Category Archives: Joke

Joke

Reality surpasses anything one could imagine

Today’s inbox brought an invitation to Cappadocia: three days on epithelial barriers, the microbiome and planetary health. I had assumed my column on the epithelial barrier theory would keep me safely off that list.

Instead I found myself recipient number 361 in an unhidden To: field, which is itself a nice demonstration of barrier dysfunction.

(email domains removed, deduplicated list)

From: Ismail Ogulur <ismail.ogulur@siaf.uzh.ch>
To: ismail.ogulur, ahaber, nacevedoc, emma.wincent, piia.karisola, joseph.ndika, hanna.sinkko, chudk, jatodd, lars-olaf.cardell, christoff_g, M.Hyland, hstanleykim, stanley.szefler, R.A.Scheltema, mcasanovas, paul.lavender, cmma, acrc, mariamontserrat.fernandez, Marianne.van.Hage, Martin.Himly, joerg.lehmann, markus.kleinewietfeld, mjp, clive.page, frg, maria.bech, Tania.Maes, bayry, lbosca, mercedes.gomez, greta.guarda, hanif.javanmard, carlo.caffarelli, nbarrett, saadia.kerdine-romer, alexandrafigueirasantos, tomas.slisz, valerian.dormoy, hirotaja, jvortega2002, mathieu.coureuil, s.huber, A.ten.Brinke, kim.tu.vn, tuyetlanyds, drarturo, nuray.bayar, Nina.D’Vaz, Liz.Starcevich, aanowak, dirk.brenner, oscar.palomares, gudrun.weinmayr, sfw, Stacy.Weisberg, soott.weiss, maria.weitoft, michael-welsh, welte.tobias, Andrea_milnewenderlich, goran.wennergren, werfel.thomas, christina.west, marit.westman, paul.whitaker, kristin.wickens, magnus.wickman, Alicia.Widge, Pascal.Wild, christoph.wilhelm, pwilku, l.e.m.willemsen, tim.williams, wilson, jbwing, lone.winther, owirz, wohld, woehrl, wollenberg, roel.klein.wolterink, hkwonmd, ck-wong, wingkinwong, ashley.woodcock, jaw4m, harm.wopereis, margitta.worm, grzegorz.woszczek, wright.benjamin, rerjw, piotr.wroczynski, aywu, Ann.Wu, dongmeiwu, jbwucn1996, joyce.wu, wuzhihua, reinhard.wuerzner, Matthias.Wymann, y.xi2, zhengxuag, Damo.Xu, gzxur2708, luzheng.xue, yamamoto-k, yamanishi.mbch, yanyan9996, sagami, b.d.yang, Ian.Yang, j.yang, yangkd.yeh, peizengycmu, pcy2356, yaoc1010, s1130465, yazawa, reza_yazdani86, myazicioglu, sungtae, daniel.yerly, rae.yeung, oender.yildirim, yokomizo-tky, Yonkkang, LYONKER, ydy4218, cmcyhg, ivana.yang, gpsoy, jeyu74, yingxin.yu, qyuan, ayuce, james.yun, a.zahirovic, asiyazaidia, jzakzuks, ZARYAN, robert.s.zeiger, zeldin, krzysztof.zeman, olatz.zenarruzabeitiabelaustegui, hannah.zenker, zh_gm, dr.luozhang, sz, taozhang, wenmingz, zyy, zhaozuotaotao, tzheng, stefan.zielen, christina.zielinski, alexander.zink, torsten.zuberbier, c.zubrinich, zychlinsky, wdvandeveen, m.van.den.berge, nicole.van_der_burg, hvdkleij, C.M.vanDrunen, f.c.vanerp, m.vanmaaren, avmuylem, joost.vanneerven, vannunen, L.S.vanrijt, menno.vanzelm, ghsv, laura.vangerven, jdv27, pvarshney, martina.vasakova, katerina.vavrova, marta.vazquez.ortiz, tsvelikova, lennart.venemalm, carina.venter, sylvia.verbanck, donata, valerie.verhasselt, kitty.verhoeckx, giuseppe.verlato, alokverma21, mvermani, bpvicke, carmen.vidal.pan, viegig, stefan.vieths, s.j.vijverberg, mvillalba, alma.villasenor, jc.h.virchow, YVIRKUD, massimo.vitale, jvitte, b.vlieg-boerstra, marc.vocanson, david.voehringer, Lothar.Vogel, jens.stein, avb.rodehorst, Christophe.vonGarnier, stephan.vongunten, laura.vonkobyletzki, linstow, erika.von.mutius, l.udraite, robert_voyksner, sarah.vreugde, susanne.vrtala, vultaggioalessandra, Martin.Wagenmann, ulrich.wahn, christineyywai, Brynn.Wainstein, swalker, drdanawallace, elizabeth.wallace, Alexandra.Wallimann, g.m.walton, entwdy, de_yun_wang, xjwgang, wang_guifang08, wanghewen99, ijong, julie.wang, lixinwang99, wangm, entwxd, yichao.wang, aw24, peter.wark, klaus.warnatz, christopher.warren, ewasilewska, pwatkins, kewatters, tania.watts, robert.h.wauters.mil, marcin.wawrzyniak, paulina.wawrzyniak, richard.weaver, twebb, WechslerM, mikewechsler, wedi.bettina, wegrzyn.as, julie.weidner, edwin, denise.tambourgi, b-tan, ge.tan, tanakaa, akane, tyq003, mimi.tang, luciana.tanno, Kelan.Tantisira, btarini, tarran, Christian.Taube, tasadachisato, tunn_ren_tay, bineymt, timothy.j.taylor, m914674227, a_tenbrinke, n.h.t.ten.hacken, vinayt, Falko.Tesch, frederic.tessier, tezuka, diamant.thaci, vthannickal, frank.thien, j.thijs, paul.thomas, Wayne.Thomas, B.Thompson, bernard_thong, bth50, loreen.thuermann, jacob.pontoppidan.thyssen, alex.tihonoff, s.till, guillermotil, signe.timm, teresa.to, r.e.m.toes, martin.tollinger, peter.tomassen, peter.tomazic, tomlinss, d.p.tonge, sanna.salmi, leticia.tordesillas, mjtorresj, torres.tiago, tost, tour, traidl.stephan, claudia.traidl-hoffmann, g.tramper, maxwell.tran, trautmann_a, myrtotrianti, mtriggiani, mtrzeciak, stsabouri, tsakanova, anne.tsicopoulos, ol.tsilochristou, sophia.tsoka, kwtsui, gakku, Ellen.Tufvesson, y.turk, p.turkeltaub, p.turner, riitta.turunen, sturvey, cbennett10, damian.tworek, ueki-shige, ukleja, lena.uller, sullrich, csulrik, eva.untersmayr, j.upham, julia.upton, o.usmani, Wolfgang.Uter, vachovam, pv4588, Michael.vaezi, peter.valent, rudolf.valenta, pvtomazic, anna.valerieva, valero, maria.valkonen, gloria.vallejo, roccoluigi.valluzzi, Erkka.Valovirta, paevbhps, cezmi.akdis

Dear Colleagues,
We are delighted to announce that the EAACI Symposium on Epithelial Barriers, Microbiome and Planetary Health 2026 will be held from 1-3 October 2026 in Cappadocia, Türkiye.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia
On behalf of the Scientific Programme Committee chairs, Cezmi Akdis (Editor-in-Chief Allergy) and Ismail Ogulur (Chair EAACI epithelial cell biology working group), we would like to invite you to participate in this symposium. We believe that your expertise and scientific contributions would greatly enrich the scientific programme.
Please find the preliminary programme at the link below:
https://www.epithelialbarriertheory.com/events
Venue: Cappadocia Marriott Hotel
https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/navmc-cappadocia-marriott-hotel/overview/
Main topics and speakers:
Immune and epithelial mechanisms in allergic diseases
Dr. Mohamed Shamji and Dr. Clare M Loyd
Epitelial barrier and immune pathways driving allergic diseases
Dr. Maria Torres and Dr. Umit Sahiner
Modeling and mechanisms of epithelial barrier function
Dr. Sandra Citi and Dr. Ozlem Celik-Yesiltas
Epithelial injury and microbiota-driven regulation of immune responses
Dr. Ali Onder Yildirim and Dr. Jonathan M. Coquet
Environmental and planetary drivers of epithelial barrier dysfunction in allergic diseases
Dr. Cezmi Akdis and Dr. Ruby Pawankar
Metabolism and biomarkers in allergic inflammation
Dr. Milena Sokolowska and Dr. Ibon Eguiluz Gracia
Mucosal homeostasis and epithelial barrier function in gut and lung
Dr. Nicola Harris and Dr. Ismail Ogulur
Microbial and dietary influences on allergic inflammation
Dr. Oscar Palomeras and Dr. Rodrigo Jimenez Saiz
Environmental regulation of epithelial barrier integrity and the microbiome in allergic diseases
Dr. Arzu Bakirtas and Dr. Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann
The symposium will be officially announced on the EAACI website within the next few days. Following the announcement, abstract submission will open through the official EAACI symposium webpage.
The aim of this symposium is to explore the critical role of epithelial cells and their interaction with the microbiome and immune system at the barrier interface between humans and their environment and to highlight how global changes, including climate stressors, pollution, and biodiversity loss, affect barrier integrity and human health. By bringing together leading international experts in epithelial cell biology, immunology, environmental science, microbiology, and translational medicine, the meeting will address mechanistic insights into epithelial barrier biology and the impact of extreme environmental exposures. The goal is to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, inspire novel research strategies, and translate scientific advances into preventive and therapeutic strategies for the rising burden of allergic, autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases worldwide.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Warm regards,
Ismail Ogulur
Chair, EAACI Epithelial Cell Biology Working Group
Cezmi Akdis
Editor-in-Chief Allergy
Past-Chair EAACI Epithelial Cell Biology Working Group
Umit Murat Sahiner
Board Member, EAACI Pediatric Section
President, Turkish National Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Ismail Ogulur, PhD.
Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF)
Associated Institute of the University of Zurich
Herman-Burchard-Strasse 9
CH-7265 Davos-Wolfgang – Switzerland
ismail.ogulur@siaf.uzh.ch
World Immune Regulation Meeting-XIX
10-13 March 2027 – Davos, Switzerland
www.wirm.ch
Website: www.epithelialbarriertheory.com

 

So, the satire got the structure right. It predicted an EAACI-sponsored symposium in late 2026, built around the epithelial barrier theory, with Akdis at the centre and an environmental framing in the title. All of that arrived: Cappadocia, 1-3 October 2026, Cezmi Akdis chairing the planetary session, the theme announced as “Epithelial Barriers, Microbiome and Planetary Health”. Only the country was wrong.

The satire got the content wrong by being too specific. It invented sessions on microplastic pathobiology, quaternary ammonium toxicology, electromagnetic effects on tight junctions and a digital detox protocol. Absurd, but each named an exposure that could in principle be measured and refuted. The real programme names no exposure at all. Nine sessions pass without a single quantity, agent or threshold.

What the nine titles do contain is a small vocabulary recombined: epithelial, barrier, immune, microbiome, environmental, allergic, mechanisms, just with the nouns reordered. Nothing in the list would change meaning if the words were shuffled between titles, each speaker could speak with slides from another talk – known as powerpoint karaoke.

That is the point worth publishing. A satirist inventing a fake conference has to give each session distinguishing content, because otherwise the joke does not land. The real programme is under no such constraint. It reads more interchangeable than the parody, and the theory it is built on has now reached the stage where a symposium can be assembled around it without anyone having to say what would count as evidence against it.

Predatory science.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 15.08.2026
Joke, written with AI support

Markus Blume und die künstliche Intelligenz

Bayern hat beschlossen, das Verbot von Künstlicher Intelligenz bei Hochschulprüfungen zu verbieten. Sprachlich ein Meisterwerk, führt das inhaltlich zu der naheliegenden Frage: Wenn in der Prüfung ohnehin jedes Sprachmodell mitschreiben darf, warum prüfen wir dann überhaupt noch?

Kernkompetenz. Wir brauchen auch weiterhin Leistungsnachweise, um sicherzustellen, dass die Studierenden gelernt haben, die richtige KI mit dem richtigen Prompt zu bewegen. Wer den Bachelor besteht, hat bewiesen, dass er ein Sprachmodell unter Aufsicht bedienen kann, ohne dass es halluziniert. Eine Schlüsselqualifikation des 21. Jahrhunderts, und die gehört zertifiziert.

Klimaschutz. Solange Tausende Studierende gleichzeitig dieselbe Frage an dasselbe Rechenzentrum schicken, wissen wir wenigstens, wofür der Strom verbraucht wird. Ohne festen Prüfungstermin liefen die Grafikkarten ja völlig planlos heiß, so kann man die Antworten komplett aus dem Cache ziehen. Der synchronisierte Klausurtermin ist im Grunde angewandte Energiepolitik.

Und dann die soziale Funktion. Ohne Prüfungsangst wüssten ganze Studierendenjahrgänge nicht mehr, wofür sie um drei Uhr nachts wach liegen sollen. Man kann den Menschen nicht einfach die letzte verlässliche Quelle existenzieller Demut nehmen, die das Bildungssystem noch bereithält.

Die Verwaltung. Was würde bitte aus den Prüfungsämtern? Eine Verwaltung, die nichts mehr zu verwalten hat, ist eine Verwaltung, die über sich selbst nachdenken müsste. Dieses Risiko will wirklich niemand eingehen.

Endlich Fairness. Alle dürfen jetzt KI benutzen, also alle dieselbe Chance, sich auf dasselbe Modell zu verlassen, das bei allen denselben Fehler macht. Chancengleichheit war noch nie so leicht herzustellen. Für die Abschlussprüfung an den 5 Musikhochschule erlaubt Bayern jetzt auch das Vorspielen von mp3 Files und an der Otto Falckenberg Schule YouTube Videos.

Fazit. Abschaffen geht also nicht. Wir behalten die Prüfung, nehmen ihr nur jeden verbliebenen Zweck und nennen das dann Hochschulinnovationsgesetz. Bayern, Vorreiter des digitalen Wandels.

 

 

 

Postscriptum 11.7.2026

Wir lernen daraus: Was für einen bayrischen Politiker völlig normal und wünschenswert ist, wird andernorts als Betrug geahndet.

https://www.dmz-news.online/2026/07/11/wenn-die-pruefung-nicht-mehr-zeigt-was-studierende-wissen/

Screenshot 11.7.2026

 

Könnte der Wissenschaftsminister vielleicht mal kurz mit seinem Kultusminister reden, der gegen Betrug beim Abitur massiv vorgeht? Denn hier

dürfen auf dem Pult nur Papier und Stifte liegen, die die Schule geprüft hat. “Alles andere, Essen, Trinken, Stofftiere als Maskottchen und Glücksbringer, muss auf den Boden gestellt werden, weil sich dort kleine Kameras befinden könnten”, sagt er. Jacken, Taschen und elektronische Geräte lagern in einem anderen Raum. Auch für die Kleidung gibt es Vorgaben: Blusen und Hemden sind im Abi nicht erlaubt. Auch dort könnten Mini-Kameras angebracht sein. Falls sich jemand nicht daran hält, hat die Schule vorgesorgt: Wir haben dann so Leibchen, die man aus dem Sportunterricht kennt, eine Art Trikot, die bitten wir dann die Schüler überzuziehen.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 15.08.2026
Joke, Video

Tarzahn aus Timbuktu

Privates wird sich hier auf dem Blog hier kaum etwas finden, aber als ich ein Video meines langjährigen Zahnarztes zufällig gefunden habe, muss ich es natürlich teilen.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 15.08.2026
Joke

It's not theft

Source https://mastodon.social/@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social/115447554094510911 28Oct25

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 15.08.2026
Joke

Is there a seahorse emoji?

Ask this question chatGPT – and it starts rattling like a shaken pinball machine…

first discovered by https://x.com/voooooogel/status/1964465679647887838

Here is an explanation of that phenomenon by Brian Huang

if the model wants to output the word “hello”, it needs to construct a residual similar to the vector for the “hello” output token that the lm_head can turn into the hello token id. and if the model wants to output a seahorse emoji, it needs to construct a residual similar to the vector for the seahorse emoji output token(s) – which in theory could be any arbitrary value, but in practice is seahorse + emoji in word2vec style.
The only problem is the seahorse emoji doesn’t exist! So when this seahorse + emoji residual hits the lm_head, it does its dot product over all the vectors, and the sampler picks the closest token – a fish emoji.

For an even longer version see [here].

Bonus 1 Рhere is a my seahorse image taken at the Mus̩e oc̩anographique de Monaco last week from its wonderful collection. Let's forget the virtual world and preserve the real one.

image taken at the Musée océanographique de Monaco (c) 2025.

Bonus 2 – the answer to a long-standing question: The origin of male seahorses' brood pouch!

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 15.08.2026
Joke, Philosophy

LLM crazyness

We do not need to discuss all dystopic X posts about LLMs.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1936333964693885089

 

Whenever Nature Mag, however, publishes nonsense like “A foundation model to predict and capture human cognition” this may deserve a comment…
Fortunately Science’s Cathleen O'Grady already commented

"I think there's going to be a big portion of the scientific community that will view this paper very skeptically and be very harsh on it" says Blake Richards, a computational neuroscientist at McGill University … Jeffrey Bowers, a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol, thinks the model is “absurd". He and his colleagues tested Centaur … and found decidedly un-humanlike behavior.”

The claim is absurd as training set of 160 psych studies was way to small to cover even a minor aspect of human behavior.

And well, a large fraction of the 160 published study findings are probably wrong as may be assumed from another replications study in psych field

Ninety-seven percent of original studies had significant results … Thirty-six percent of replications had significant results.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 15.08.2026
Joke

Cochrane: Aprilscherz ja oder nein?

Cochrane Zentrum für Yoga, Akupunktur, Heilpflanzen, Homöpathie, Bioresonanz

War das ein Aprilscherz? Nein, offensichtlich nicht, obwohl am 1.4. veröffentlicht.

Aber gibt es ja auch in Berlin so ein dubioses “Forschungszentrum” am Institut für Sozialmedizin, Epidemiologie und Gesundheitsökonomie der Charité.

Und Cochrane: Waren das nicht die EBM Evidenzfetischisten die sowohl gegen Testen und Masken waren und die gerade pleite sind trotz Alimente?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 15.08.2026
Joke, Noteworthy

I asked chatGPT about SARS-CoV-2 genome similarities and this is what I got

https://chatgpt.com/share/67e9741d-bcf4-8000-bb60-26dc50e6fa5f

Where was the closest sequence observed before the first COVID-19 sequence?

The closest known sequence to the first identified SARS-CoV-2 genome (from Wuhan, China, in December 2019) comes from bat coronaviruses, particularly RaTG13, which was found in a bat (Rhinolophus affinis) in Yunnan, China, in 2013. RaTG13 shares about 96.2% genetic similarity with SARS-CoV-2, making it the closest known relative at the time. Additionally, other similar sequences, such as BANAL-52, BANAL-103, and BANAL-236, were later discovered in bats in Laos, showing even closer similarity in certain regions of the genome. Would you like more details on these related viruses?

Continue reading I asked chatGPT about SARS-CoV-2 genome similarities and this is what I got →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 15.08.2026
Joke

Paper of the year

I have occasionally selected a paper of the year, that I enjoyed most for reading. Usually this was not a breakthrough paper but a more hidden pearl. BMJ Christmas and Ig Nobel 2024 were funny, sure, but here is my selection from the literature, a correspondence

Can a biologist fix a radio? - Or, what I learned while studying apoptosis Cancer Cell Volume 2, Issue 3 P179-182 September 2002

A more successful approach will be to remove components one at a time or to use a variation of the method, in which a radio is shot at a close range with metal particles. In the latter case radios that malfunction (have a "phenotype") are selected to identify the component whose damage causes the phenotype. Although removing some components will have only an attenuating effect, a lucky postdoc will accidentally find a wire whose deficiency will stop the music completely. The jubilant fellow will name the wire Serendipitously Recovered Component (Src) and then find that Src is required because it is the only link between a long extendable object and the rest of the radio. The object will be appropriately named the Most Important Component (Mic) of the radio. A series of studies will definitively establish that Mic should be made of metal and the longer the object is the better, which would provide an evolutionary explanation for the finding that the object is extendable.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 15.08.2026