No Bad News today, not even Bad for Them. And I won’t make you read tweets today. We will enjoy the day with the Good and the Goofy. It’s not like there is a shortage of real Good News to share around with family and friends, even with Cranky Uncles.
Well, I’ll go this far.
In this world of sin and sorrow, there is always something to be grateful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H. L. Mencken
Best News of the Week
We have been talking about this for days, but there are new details each day.
Israel and Hamas have reached a deal on a cease-fire and hostages. What does it look like?
Israel’s Cabinet has approved a cease-fire deal with the Hamas militant group that would bring a temporary halt to a devastating war and a release of some of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
Hamas will release 50 hostages in exchange for what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Those released by both sides will be women and minors.
The hostages would be released in bursts throughout the cease-fire. Once the first batch is released, Israel is expected to free the first group of Palestinian prisoners.
Israel said the truce would be extended by a day for every 10 additional hostages released.
Hamas said hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid and fuel are to be allowed to enter Gaza every day as part of the deal. Supplies would also reach northern Gaza, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive, for the first time, Hamas said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross will visit remaining hostages and provide them with any medicine they need.
There was hope that the prisoner exchanges would begin today, but the official word is tomorrow.
This deal puts both sides into a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Grokking Republicans: The Non-Cooperator's Dilemma
Imagine two fighters, each with both hands on the other’s neck, like Londo and G’Kar killing each other on B5 (which is impossible). If both squeeze, both are harmed. If one lets go while the other squeezes, even worse harm comes to that one side. The best possible outcome is for both to let go, to cooperate. The worst is for both to inflict maximum harm, called defecting in the Prisoner’s Dilemma literature.
There is no way to influence an opponent in a single round of Prisoner’s Dilemma, but in an iterated game consisting of many rounds, there is. A simple strategy called TIT FOR TAT has the best record against all comers. It begins by cooperating, then mirrors its opponent, defecting once and only once after each defection by the other side. Far too many actors on the world stage insist that defecting more and worse than your opponent is the only way to go.
One of the most important concepts in Prisoner’s Dilemma is the Shadow of the Future.
As the number of rounds increases, the possibility of future punishment increases with it. In real-world situations, many factors can influence the shadow of the future.
We have many factors in this deal.
- Successive rounds of hostage and prisoner releases
- Successive days of no fighting
- Successive rounds of increased aid, including fuel
- Cooperation with the IRC
- Successive opportunities to extend the pause and trade more captives
Each will act as another round of the game, and each successful round will increase the Shadow of the Future and act as impetus for more.
Another way to look at this is that each round is an opportunity to show the other side that you are not, in fact, subhuman. Respect is the key to peace. You cannot oppress, dispossess, and murder those you respect.
So I have some hope for more swaps, and a longer pause, and perhaps more.
Not blind hope, certainly. Watch this space.
All Kinds Good News
From our standard sources, and more.
Kindness
Mayo Clinic
The art of kindness
Kindness is more than behavior. The art of kindness involves harboring a spirit of helpfulness, being generous and considerate, and doing so without expecting anything in return.
Science! Animals! Weirdness!
I am grateful for ever-bigger telescopes of all kinds, for massive advances in health care, for falsifying what we thought we knew that turns out not to be the case, and for opportunities to be kind to animals as well as people.
No @buitengebieden today. I know how to embed his tweets, but not his videos by themselves. Trying to copy any of his video addresses gives an address of the tweet, not the video.
James Webb Space Telescope makes 1st discovery of disappearing neon around newborn star
New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest the amount of ionized neon gas present in dusty, planet-forming disks can tell us how quickly planets must form before the disk itself disappears.
Nautilus On The Go!
JWST Breaks the Cosmic Distance Record: The Discovery of the 2nd- and 4th-Most Distant Galaxies
JWST data shows an atmosphere of water vapor and noxious sulfur dioxide, capped with sandy clouds.
Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts.
The gamma rays from the burst impacted Earth's atmosphere for a span of about 13 minutes on Oct. 9, 2022. They were detected by the European Space Agency's Integral (International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) space observatory and various satellites orbiting close to Earth.
The source of the burst is 2 billion light years away. We don’t know what it was.
Swimming Bay Scallops Homosassa Florida
A New Planet-Hunting Instrument Has Been Installed on the Very Large Telescope
Exoplanet studies have come a long way in a short time! To date, 5,523 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,117 systems, with another 9,867 candidates awaiting confirmation. With all these planets available for study, exoplanet researchers have been shifting their focus from detection to characterization – i.e., looking for potential signs of life and biological activity (biosignatures). Some major breakthroughs are expected in the coming years, thanks in part to next-generation observatories like NASA’s James Webb and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the ESA’s PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission.
Several ground-based facilities will also be vital to the characterization of exoplanets, like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). But there are also existing observatories that could be upgraded to perform vital exoplanet research. This idea was explored in a recent paper by an international team of astronomers, who presented the first light results of the High-Resolution Imaging and Spectroscopy of Exoplanets (HiRISE) recently installed on the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) – not to be confused with the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Kisslip Cuttlefish Changing Colors In Inkredible Mating Displays! | The Critter Corner
CRISPR and ‘e-ink’: new tools could reveal the secrets of cuttlefish camouflage
New technology moves scientists closer than ever to understanding how colour-blind cuttlefish pull off their kaleidoscopic patterns.
Help cure more children with cancer, more kindly
We have made huge strides in research and treatment for children with cancer, improving their chances of survival. With your support today, we can discover kinder treatments and offer more children the hope of a cure.
Caturday Pootie Diary: Doggie Bag
I don’t know what it’s called, but in previous years you gave me a bite or two of the big chicken when you came home. It’s not enough. I should get a whole bowl.
Funny or Fuggedaboudit
No nasty political cartoons today. I have put a list of cartoon sources in my queued draft Potluck GNR, political and non-political. Please let us know if you have more.
Some cartoons are not jokes, but make us smile in other ways.