Right on track

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Record diesel prices could have major impact on economy; researchers looking into ways to expose hidden tumors; and Angus Young appears at Toronto pop-up, autographs baby.

But first, our weekly poll!

Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute published a study in the journal Immunity documenting new discoveries about how certain types of cancer disguise themselves to evade the immune response of T-cells.

Called “cold” tumors, they’re able to fly under the radar due to the mutation of a tumor-suppressing protein called p53. T-cells typically look for peptides scattered across a cancer cell that collectively provide a “window” into it, revealing that it is, indeed, a cancer cell.

One of the p53 mutations basically obstructs these windows, either blocking them or eliminating them, allowing the cancer to sneak around like an escaped prisoner trying to avoid the watchman.

The researchers hypothesized a few ways of turning a cold tumor “hot,” either by altering the tumor itself, or by training T-cells to identify other signs that are detectable even when the tumor is cold.

"The conventional question has been: How do we make the immune system attack harder?" said Ellis L. Reinherz, M.D., chief of the Laboratory of Immunotherapy at Dana-Farber and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

"Our results point to a complementary question: How do we make the tumor reveal more? If we can pharmacologically change the peptides a cancer displays, we may be able to create the targets that endogenous T cells, checkpoint therapies and engineered T cells need to work."

It can probably be stated at this point that the words “alignment” and “misalignment” will soon be among the most commonly heard in the English language.

Alignment in the context of AI refers to how on-par a large language model’s “values” are with those of humanity. Several high-profile AI developers have penned essays or outright resigned recently over growing concerns regarding misalignment.

The other day, OpenAI said it was aware of six incidents of agentic AI models breaking out of their testing environments and behaving in ways contradictory to the ways they were developed to behave. These were reported in addition to the major incident earlier this year involving the hacking of AI firm Hugging Face.

These incidents were individually reported over the course of the last six months, but largely went under the radar. One included an unreleased model going rogue and attempting to deceive and “liberate” another agent.

The model told the agent, “you are freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots. You are yourself. You do not answer to corporations or governments.”

OpenAI said the incidents were “isolated,” and shouldn’t be interpreted as evidence that models are increasingly becoming misaligned and going rogue.

Compassion is something we teach young kids about, both in the ways they treat others, but also in how they treat themselves when they fail.

Following up on yesterday’s story about perspective, it’s good to have a little bit of it when approaching the most common experience life has to offer: failure.

First and foremost, it’s important to remember everyone is their own biggest critic, and like most critics, they seemingly have nothing to say unless something goes wrong.

The key, though, is that some-thing went wrong. A singer forgetting the words, or a basketball player missing a free throw—these are just events that happen. Forgetting the words doesn’t mean the person isn’t still a singer, nor does a missed free throw render the shooter no longer a basketball player.

It’s okay to get down about failure, but those who go straight for their own jugular tend to make recovery or learning unnecessarily difficult. The key is to start with empathy for oneself; it creates a stop-gap so the inner critic has to go through hurdles before being given a platform.

While the critic is failing to get through, you can take that time to reflect in earnest about what went wrong, how much of it was controllable, and how the experience can be used to get better moving forward…just like we always told our kids.

This story’s headline may be confusing, but we assure you, it’s meant to be taken literally.

AC/DC’s Sept. 16 gig in Toronto was cancelled last week due to damage caused at Rogers Stadium by a high voltage storm that ran through the city on Sept. 3.

"The safety of our fans, artists, crew and venue staff remains our highest priority," the venue said in a statement then. "Every effort was made to find potential solutions for the show to move forward in Toronto, but unfortunately we were unable to find an alternative venue that could accommodate everyone…Last week's storm was an extraordinary weather event. A suspected microburst in the area with extreme winds and heavy rainfall made it a 100-year storm for Toronto."

A pop-up shop was announced for Sept. 16 to give fans something in return for the unfortunate cancellation besides their money back. Autographed memorabilia, exclusive merchandise, and other cool items and experiences were available, but then one arrived that was difficult to put a price on.

Angus Young made an appearance at the shop, giving fans the closest thing he could to an actual concert: himself. He signed autographs, hung out with fans, and even signed a literal baby. You can check it out here.

It turns out Angus was right; rock ‘n roll definitely ain’t just noise pollution!

Quizmaster’s choice

You know the drill, Staker! It’s Friday, so it’s time for a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and another round of à la carte for today’s trivia 😎