Ghost in the machine

The first use of a hydrogen bubble chamber to detect neutrinos, on November 13, 1970. A neutrino hit a proton in a hydrogen atom. The collision occurred at the point where three tracks emanate on the right of the photograph.

Neutrino's are everywhere, passing through us by the trillions every second. They are truly ghosts in the machine. They are the only particle connecting to the weak force and gravity, hence their unique ability of being in the world but not of it.

A neutrino (/njuːˈtriːnoʊ/ new-TREE-noh; denoted by the Greek letter ν) is an elementary particle that interacts via the weak interaction and gravity.[2][3] The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small (-ino) that it was long thought to be zero. The rest mass of the neutrino is much smaller than that of the other known elementary particles (excluding massless particles).[4] The weak force has a very short range, the gravitational interaction is extremely weak due to the very small mass of the neutrino, and neutrinos do not participate in the electromagnetic interaction or the strong interaction.[5] Consequently, neutrinos typically pass through normal matter unimpeded and with no detectable effect.

As per Gemini, 

They are the only particles that exclusively feel the macro fabric of spacetime (Gravity)
and the discrete quantum decay of the atomic world (the weak force).

Standard Model of Particle Physics. The diagram shows the elementary particles of the Standard Model (the Higgs boson, the three generations of quarks and leptons, and the gauge bosons), including their names, masses, spins, charges, chiralities, and interactions with the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces. It also depicts the crucial role of the Higgs boson in electroweak symmetry breaking, and shows how the properties of the various particles differ in the (high-energy) symmetric phase (top) and the (low-energy) broken-symmetry phase (bottom).

Perhaps a way to achieve unification of the four forces may be possible by looking closely at the relationship of the neutrino to gravity and the weak force as the Standard Model doesn't include the one entity keeping all of reality together 24/7. It's worth a shot, right? :)

Thru the back door ...

 Donald Trump welcomes Benjamin Netanyahu to his Mar-a-Lago club on Dec. 29, 2025,
in Palm Beach, Fla. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Thru the back door applies as this pix says it all. Like a tick latching onto a host to draw blood, Israel, via AIPAC, controls congress via monies, hence, the endless MOUs favoring Israel while compromising the US, continues unabated. Now, the latest ploy is to join the military of the two nations at the hip if the latest proposed Israeli/US MOU, Memorandum of Understanding become law. Dangerville comes to mind here as this is not only an entangled alliance, but now, is forced teaming to the nth degree, something Eisenhower, Kennedy or the the troika of Washington, Jefferson or Madison would never have condoned under any circumstances.

The Trump Administration and Israeli government are reportedly negotiating a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on U.S. foreign assistance to Israel, which, if completed, would make it the fourth such bilateral understanding reached between the two countries. MOUs are not legally binding agreements like treaties and do not require Senate ratification; ultimately, lawmakers' appropriations power subjects foreign assistance levels delineated in MOUs to congressional approval. Past MOUs have significantly influenced U.S. aid to Israel; historically, Congress has appropriated foreign aid to Israel largely according to the terms of the MOU in place at the time (with the exception of supplemental appropriations acts). Congress last authorized military aid to Israel per the terms of the current MOU in P.L. 116-283, the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for FY2021. With potentially consequential elections scheduled this fall in Israel and Israel seeking munitions replenishment in light of the war in Iran and other conflicts, both sides may seek to complete a new MOU in the months ahead.

The Camel's Nose

According to this classic tale, one cold night, a camel asks his master if he can put his head in the tent for warmth. “By all means and welcome,” said the man; and the camel stretches his head into the tent. Soon after, the camel inquires if he may also bring his neck and front legs inside. Again, the master agrees.

Finally, the camel asks, “May I not stand wholly within?” With pity, the master beckons him into the warm tent. But when the camel comes forward it becomes clear that the tent is too small for them both. “I think,” the camel said, “that there is not room for both of us here. It will be best for you to stand outside, as you are the smaller; there will then be room enough for me.” And with that, the man is forced outside of his tent.

The danger.

 

A controversial insertion in the National Defense Authorization Act currently winding its way through the House would permanently intertwine U.S. and Israeli defense technology, including artificial intelligence and autonomous systems.

Lawmakers and military experts told The Intercept that Section 224, named “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” is highly irregular — and closely resembles a bipartisan bill backed by the pro-Israel lobby that died in Congress earlier this year.

“I can’t think of another example of Congress formalizing integration of critical national security technologies with a foreign power,” said retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Astore.

Unlike traditional foreign military aid programs, Section 224 would establish a framework for integrating Israeli-developed technologies directly into U.S. research, procurement, manufacturing, and acquisition processes — which military experts warned would be complicated, if not impossible, to unwind. It would apply across areas including AI, autonomous systems, cyberwarfare, biotechnology, missile defense, and defense industrial production.

A handful of legislators from both parties have rebuked Section 224. Among them is Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican known for opposing all foreign military aid — a stance that drew the ire of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and drove millions in spending against him in the recent primary he lost to a Trump-backed challenger.

Any questions?

The long view

 

1:00 AM

The long view, the attempt to look at the vastness of reality from a single point of view seems to be a fool's errand but not if you look at how creative people look at the world as creativity, at high level, is scale invariant. In this post, no color links, just musings as the number of giants showing why scale invariance holds true just makes a lot of sense.

The question is key. One must question before trying to answer and ... the question is always visual.

But a tiny, tiny snippet follows :)

What's it's like to ride alongside a beam of light? - Einstein. 

Songs in the key of life, visual to the max, written and performed by a blind man touching
the world with imagery most profound and beautiful - Stevie Wonder

Everything's information. It from Bit. Maybe Jonathan Wheeler was channeling
Walt Whitman while writing, in scientific terms, Whitman's poem I sing the Body Electric.

Swinging a cane back and forth while taking a walk brings AC to light - Tesla

Take my wife, please. Henny Youngman, the start point for Koestler's The Act of Creation

David coming out the marble by taking away the part that's not David - Michelangelo

The 7 Greek modes, the genesis for Kind of Blue - Miles Davis

Calligraphy to explain, What is jazz? - Bill Evans

Information compressed to the ultimate giving rise to the ultimate complexity - Claude Shannon

Less is more - Dizzy Gillespie and Alan Turing

Call me Ismael - Melville

0 & infinity, complementarity rules - The Tao

Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

And so it goes. -  K. Vonnegut

God must be a boogie man. -  Joni Michell

A Modest Proposal

Microtubule RM/Freepik/NanoBana

They're everywhere. Plants, fungi, insects, animals and ... of course, us. Question, why is everything alive able to cope with reality? From one celled organisms to whales and trees, they all function without a problem Why, Microtubuels. Only now is Penrose and Hammeroff's Orch-Or theory finally being discovered to be true because the tech now has the prerequisite fine granularity to tease out the secrets
of a 25nm entity, something 1/4000th the diameter of a human hair.

Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) is a controversial theory postulating that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons (rather than being a product of neural connections). The mechanism is held to be a quantum process called objective reduction that is orchestrated by cellular structures called microtubules. It is proposed that the theory may answer the hard problem of consciousness and provide a mechanism for free will.[1] The hypothesis was put forward in the 1990s by physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff; it combines molecular biology, neuroscience, pharmacology, philosophy, quantum information theory, and quantum gravity.[2][3]

Electrons have mass, photons do not. Pushing electrons through silicon generates heat, lots of it.
Pushing photons through glass does not. Think fiber optics to see why these facts ring true.

Question, why is silicon still being used to push electrons through a chip, thus generating heat and requiring cooling while pushing photons through glass does not.

Also, moving electrons through a chip is slow, moving photons is fast, very fast.

Adding fuel to the fire. Current data centers are silicon based. When expanded to 200,000 entities to enable Chat to respond to a question like, What is the best way to make an apple pie? while requiring gas turbines or nuclear reactors to power the system while at the same time, needing rivers to keep the center from doing a China Syndrome type event at the same time becomes a rather significant problem to deal with, does it not? And ... we haven't addressed maintenance costs of replacing server units when they die or with the obsolescence factor of the enterprise in question because tech never sleeps. 

Why not do glass and imitate microtubules as a possibility as physics don't lie. Researchers now are seeing microtubules as an integrated analog/digital system as light, in free space, is analog and the shell, as depicted in the screen shot above, is digital as seen by the presence of the 2 differing tublins shown in the pix. Based on external input from reality every life form encounters and has to react to in order to survive, the light and the tube exchange information in concert with how life lives on planet earth so... why not do a test using glass and fabricating artificial microtubules to see if this proposal works because the physics of this construct are well known and building this as a proof of concept is doable because the hardware is there if one has the curiosity and drive to put together something that may work just like the way nature has worked for over 2 billion years.

2nd question, why are quantum computers chilled down to near absolute 0 while paramecium, without a brain but with micrortubuels, are able to navigate the world at a level far beyond that of Willow or Heron with the amount of power needed to power the paramecium being almost too small to measure. What's even better is the fact the design of AI and QC, using glass, light and the artificial microtubule can become an integrated system, able to run
without eating the world. 

A diagram of Paramecium caudatum

Glass waveguide - RM/Freepik/NanoBana

Thinking fiber optic here but in grander fashion. Something worth pursuing is it not?

Remember, the theories behind AI and QCs are correct, it's the plumbing needing to be changed.
Think Edison's DC vs Tesla's AC as example. :)

To be continued.

Perfect!

 

Workers have been trying to remove algae from the bottom of Washington’s reflecting pool
after recent renovations. Photograph: Aaron Schwartz/Reuters

This is the TA in a nutshell. Incompetency, corruption, blame it on outside influences, hire inepts and employ sycophants to keep The Donald happy. Perfect! Question: will the Reflecting Pool be ready for the 250th?

Space Oddity

Cover of the 1969 Dutch and Italian single

Back in 1969 David Bowie crafted a masterpiece about Major Tom leaving a tin can to go to forever, a song haunting and most powerful, something one must hear to see why this rings true. Seems the lyrics are even more powerful as they indirectly connect to It from Bit, the theory written by Jonathan Wheeler stating that reality's a participatory entity and that leaving earth is not a great idea if Frontier's Space Oddity piece pans out. Betting pool, it does.

Quantum scrambling is reversible. Information is not lost. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.25331

Google's willow chip unscrambles data using time reversal https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10191v1

UCI supports unscrambling physically, Willow supports it computationally.

Human space exploration is often portrayed as a triumph of engineering, logistics and life-support technology. Yet the most profound consequences of venturing beyond Earth are not mechanical, they unfold within the mind. As lunar bases, commercial spaceflight and Mars missions transition from speculative to operational realities, a pressing question emerges: how does human consciousness respond when freed from the gravitational anchor that has shaped evolution? Prolonged exposure to non-terrestrial gravity does more than challenge brain physiology, it reshapes perception, disrupts multisensory integration, induces spatial disorientation, and alters fine-grained sensorimotor control (Goswami et al., 2021; Arshad and Ferré, 2023). In the absence of a stable terrestrial gravitational reference, the brain struggles to maintain reliable estimates of posture, movement, and spatial orientation (White et al., 2020). These perturbations can fragment the continuity of conscious experience, giving rise to subtle depersonalization (detachment from one’s body or thoughts), derealization (the world feels unreal or dreamlike), and even profound blurring of self-environment boundaries (Renaud, 2015). While such effects introduce vulnerabilities, they also open pathways to transformative cognitive and affective states. By perturbing the most stable embodied reference - gravity itself - spaceflight offers a rare window into how fundamental expectations shape consciousness.

In this perspective piece, we have reviewed key literature and argued that spaceflight functions both as a perturbation and as a lens, exposing how the brain constructs awareness, maintains continuity of experience and delineates the boundaries between self and world. When Earth-bound constraints are lifted, a rare window opens onto the mechanisms that underpin transformative experience offering insights that are inaccessible under terrestrial gravity conditions.

Space Oddity - David Bowie

It's about time

 

Vice President JD Vance holds a press briefing at the White House, on June 18. Eric Lee/Reuters

As much as I detest this administration, at least the truth about Israel is finally coming to light. Since Lyndon Johnson, the US has allowed Israel to dictate our foreign policy, to use the US as the useful idiot to promote a greater Israel. Lest you think yours truly is antisemitic, nothing could be further from the truth as Judaism is NOT zionism, a secular doctrine that conveniently wrapped Judaism around the political movement to give cover while controlling US interests in the middle east for years. This may be finally changing due to some harsh words coming from a most unlikely source, JD Vance, the used cars salesman who makes yours truly cringe without question.

Zionist leader Theodore Herzl c.1898

An approximation of the "Royal Grant" to Abraham consisting of all the land east of the Brook of Egypt and west of the Euphrates, north of Kadesh and south of Hamath, from a 1919 book by Clarence Larkin.

The United States joining with Israel to launch a war in the Middle East
was always a fraught situation for the longstanding US-Israeli alliance.

But things seemed to come to a head Thursday, when Vice President JD Vance had some blunt and harsh words for Israel — words that sounded a whole lot like a threat.

It was the culmination of days of warning signs from the Trump administration, which clearly fears Israel might scupper a US agreement with Iran that many view as way too favorable to the Iranians. Israel and Hezbollah agreed to renew a ceasefire on Friday, sources told CNN, after fighting between the Israeli military and the Iran-backed militant group again jeopardized US-Iran negotiations.

The break seemed inevitable, for several reasons:

• Israel’s goals for the Iran war were substantially different from the United States’ goals,
  and it was far more invested.
• Israel’s reputation in the US had already substantially declined in recent years.
• Even the still-strongly pro-Israel Republican Party has recently seen many
  prominent influencers strongly criticize Israel and has reckoned with growing 
  antisemitism in its base. 
• While President Donald Trump has aligned strongly with Israel, he’s also trafficked in numerous antisemitic tropes over the years.

And Trump tends to treat allies well only insofar as it benefits him.

Now, the administration is practically yelling:
You guys should take what we’ve given you and be happy, or else.

Vance’s remarks, in which he pointed to Israel’s worldwide unpopularity, were the most striking.

“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” Vance said at a press briefing Thursday. “And he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”

It's abut time.

Not a hit piece ...

 Photo-illustration: Wired Staff; Getty Images

Not a hit piece as Wired has it covered but rather, the article's a testament to to understanding how compromised values can impact a man't persona in ways defying the imagination.

Dialog, the private network cofounded by Peter Thiel, grades its event attendees on a hidden scale, ranking them by wealth and fame, tracking their relationships, and using algorithms to help decide who they should meet, who they should sit with, and who no longer belongs, WIRED has learned.

The records are part of a trove of internal data received by WIRED from a confidential source, containing the personal information of nearly 200 prominent people scheduled to attend the group's annual retreat this summer. The data includes home addresses, private phone numbers and email accounts, dates of birth, photos, and emergency contacts, as well as food allergies and the political leanings volunteered by some members.

Dialog assigns people grades before they join. Of the 192 dossiers examined by WIRED, 130 are tagged as members. The rest are prospects with files bearing markings like “First Time Dialoger” or “Warm.” Everyone—members and prospective invitees alike—is assigned a grade of A, B, or C. The “C” grade appears reserved for the most famous and influential; only one in seven received it. Most people—141 of 192—received a “B.” The final tier, “A,” appears primarily assigned to older, established members whom the graders consider less notable.

In reading this, what ranking is JD Vance's as he's a creation of Thiel. Something to think about don't you think?
Read the entire Wired piece. You will learn a lot. I know I did.

Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary

Excellent film, Rocky rules and the science's excellent but the interesting part is the fact life does not have be carbon based as authors like Arthur C. Clarke and Olaf Stapleton, along with Andy Weir, the writer of  Project Hail Mary, explore this possibility with passion and precision. Add Johnathan Wheeler's It from Bit analysis of existence being an information appliance and transaction mechanism 24/7 and one readily sees the four are onto something very profound in this writer's opinion. For starters. Rocky's something else altogether. :)

As are others.

False-color Cassini radar mosaic of Titan's north polar region;
the blue areas are lakes of liquid hydrocarbons.

"The existence of lakes of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan opens up the possibility for solvents
and energy sources that are alternatives to those in our biosphere and that might support novel life forms altogether different from those on Earth."—NASA Astrobiology Roadmap 2008[1]

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism.
Source: Tom Brenner For The Washington Post via Getty Images; Google

The element silicon has been much discussed as a hypothetical alternative to carbon. Silicon is in the same group as carbon on the periodic table and, like carbon, it is tetravalent. Hypothetical alternatives to water include ammonia, which, like water, is a polar molecule, and cosmically abundant; and non-polar hydrocarbon solvents such as methane and ethane, which are known to exist in liquid form on the surface of Titan.

“But was even this the end? A few mystically inclined biologists went still further. They speculated, taking their cues from the beliefs of many religions, that mind would eventually free itself from matter. The robot body, like the flesh-and-blood one, would be no more than a stepping-stone to something which, long ago, men had called “spirit.” And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God.”

― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms, and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night.

And because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped.

And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.”

― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 a Space Odyssey

And then, immediately beneath him, Bowman noticed something which was surely new, since he could hardly have overlooked it if it had been there before. Moving across the ocean of glowing gas were myriads of bright beads; they shone with a pearly light which waxed and waned in a period of a few seconds. And they were all traveling in the same direction, like salmon moving upstream; sometimes they weaved back and forth so that their paths intertwined, but they never touched.

There were thousands of them, and the longer Bowman stared, the more convinced he became that their motion was purposeful. They were too far away for him to make out any details of their structure; that he could see them at all in this colossal panorama meant that they must be scores—perhaps hundreds—of miles across. If they were organized entities, they were leviathans indeed, built to match the scale of the world they inhabited.

  Perhaps they were only clouds of plasma, given temporary stability by some odd combination of natural forces—like the short-lived spheres of ball-lightning that still puzzled terrestrial scientists. That was an easy, and perhaps soothing, explanation; but as Bowman looked down upon that star-wide streaming, he could not really believe it. Those glittering nodes of light knew where they were going; they were deliberately converging upon the pillar of fire raised by the White Dwarf as it orbited overhead.

― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 a Space Odyssey

“In this world, as in our own, nearly all the chief means of production, nearly all the land, mines, factories, railways, ships, were controlled for private profit by a small minority of the population. These privileged individuals were able to force the masses to work for them on pain of starvation. The tragic farce inherent in such a system was already approaching. The owners directed the energy of the workers increasingly towards the production of more means of production rather than to the fulfilment of the needs of individual life. For machinery might bring profit to the owners; bread would not. With the increasing competition of machine with machine, profits declined, and therefore wages, and therefore effective demand for goods. Marketless products were destroyed, though bellies were unfed and backs unclad. Unemployment, disorder, and stern repression increased as the economic system disintegrated. A familiar story! 

― Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker 

“I shall describe one example of this kind of world, the greatest planet of a mighty sun. Situated, if I remember rightly, near the congested heart of the galaxy, this star was born late in galactic history, and it gave birth to planets when already many of the older stars were encrusted with smouldering lava. Owing to the violence of solar radiation its nearer planets had (or will have) stormy climates. On one of them a mollusc-like creature, living in the coastal shallows, acquired a propensity to drift in its boatlike shell on the sea’s surface, thus keeping in touch with its drifting vegetable food. As the ages passed, its shell became better adapted to navigation. Mere drifting was supplemented by means of a crude sail, a membrane extending from the creature’s back. In time this nautiloid type proliferated into a host of species. Some of these remained minute, but some found size advantageous, and developed into living ships.

― Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker 

“In the outer layers of young stars life nearly always appears not only in the normal manner but also in the form of parasites, minute independent organisms of fire, often no bigger than a cloud in the terrestrial air, but sometimes as large as the Earth itself. These "salamanders" either feed upon the welling energies of the star in the same manner as the star's own organic tissues feed, or simply prey upon those tissues themselves. Here as elsewhere the laws of biological evolution come into force, and in time there may appear races of intelligent flame-like beings. Even when the salamandrian life does not reach this level, its effect on the star's tissues may become evident to the star as a disease of its skin and sense organs, or even of its deeper tissues. It then experiences emotions not wholly unlike human fright and shame, and anxiously and most humanly guards its secret from the telepathic reach of its fellows.

― Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker 

Everything's alive. It from Bit applies.

The Exploding Whale returns. :)

The exploding whale

Back in 1970, an historic event took place. Man tried to remove a sperm whale carcass using modern technology, dynamite, a noble effort that unfortunately went sideways. :)

Why relive this paean to human ingenuity? Because the SpaceX IPO and the exploding whale are truly complementary if one takes a little time to see why. :)

To whit.

The hairs of one's neck rising with accompanying chills applies when facing something ominous and this feeling applies to both events. With the whale, the explosion came from without when dynamite tossed out chunks of same 800 feet into the air with an end result of one particularly large chunk crushing the roof of a car located in a parking lot several hundred yards away. With SpaceX,  the explosion will come from within because investors are beginning to pucker as the assumptions of untold profitability are beginning to be questioned in earnest as we speak. 

Liu Yanan / Xinhua via Getty Images; Futurism

The SpaceX IPO has been a windfall for investors — or most of them, at any rate.

But there’s a fear at the back of their minds that they just can’t shake off. What if a significant number of buyers turn tail and become sellers, dumping their SpaceX stock and leaving the most loyal Elon Musk fans holding the bag?

It hasn’t happened yet, since the vast majority of investors for the time being are locked into their shares. Nonetheless, top venture capitalists feel then need to assure that there won’t be a mass selloff when selling opens, betraying a persistent anxiety beneath the bonanza.

“That is the bet now facing the market,” writes Edward Ludlow in Bloomberg’s Tech In Depth newsletter. “Not whether investors want to own SpaceX, but whether the people who already own it will keep owning it.” 

The pucker ...

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism.
Source: Tom Brenner For The Washington Post via Getty Images; Google

While it’s still far too early to tell if Musk’s space AI behemoth is headed for a prolonged downturn — we’re fully in uncharted and almost purely speculative territory here — its ongoing dip has once again reignited fears that the stock may be massively overvalued. As many critics have pointed out, SpaceX is far from demonstrating a path to profitability, instead burning through billions of dollars per year.

The merger with Musk’s AI startup xAI, in particular, has raised eyebrows. The firm’s losses mounted considerably over the last couple years, with SpaceX’s IPO filing showing that the startup had lost a whopping $6.4. billion in 2025 — and that’s without getting into the AI venture’s seemingly endless PR headaches.

Musk’s grand vision for a million-strong megaconstellation of enormous data center satellites has also been met with plenty of skepticism. SpaceX still has to prove that it’s financially feasible — or even practically possible — to run solar-powered data centers in the Earth’s orbit.

And we haven't even discussed Colossus and it's connect to the The Black Body Problem.

Regarding the whale ...

The explosion

A widely reported case of an exploding whale occurred in Florence, Oregon, in November 1970, when the Oregon Highway Division (now the Oregon Department of Transportation) blew up a decaying sperm whale with dynamite to dispose of its rotting carcass. The explosion threw whale flesh up to 800 feet (240 metres) away, and its odor lingered for some time. American humorist Dave Barry wrote about it in his newspaper column in 1990 after viewing television footage of the explosion, and later the same footage from news station KATU circulated on the Internet. I 

Yours truly laughed to tears seeing this cosmic event unfold back in 1990. Investors may cry if the IPO for the ages does the same thing. One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller