35.99920 years in science communication
The trendy AI app – Wombo – which seems to be going viral takes your words, lets you choose an art style and then generates a dream-like image from the combination. You may have seen the Rush-inpsired art I had it create in a previous post, but here are a few more created with eclectic word choices and picking from the various styles – Mystical, Dark Fantasy, Psychic, Steampunk, Synthwave etc
TL:DR – Wombo was the big AI image generator in late 2021.
You can’t have missed the latest AI app – Wombo. It has various incarnations, one of which Wombo Dream (for Android and iOS) lets you type in a few words, choose a style (Mystical, Dark Fantasy, Psychic, Steampunk, Synthwave etc) and create a fantastical landscape or scene. It’s quite bizarre to watch it drawing together an algorithmic “artwork” from whatever scraps of graphical information are contained within the AI.
I tried a few odd, dream-like phrases, some rude words, and my own name to get a feel for what it could do, and then I thought I’d see what it would make of references to the Canadian rock band, Rush.
TL:DR – At the time of writing, people around the world were trying to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic and getting to grips with Greek letters.
UPDATE: By the way, it’s pronounced “Oh-me-cron” with the emphasis on the “Oh”, it’s not Ommy-Cron or any other variant on that theme. And, this isn’t just me making some random pronouncement, that’s how it was taught throughout science, classicists might beg to differ with their “oh-My-cron”, but that’s the Ancient Greek way, not the scientific way. More to the point, Oxford’s Professor Aris Katzourakis, an expert in SARS-CoV-2 and a Greek speaker, by virtue of his Greek parents had this to say in the Telegraph recently: “English speakers should aim for oh-me-cron, with the emphasis on the o.”
By now, we’ve all heard the phrase “variant of concern” referring to a new form of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Technically, these variants have mutations that alter how well the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus infects our cells. If the new form of the virus is of concern it is usually because the mutations in the spike protein on the surface of the virus are likely to make it more infectious, faster spreading and/or to worse symptoms or lead to more deaths.
The national and international health organisations assess new variants of which there are known to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, on the basis of whether they show increased transmissibility, increased morbidity, increased mortality, increased risk of “long COVID”, ability to evade detection by diagnostic tests, decreased susceptibility to antiviral drugs, decreased susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies, ability to cause reinfections, ability to infect people who have been vaccinated, increased risk of multisystem inflammatory syndrome and long-haul COVID, increased impact on particular demographic or clinical groups.
The new variants were initially referred to by the name of the place where they were first identified, although each was given a technical name too to represent their genetic lineage. However, those scientific names, for example, B.1.1.529, are not particularly media friendly nor memorable to non-experts. As such, in May 2021, the World Health Organisation decided that variants of concern would be given a shorthand name using a letter of the Greek alphabet.
Readers will by now be fairly familiar with the first few letters of the Greek alphabet, if they weren’t already as we have already seen the following variants of concern, which used the first four letters of the Greek alphabet:
Alpha – B.1.1.7 (first identified in the UK)
Beta – B.1.351 (South Africa)
Gamma – P.1 (Brazil)
Delta – B.1.617.2 (India)
The current variant of concern that is spreading around the world is Omicron – B.1.1.529 (first identified by scientists in South African).
I’ve been asked several times by people who have some familiarity with the Greek alphabet as to why the WHO made a leap from Delta to Omicron. Well, there wasn’t a “leap” as such, there were variants that were labelled with some of the intermediate letters that didn’t turn out to be as problematic as anticipated and were not highlighted in the mainstream media. So, we did have the following variants: Epsilon (lineages B.1.429, B.1.427, CAL.20C), Zeta (P.2), Eta (B.1.525), Theta (P.3), Iota, (B.1.526), Kappa (B.1.617.1). Lambda (C.37), and Mu (B.1.621)
Nu and Xi have been skipped deliberately, the former because English speakers may pronounce it like the word “new” (it’s actually pronounced “nih” or “nee” and Xi because it resembles a common surname).
The next variant would likely be Pi, although that is a rather familiar symbol to many people and so they may well skip that one too. The last letter of the Greek alphabet is Omega (“big O” compare that to Omicron “little o”.
But, let us hope that we stifle this virus long before we run out of Greek letters…
We had to skip our annual panto in 2020, but this year we’re bigger, bolder, and brassier than ever with Treasure Island! Oh yes we are! Here are a few of my snaps (in no particular order) from the orchestra pit where I’m playing guitar, as usual. Find out more about Cottenham Theatre Workshop.
Paid just our second visit of the year to Lackford Lakes Nature Reserve in the hope of seeing the Siskins that had been reported there this week. We stopped off at the ringing hut where two of the Suffolk Wildlife Trust team had netted various birds (Treecreeper, Blue, Great and Marsh Tits, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Robin, and others) and were carefully recording the recatches and ringing any new catches for their conservation efforts.
So, what did we see on the day? 46 species not in order of sighting but loosely grouped:
You may have noticed I wrote and recorded yet another song – it was originally entitled Footprints in the Sand. It was angst-ridden and full of random allusions and imagery, as is my wont. I added the word “No” to the title having used a photo of beach on which there were no footprints and I thought that would make it even more angst ridden, suggesting that the song’s protagonists were hankering after the beach but unable to be there for whatever reason.
As I mentioned earlier, the song started off in my usual way, simple chord progression over which I ad libbed a few words…I tightened the words up after I laid down a quick demo so I wouldn’t forget the tune I’d come up with. It started out as being about coping with grief following the death of a loved one. But, it somehow morphed into thinking about the kind of grief that migrants suffer in leaving their homeland in search of a better, safer life. Their attempts to reach foreign shores and to land on beaches from flimsy boats. There is also a kind of allusion to regrets migrants might feel in reaching that foreign shore.
Anyway, let me spell out what I think I thought I meant in the song, I’m reverse engineering it really, as many of the words arose spontaneously and from my subconscious.
The days are colder and the nights drawn in No barricades of comfort, now the aching will begin
After the clocks go back in October, my mother would often remark on how quickly it seemed “the nights are drawing in”. I made the phrase a finite point, the nights are “drawn in”, in perpetuity, you might say, it’s always going to be dark from now on. The warmth of the summer, a kind of psychological barricade definitely long gone and the pain of the cold, dark days now starting.
I'm running down an unlit corridor The pain can chase me, but I head out through an open door
This was a nightmare image of the fear of death, I think, and the possibility of somehow getting away from that pain and emerging into the light.
And you won't find a clearer path today If you turn your back on the future, try to run away
Basically, don’t dwell on the past, try to look to the future, but also live in the present, which brings us to the next couplet
And, there are times when you can plan your day But the tide will turn and wash your wishes away
Moving through grief it seems very hard to think of getting on with normal stuff, but you have to, but it’s worth remembering that your romantic dreams written with sticks and stones on the memory of a beach are always washed away by the rising tide.
But I can see the warning signs ahead They don't deter me, they draw me on instead
This sounds like being well aware of the psychological damage that might occur in the wake of trauma but being pulled along by it instead of finding a safe haven.
And I should say that we can choose a tougher path The path of least resistance was never going to last
I think this line in the pre-chorus is where the notion of it being about my grief morphed into something broader about migrants and people escaping. Always easier to stick to the well-worn track, but even they don’t offer an escape a tougher route has to be forged in some circumstances.
Now, we’re at the chorus:
Walk with me, I'll take you by the hand Can't promise anything like a promised land But, I’ll give you love, though nothing's planned Walk with me, leave just our footprints in the sand
Offering a helping hand, partnership, promising something but not necessarily the dream, maybe just a chance to walk in the sand, which would be a bit of a dream at the moment, to be honest.
The summer comes around and the days are long I thought I'd moved on but something feels so wrong
What if time isn’t a healer, what if there’s still pain long after the dark winter days when the summer clicks into view again? That was me worrying for my future self, I think.
And there you're kneeling with your head in your hands Still can't believe we found ourselves in this foreign land
An allusion to the despair felt by those hoping for a better life reaching that new world, but struggling when the reality is not what they thought they had promised themselves.
Like I said, angst-ridden and grim. But, else would you expect, I’ve written and recorded dozens of songs over the last few years and they’re almost always a bit depressing lyrically even if the tunes sometimes get a bit funky. Any questions? No? Good. I’ll let you have a listen to the song (also on Bandcamp) and you can comment at me on Twitter.
Incidentally, it struck me after recording that at least two of those lyrics are half-borrowed from a couple of other songs. “I can feel the warning signs” is in Half the World Away by Oasis, while “eyes cast down on the path of least resistance” is in A Farewell to Kings by Rush. You can check out this page for a very incomplete list of what I’d call my musical influences.
The days are colder and the nights drawn in
No barricades of comfort, now the aching will begin
I’m running down an unlit corridor
Pain can chase me, but I head out through an open door
And you won’t find a clearer path today
If you turn your back on the future, try to run away
And, there are times when you can plan your day
But the tide will turn and wash your wishes away
But I can see the warning signs ahead
They don’t deter me, they draw me on instead
And I should say that we can choose a tougher path
The path of least resistance was never going to last
Walk with me, I’ll take you by the hand
Can’t promise anything like a promised land
But, I’ll give you love, though nothing’s planned
Walk with me, leave just our footprints in the sand
The summer comes around and the days are long
I thought I’d moved on but something feels so wrong
And there you’re kneeling with your head in your hands
Still can’t believe we found ourselves in this foreign land
Though I could see the warning signs ahead
They didn’t stir me to turn away instead
And though I said that we should choose a tougher path
The path of least resistance was never at our backs
As usual, words, music, and production by David Bradley
Vocals, guitars, bass, keyboard, percussion mixing dB/
Available on Soundcloud to stream and on Bandcamp to stream or download
Started off in the usual way, simple chord progression over which I ad libbed a few words…the words tightened up and something that was originally perhaps about getting through grief but maybe not getting through it came out the other side as an allusion to migrant regrets…I think.
Back in the day, I ran numerous specialist websites. Long-time visitors to Sciencebase may well recall some of them: chemspy.com, sciencetext.com, reactivereports.com, and sciscoop.com
They are all now simply redirecting to Sciencebase itself. I had hoped to sell on those accounts via the domain registrar, but have decided to offer them to any reader who cares to take them on for a negotiable fee. Please get in touch via db@ sciencebase.com if you’re interested in acquiring any of those domains.
The Sprawler moth seems to spread its forelegs wide when it’s at rest on a chunk of wood. Its delicate patterning gives it something of a resemblance of a bark surface, perhaps. But, it is its scientific name that is a little curious and needs further explanation.
Lepidopterists originally referred to The Sprawler as Cassinia after the Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini who lived from 1625—1712. It was first cited by Hufnagel in 1766. But, why was it named after an astronomer? The answer lies in the behaviour of the moth’s larva, its caterpillar. When startled the little green beast rears up its spine-covered head as if gazing heavenwards. Why it does this is something of a mystery, but then much about insects remains mysterious. Perhaps the behaviour is enough to fool a predator into thinking the larva might bite back.
The Cassinia genus was dropped in recent times for the term Asteroscopus, which is a more generic term for a star gazer, one might say. The astero part from the Greek for star and scopus from the word for watching (see also telescope). So, the full scientific binomial for The Sprawler is Asteroscopus sphinx (Hufnagel, 1766).
UPDATE: I tested this approach on Sciencebase and another site and have come to the conclusion that such headline writing only matters in terms of click-through rate, that is improved, but initial hits don’t seem to be improved at least in the short term, so whether or not it has a beneficial SEO effect remains to be seen.
Headline writing for newspapers and magazines was always the preserve of the subbies, the sub-editors. A reporter, journalist, columnist or another writer would file their copy, it would be bashed into basic shape and length by an editor. Then, a subbie would tear into it, weeding out logical inconsistencies in the flow of text, trapping factual errors, adding puns, dismantling potentially libellous statements, checking the grammar and spelling, cutting it to length, adding extra puns, removing the byline, adding the byline back in, and then removing it again. Finally, adding a headline and perhaps a few extra puns, and strapline with plenty of puns.
Things have changed now that almost everything we read is online. Space constraints are no longer the issue. The issue is search engine optimisation, SEO, and converting eyeballs seeing a headline into clicks on that headline to open the page and get those eyeballs and click action on to the advertising within.
First, we had keyword stuffing, which was usually out of site and the headlines followed the traditional form for years. Next came clickbait, of which there are two flavours. One that baits the reader to click with a catchy enticement and keywords in which they’re interested. Another, a kind of bait and switch on a par with Rickrolling in which an attractive headline makes the eyeball to click conversion, but the content within isn’t what the headline suggested, bait and switch clickbait, you might call it.
Now, we are in a new golden age of headline writing, but sadly, the subbies aren’t happy as puns are out. There is no point in making parochial puns, idiotic idioms, or archaic cultural allusions when one’s vast new audience is international. Your native tongue and clever wordplay won’t work for every putative reader from those just starting to learning your language as a second, third, or fourth language and even for those in the upper echelons of multilinguistics.
So headlines these days have to be self-explanatory rather than self-indulgent. They have to make sense on a first read without anyone having to reach for a dictionary to interpret them. They have to be conversational, a dialogue between reader and writer are, in the age of social media, all-important, essential in fact. The writer must now recognise not that they are talking to a vast, abeyant audience of word worshippers, but rather talking one-to-one, direct in dialogue, with their reader. A singular reader is the audience even if there are millions of them (I wish).
A couple of excellent infographics published with an NPR article entitled “Write digital headlines both readers and Google will love” summarises brilliantly everything I am talking about here and more. It explains the modern penchant for long, conversational headlines of which we are all seeing more and more these days as well as the SEO-led nature of the URL for those headlines that take your eyeball, via your web browser or app, to the page in question.
As you can see, the title of this article is
Here's how to write a clickable headline without using clickbait
The web address, the URL, for it is not what you’d perhaps expect though. It’s not
https://sciencebase.com/heres-how-to-write-a-clickable-headline-without-using-clickbait
No. The URL is as follows, which is much more SEO ready for Google and other search engines
https://www.sciencebase.com/howto-write-clickbait-seo-headlines.html
Now, I’ve been a science writer, journalist, copywriter, editor for more than three decades. I hope I’ve learned a few things about the trade, in that time. But, I’m no high-faluting expert and maybe my interpretation of the NPR isn’t entirely accurate. You can read it for yourself and learn your own lessons.
The key points are that your new-form headlines should do the following:
From the SEO perspective the article’s URL should:
I am planning to use the techniques a little more with my own writing on sciencebase.com to see if I can draw the crowds a little more. There was a time when daily unique visitors to sciencebase numbered in their thousands, these days, that’s more like the monthly numbers. Of course, back then (1999 onwards) Sciencebase was one of very few science news sites and social media was not yet a reality. Indeed, when I first established Elemental Discoveries, which was the proto-sciencebase, it was *the* only popular science news website as far as I know. So, I have hopes, but they’re not high. We’ll see.
Also, for anyone who hit this page searching for SEO and was expecting a short-eared owl, you shouldn’t be disappointed. Here’s one I snapped earlier.
*Subbies are almost redundant now.