Some wasps are called 'parasitoids' because they lay their eggs in still-living caterpillars. The eggs develop into larvae that eat the caterpillar from the inside.

But turnabout is fair play. Sometimes, other wasps called 'hyperparasitoids' lay their eggs in the larvae of these parasitoids!

The caterpillars also fight back. Their immune system detects the wasp's eggs, and they will do things like surround the eggs in a layer of tissue that chokes them.

But many parasitoid wasps have a trick to stop this. They deploy viruses that infect the caterpillar and affect its behavior in various ways - for example, slowing its immune response to the implanted eggs.

These viruses can become so deeply symbiotic with the wasps that their genetic code becomes part of the wasp's DNA. So every wasp comes *born* with the ability to produce these viruses. They're called 'polydnaviruses'.

In fact some wasps are symbiotic with *two kinds* of virus. One kind, on its own, would quickly kill the caterpillar - not good for the wasp. The other kind keeps the first kind under control.

And I'm immensely simplifying things here. There are over 25,000 species of parasitoid wasps, so there's a huge variety of things that happen, which scientists are just starting to understand! I had fun reading this:

• Marcel Dicke, Antonino Cusumano and Erik H. Poelman, Microbial symbionts of parasitoids, Annual Review of Entomology, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ento-011019-024939

Why such diversity? I think it's just that there are so many plants! So insect larvae like caterpillars naturally tend to feed on them... in turn providing a big food source for parasitoids, and so on.

Oh my goodness I've just learned a thing about The Matrix that causes it to make a lot more sense: In the original script the humans were used as neural network compute clusters by the Machines and as a crucial component of The Matrix itself.

Which is why humans who were aware of the simulation could control aspects of The Matrix - their minds were part of its foundation.

Unfortunately the test audiences had trouble understanding this concept so the studio changed the human role to "batteries".

Apple's reported friendliness toward "right to repair" and environmental laws is a sham, and a scam. The company has one goal only: make more money, which means selling more devices.

Read this from @pluralistic -- and reconsider your devotion to one of the planet's greediest operations. https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Important tech tip for Slack users not sold on the new "design"

If you hard-refresh Slack Command-Shift-R, and then type Command-Shift-S, you get an extra vertical sidebar that disaggregates your individual slacks.

Thanks to @snarkout who has improved my life for the better, this day.

Naw, I figured it out; they absolutely don't care if AI doesn't work.

They really don't. They're pot-committed; these dudes aren't tech pioneers, they're money muppets playing the bubble game. They are invested in increasing the valuation of their investments and cashing out, it's literally a massive scam. Reading a bunch of stuff by Amy Castor and David Gerard finally got me there in terms of understanding it's not real and they don't care. From there it was pretty easy to apply a historical analysis of the last 10 bubbles, who profited, at which point in the cycle, and where the real money was made.

The plan is more or less to foist AI on establishment actors who don't know their ass from their elbow, causing investment valuations to soar, and then cash the fuck out before anyone really realizes it's total gibberish and unlikely to get better at the rate and speed they were promised.

Particularly in the media, it's all about adoption and cashing out, not actually replacing media. Nobody making decisions and investments here, particularly wants an informed populace, after all.

Zoomers & boomers: «IDGAF. It doesn’t affect me; everyone already has all my data—»

Me: No. No, they do not.

You *generate* data every time you touch that service, visit that site, patronise that business. Your data isn’t just your PII, and it isn’t finite. You are a living, breathing fountain of data that can be and is used in ways that harm the vulnerable and marginalised, even if it’s never used to harm *you*

It’s not zero-sum. Limiting use & reducing dependence still counts as a good