait. The researchers postulate that T. rex struck the ground with its toes first.  The Everything Dinosaur Evolution Tyrannosaurus rex display base features three-toed theropod prints that have been modelled based on real tyrannosaur tracks.
Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Not only that but Theropods and non-avian dinosaurs communicated like birds because after all,
the environment in which they lived was complex and dangerous to the nth degree and sophisticated communication among species was an absolute requirement in order to survive.

Forget the Roars: This Exceptional Fossil Reveals Dinosaurs
Communicated More Like Birds Than Movie Monsters

Scientists have recently discovered evidence suggesting that some dinosaurs
communicated in the same way as modern birds.

The skull of Pulaosaurus qinglongin left lateral view. Image credit: Hailong Zhang/PeerJ, 2025

Picture a dinosaur opening its mouth. What sound comes out? For decades, film and television answered with a guttural roar, a noise borrowed from lions and scaled up for monsters. A fossil pulled from rust-colored sandstone in northern China tells a quieter story, one written in throat bones smaller than a finger joint.

The animal was no giant. Pulaosaurus qinglong stretched about 72 centimeters from snout to tail, a two-legged herbivore that scurried through Jurassic forests 163 million years ago. But inside its throat sat something paleontologists had seen only once before in a non-avian dinosaur: an ossified larynx, the bony framework of a voice box, preserved clearly enough to reveal how the creature made sound.

Researchers named the species after Qinglong County and after Pulao, a dragon from Chinese mythology known for its thunderous voice. The choice fits with quiet irony. A creature named for deafening sound probably made none. Instead, it called through the forest in frequencies that might have carried between individuals without broadcasting danger to every predator within earshot.

Seems Jurassic Park needs to revisit how T Rex and company communicated without question. :)

Montage of two species within the bird genus Struthio (the ostrich). Featuring from left to right: common ostrich and somali ostrich. These files are already on Commons with their respective licenses. This montage was made for the article Ostrich on Wikipedia. File:Avestruz (Struthio camelus), Tierpark Hellabrunn, Múnich, Alemania, 2012-06-17, DD 02.JPG File:Struthio molybdophanes, male, Samburu National Reserve, Kenya.jpg

Next time, when you think about T Rex, think ostrich. :)

23 years ... & counting :)

 

https://beyondrealtime.blogspot.com/2003/

Hard to believe BRT's been around that long. I thought 2007 was the start date as the blog remained dormant for 4 years before a good friend of mine said, You seem to know a lot. Prove it.
Hopefully I am, 23 years later. :)

Channeling Frank :)

05-15-2026

Seems black hole mergers and violin strings have a lot in common because both produce waves and harmonic overtones, thus proving the Principle of least Action applies. Additionally, scale invariance also applies as it matters not the size of the event in question, it's the process in question and waves are analog. :)

The Wiener process is scale-invariant

Black holes ring like bells - and scientists just mapped the vibrations

After two black holes collide, the resulting object vibrates as it settles down. Those vibrations carry information about nearly everything the new black hole is.

It gets better ...

Catching hidden harmonics

A team at the University of Cambridge has built a tool that draws those quieter notes out cleanly. Richard Dyer, an astronomer at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, led the work with co-author Dr. Christopher Moore.

The vibrations they wanted to map are called quasinormal modes. Theory holds that each one is set by the black hole’s mass and spin, making those frequencies a fingerprint.

Read more than one mode cleanly, and you can check whether those frequencies relate to each other the way Einstein’s equations actually predict.

Click here for the paper. 

Frank Zappa would agree. :)