Artificial Intelligence
Jan. 13th, 2026 03:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithResearchers poison stolen data to make AI systems return wrong results
Researchers affiliated with universities in China and Singapore have devised a technique to make stolen knowledge graph data useless if incorporated into a GraphRAG AI system without consent.
I'm reminded of how alchemists would leave out a critical detail, or make a substitution, so that nobody could steal and reproduce their work.
Researchers affiliated with universities in China and Singapore have devised a technique to make stolen knowledge graph data useless if incorporated into a GraphRAG AI system without consent.
I'm reminded of how alchemists would leave out a critical detail, or make a substitution, so that nobody could steal and reproduce their work.
Writing status, sorta, a plan update at least
Jan. 13th, 2026 07:52 amvriddyWhere am I at with all the projects? Definitely nowhere I thought I'd be in early December. Let's have a look at the "vague current plan" back then:
- Let [the Cursed Witch] Rest - I've sure been doing that! Though not the "not too long" bit.
...Actually that's it I did nothing else on that list, and half the rest will have to change. In fairness, I knew all the sequel-related stuff would have to be temporarily shelved about a week later: I was deep in the kn8 edits, and could tell it would take longer than anticipated. I wanted the time away from the witch so my subconscious could ✨ work its magic ✨ about the remaining problems, but once most of the story left my "active" memory, outlining or planning a sequel felt nearly impossible.
Then K-9 happened. Lol. I mean, this was and continues to be fun, and I'm surfing that delightful fandom wave for as long as I can. 🏄 Did I mention our fandom tag was canonised? Teeheehee.
I'm writing a lot of short fics in too many fandoms and I think that's doing me good for now. Mostly because I want to keep myself distracted away from *waves wildly*. It means I'm rereading manga chapters here and there, rewatching episodes bits. I'm still reading a lot of new manga at the moment, and unfortunately feeling fannish about more and more of the tiniest, non-existent fandoms. It's just!! There's so much awesome polyship potential everywhere!!!! They just huh write themselves, or should!!!!! Or I wish someone else did so I could just read it... XD At least, a few of them have English translations out there so maybe some readers will have the same vision and eventually find the fic, but there's also a BL horror manga (the true monster isn't really the creature...) that doesn't, despite calling my name and whispering OT3 into my head louder and louder....... Ah well. Fan does as fan must.
But anyway! Writing short is doing me good, I think, and writing varied too. But I still have plans for the big original projects:
- I want/must do the pacing check for the cursed witch in January. At the very, very least, do the full re-read and take notes on where to break down the new chapters. But ideally I'd like to do that work itself, too, because...
- ...I signed up for an editing course/workshop/cheeralong in February and I plan to begin
againthe structural edits for the soul thief then. I'm hoping the peer support/challenge will help me get past the "blergh I already did 2/3 of this before but stopped at an awkward point." It's been a year now, so hopefully the reset will work out ok...
But I'd really like to have this round of Cursed Witch edits feel like they're a better shape, with chapters properly broken down and cliffhangerised. Also I hope to keep writing ficlets as a pressure valve for launching myself into yet another MASSIVE EDITING/BIG LENGTH round.
That's the current plan! Let's see in a month how it totally didn't work out that way!! XD
Am I just a phantom waiting to be ripped around on shady ground?
Jan. 12th, 2026 11:24 pmsovayRunning this many days without sleep, I find it hard to tell whether I had an insight about creativity this weekend or just reinvented a 101-level objection to LLMs and so-called generative AI, but it ocurred to me that such technologies are not capable of allusions. Their algorithms are not freighted with the same three-dimensional architecture of associations which accrete around information stored in the human cold porridge, all the emotional colors and sensory overtones and contextual echoes which attend the classic example of a word like tree when you throw it out across the incommensurable void between one human mind and another to be plugged into their own idiosyncratically plastic linkage of bias and experience whose least incompatibility may be the difference between a bristlecone and a birch and Wittgenstein has to lie down with a headache, but all of these entanglements form as much of the texture of a writer's style—of any human communication—as the word cloud of their vocabulary or their most commonly diagrammed sentences. It has always interested me to be able to detect the half-rhymes or skeletons of familiarity in the work of other writers; I have always assumed I am reciprocally legible if not transparent from space. I've seen arguments against the creativity of LLMs based on intentionality, but the unintended encrustrations seem just as important to me. By way of illustration, this thought was partly sparked by this classic and glorious mashup.
I was delighted to find on checking the news this morning that a new Roman villa just dropped. Given the Iron Age hillforts, the twelfth-century abbey, the Georgian country house, and the CH station, Margam Country Park clearly needed a Roman find to complete the set. I have since been informed of the discovery of a similarly well-preserved and impressive carnyx. Goes shatteringly with a villa, the Iceni tell me.
I joke about this rock I spend most of my time under, but how can I never have heard of Marlow Moss? The Bryher vibes alone. The Constructivism. And a real short king, judging by that jaunty photo c. 1937 with Netty Nijhoff. Pursuing further details, I fell over Anton Prinner and have been demoralized about my comprehension of art history ever since.
Last night I read David Copperfield (1850) for the third time in my life. It has the terrible feel of a teachable moment. In high school I bounced almost completely off it. About ten years later, I enjoyed the dual-layered narration and was otherwise mostly engaged by the language. Now it appears I just like the novel, which I have to consider may be a factor of middle age. Or I had just read the necessary bunch more of Dickens in the interval, speaking of traceable reflections, recurring figures; my favorite character has not changed since eleventh grade, but I can see now the constellation he's part of. It seems improbable that I was always reading the novel while waiting for chorus to start, but I did get through Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) in the down time of a couple of rehearsals that year. I was not taking either of the standard literature classes, but I had friends who left their assigned reading lying around.
I have to be at three different doctors' offices tomorrow. I could be over this viral mishegos any second now.
I was delighted to find on checking the news this morning that a new Roman villa just dropped. Given the Iron Age hillforts, the twelfth-century abbey, the Georgian country house, and the CH station, Margam Country Park clearly needed a Roman find to complete the set. I have since been informed of the discovery of a similarly well-preserved and impressive carnyx. Goes shatteringly with a villa, the Iceni tell me.
I joke about this rock I spend most of my time under, but how can I never have heard of Marlow Moss? The Bryher vibes alone. The Constructivism. And a real short king, judging by that jaunty photo c. 1937 with Netty Nijhoff. Pursuing further details, I fell over Anton Prinner and have been demoralized about my comprehension of art history ever since.
Last night I read David Copperfield (1850) for the third time in my life. It has the terrible feel of a teachable moment. In high school I bounced almost completely off it. About ten years later, I enjoyed the dual-layered narration and was otherwise mostly engaged by the language. Now it appears I just like the novel, which I have to consider may be a factor of middle age. Or I had just read the necessary bunch more of Dickens in the interval, speaking of traceable reflections, recurring figures; my favorite character has not changed since eleventh grade, but I can see now the constellation he's part of. It seems improbable that I was always reading the novel while waiting for chorus to start, but I did get through Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) in the down time of a couple of rehearsals that year. I was not taking either of the standard literature classes, but I had friends who left their assigned reading lying around.
I have to be at three different doctors' offices tomorrow. I could be over this viral mishegos any second now.
A Plume of Bright Blue in Melissa’s Wake
Jan. 13th, 2026 05:01 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
earthobservatory_iod_feed
September 20, 2025
October 30, 2025
A satellite image shows a portion of the dark blue Caribbean Sea near Jamaica. A submerged carbonate platform appears as a slightly brighter blue area of water in the center. The mostly green island of Jamaica is in the upper right, and scattered clouds are present throughout.
NASA Earth Observatory
A satellite image shows a portion of the Caribbean Sea near Jamaica. Much of the water in the middle third of the image is bright blue due to suspended sediment. The mostly green island of Jamaica is in the upper right, and scattered clouds are present throughout.
NASA Earth Observatory
A satellite image shows a portion of the dark blue Caribbean Sea near Jamaica. A submerged carbonate platform appears as a slightly brighter blue area of water in the center. The mostly green island of Jamaica is in the upper right, and scattered clouds are present throughout.
NASA Earth Observatory
A satellite image shows a portion of the Caribbean Sea near Jamaica. Much of the water in the middle third of the image is bright blue due to suspended sediment. The mostly green island of Jamaica is in the upper right, and scattered clouds are present throughout.
NASA Earth Observatory
September 20, 2025
October 30, 2025
Before and After
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on October 28, 2025, as a category 5 storm, bringing sustained winds of 295 kilometers (185 miles) per hour and leaving a broad path of destruction on the island. The storm displaced tens of thousands of people, damaged or destroyed more than 100,000 structures, inflicted costly damage on farmland, and left the nation’s forests brown and battered.
Prior to landfall, in the waters south of the island, the hurricane created a large-scale natural oceanography experiment. Before encountering land and proceeding north, the monster storm crawled over the Caribbean Sea, churning up the water below. A couple of days later, a break in the clouds revealed what researchers believe could be a once-in-a-century event.
On October 30, 2025, the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image (right) of the waters south of Jamaica. Vast areas are colored bright blue by sediment stirred up from a carbonate platform called Pedro Bank. This plateau, submerged under about 25 meters (80 feet) of water, is slightly larger in area than the state of Delaware. For comparison, the left image was acquired by the same sensor on September 20, before the storm.
Pedro Bank is deep enough that it is only faintly visible in natural color satellite images most of the time. However, with enough disruption from hurricanes or strong cold fronts, its existence becomes more evident to satellites. Suspended calcium carbonate (CaCO3) mud, consisting primarily of remnants of marine organisms that live on the plateau, turns the water a Maya blue color. The appearance of this type of material contrasts with the greenish-brown color of sediment carried out to sea by swollen rivers on Jamaica’s southern coast.
As an intense storm that lingered in the vicinity of the bank, Hurricane Melissa generated “tremendous stirring power” in the water column, said James Acker, a data support scientist at the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center with a particular interest in these events. Hurricane Beryl caused some brightening around Pedro Bank in July 2024, “but nothing like this,” he said. “While we always have to acknowledge the human cost of a disaster, this is an extraordinary geophysical image.”
Sediment suspension was visible on Pedro and other nearby shallow banks, indicating that Melissa affected a total area of about 37,500 square kilometers—more than three times the area of Jamaica—on October 30, said sedimentologist Jude Wilber, who tracked the plume’s progression using multiple satellite sensors. Having studied carbonate sediment transport for decades, he believes the Pedro Bank event was the largest observed in the satellite era. “It was extraordinary to see the sediment dispersed over such a large area,” he said.
The sediment acted as a tracer, illuminating currents and eddies near the surface. Some extended into the flow field of the Caribbean Current heading west and north, while other patterns suggested the influence of Ekman transport, Wilber said. The scientists also noted complexities in the south-flowing plume, which divided into three parts after encountering several small reefs. Sinking sediment in the easternmost arm exhibited a cascading stair-step pattern.
Like in other resuspension events, the temporary coloration of the water faded after about seven days as sediment settled. But changes to Pedro Bank itself may be more long-lasting. “I suspect this hurricane was so strong that it produced what I would call a ‘wipe’ of the benthic ecosystem,” Wilber said. Seagrasses, algae, and other organisms living on and around the bank were likely decimated, and it is unknown how repopulation of the area will unfold.
Sediments from the top of Pedro Bank contain masses of calcified red algae, flaky sands made of Halimeda macroalgae remnants, and carbonate mud. The wing-like shape of Halimeda sand allows it to be lifted and transported while waters are turbulent, and finer mud remains suspended longer. These samples were acquired during a research expedition in the winter of 1987-1988 and are archived at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Photo by Jude Wilber, January 8, 2026.
Perhaps most consequentially for Earth’s oceans, however, is the effect of the sediment suspension event on the planet’s carbon cycle. Tropical cyclones are an important way for carbon in shallow-water marine sediments to reach deeper waters, where it can remain sequestered for the long term. At depth, carbonate sediments will also dissolve, another important process in the oceanic carbon system.
Near-continuous ocean observations by satellites have enabled greater understanding of these events and their carbon cycling. Acker and Wilber have worked on remote-sensing methods to quantify how much sediment reaches the deep ocean following the turbulence of tropical cyclones, including recently with Hurricane Ian over the West Florida Shelf. Now, hyperspectral observations from NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) mission, launched in February 2024, are poised to build on that progress, Acker said.
The phenomenon at Pedro Bank following Hurricane Melissa provided a singular opportunity to study this and other complex ocean processes—a large natural experiment that could not be accomplished any other way. Researchers will be further investigating a range of physical, geochemical, and biological aspects illuminated by this occurrence. As Wilber put it: “This event is a whole course in oceanography.”
NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview, and ocean bathymetry data from the British Oceanographic Data Center’s General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO). Photo by Jude Wilber. Story by Lindsey Doermann.
References & Resources
- Acker, J.G. and Wilber, R.J. (2025) The first 25 years of satellite carbonate sedimentology: What have we learned? The Depositional Record, 11(3), 975-997. In: Kump, L.R., Ingalls, M., and Hine, A.C. (eds) Carbonate depositional environments: Past and future questions—A Tribute to the career of E.A. Shinn.
- Acker, J.G. and Wilber, R.J. (2024) Satellite-Derived Estimates of Suspended CaCO3 Mud Concentrations from the West Florida Shelf Induced by Hurricane Ian. Environmental Sciences Proceedings, 29(1):69.
- EBSCO Research Starters (2024) Carbonate Compensation Depths. Accessed January 9, 2026.
- NASA Earth Observatory (2025, November 25) A Direct Hit on Jamaican Forests. Accessed January 9, 2026.
- NASA Earth Observatory (2023, April 6) Stirring Up Carbonate in the Coral Sea. Accessed January 9, 2026.
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Communities
Jan. 12th, 2026 10:47 pmysabetwordsmith![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
pluralquestions -- Discussing plural existenceWelcome to the Plural Questions community! A lot of existing plural communities on Dreamwidth are inactive. We all have a lot to gain from talking to each other, so Plural Questions was created to encourage community discussion around plural experiences. Interactions are encouraged- please comment, post to the community, etc! Get your voice out there! Discussion questions will be posted every now and then, but please feel free to add your own questions or post about your lived experiences.
If you've been following
lb_lee and pluralstories then you might like this new community.Y2K virtual collectible animal trading (no, it's not just pokemon)
Jan. 12th, 2026 10:00 pmmalyminI've suspected that the modern "adoptable" is a several-generations removed descendant of 90's and early 2000's "cyberpets," but as a kid I mostly only ever interacted with free-to-adopt pets that could be adopted by an infinite number of people; I was aware limited-quantity pets via application submissions and "breeding" were available, but I have fewer memories of them because I didn't really have a website to participate in them with. (I just saved the free pets on my hard drive, lmao.) It's very similar to how limited adoptions have existed in the Petz Community since at least 1998, but I mostly just downloaded free petfiles or breedfiles that didn't require talking to people.
(kalium has talked about similar levels of rarity and scarcity existing with roleplay characters in fantasy animal forum RP of the era, which is 100% a related phenomenon... just one I've been exposed to less on my own end.)
The problem with researching cyberpets? It's hard to find evidence via search engine that they ever existed. I keep getting results for some very recent take on the "robot toy dog" concept being sold under that name, as well as unrelated garbage articles and images that happen to have good SEO. Robot dogs (and other robot pets like Furbies, and virtual pets like Tamagotchi, etc) were part of a general Y2K fascination with virtual animals, but they are not even a little bit the same thing as a cyberpet. A cyberpet is a funny little image file that lives on the internet, got it? Some are just static pngs, some have "mechanics" that are roleplayed by the creator and adopter, some of the later forms of cyberpet whole website backends like Dragon Cave or Neopets. Bunnyhero Labs even had interactive Flash-based cyberpets. But a cyberpet is, at its core, an picture of an animal on a website, with some kind of certificate or verification showing that you've "adopted" it and that it's yours. (Even if it's one of the ones can be adopted by infinite people, you often get a little adoption certificate to put on your page next to it.)
But... I think I just found some evidence that backs up my theory of adoptables being an evolution of cyberpets?
There was a cyberpet marketplace. They used fake currency, not real money, but still. You have the concept of character designs as a good that can be bought, sold, and traded! Right here at the dawn of the 21st century!
The Market
Welcome to the Market, a unique place where one may buy, sell, and trade various creatures.
How it works
If you wish to participate in the market you must send in a form requesting registration. After becomming a member, you will recieve a certain number of credits. Credits can be used to purchase goods and livestock of many varities. As a member, you will recieve 100 credits(c.) on the first of each month. That means everyone gets 100 credits every month just for being a member! Yes, I did change it back from three to prevent inflation. Credits can be obtained in many ways:Wyvern Breeding- Breeding wyverns is an interesting and profitable buisness. You start by purchasing a pair(or more) of the creatures from the market. Females may lay eggs once every month, after paying a small fee. They may lay up to 10 eggs and the owners have the option of selling the eggs or hatchlings to other members of the Market. Wyverns, if they are available, can be found in the Roost.
Selling Livestock- Selling a creature that YOU MADE. Adds for creatures may be placed on the board below. The livestock auction is now open! If you wish to sell an item, please do so on the Livestockboard.Also, auctions are to be posted ONLY on the auction board.
Doing a Favor for Yours Truly- If you wish to do a trade with me dirrectly or if I ask you for help with something, you can earn some credits. Just dont bombard me with a hundred trade requests please ~.~I, DragonSpyrit, must be notified of ALL transactions via the form that will soon be posted below or Email. You must tell me how many credits a person spent, who they were, and who you are. The 5c. selling fee has been deactivated. I will also be keeping running lists of your credit totals.
Also, please keep in mind that the Livestock board is the main part of The Market, not the Roost.The roost is down again due to the fact that DS is overwhelmed with stuff to do. Id appreciate it if no one complained, concidering that I get no money fro wyvern sales and it takes 20 minutes to draw, scan, color, upload, and put each wyuvern up on the page.
(I've left all of the misspellings on the original page as is...)
Here's an example of a "market stall" for boutique cyberpets. You can definately see how the concepts at play here have evolved into new forms later down the line, right? And here's another market stall, and yet another.
BTW: That last site, Clearwater? Also has a bunch of free-to-take cyberpets, which is the main thing I remember it for. If you have a website, consider adopting one! I always liked the Glerit on the "canyon" page of the site. There's also two secret pages with secret pets...
If you're into smallweb/oldweb stuff, consider adopting and making free cyberpets! They're such an iconic part of early web culture for me, as irremovable from my nostalgic conception of my childhood as dubbed anime and Nintendo games are to a lot of my age-peers. And you know what? I never see them acknowledged on the intentionally nostalgic throwback sites people make at all. Never! They're literally collectible gifs, don't people love those? Cmonnnn you wanna make a web page for magic animals so baaaaad
sigh
Jan. 12th, 2026 10:27 pmjames_davis_nicollOne character in my Outgunned game gets a laptop as part of his starting gear. Game is set in 1977 so I told the university age player he could have a programmable calculator or a slide rule.
"What's a slide rule?"
"What's a slide rule?"