The Lounge

whatever next! http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/igrill.shtml ROFLMFAO If I knew how to post a POLL I would... do you think we should have a jokes section in the forums?

What interesting fact or trivia did you learn today? For example, today I learned that a shamrock and four-leaf clover are not the same. It seems that shamrock describes a three-leaf clover and, as folklore has it, was used by St.Patrick as a religious totem. The four-leaf clover, which is not associated with St.Patrick, owes it's reputation for luck to its rarity. So, do you have something interesting to share?

I thought for any new members that we have, it might be nice to introduce yourself. feel free to do so here

You may have seen various acronyms used on the forums and wondered what they stood for. This non-exhaustive list is to clarify their meanings: IOW - in other words IMO - in my opinion IMHO - in my humble/honest opinion IIRC - if I remember correctly AFAIK - as far as I know ATM - at the moment (also "atinymonkey" on this site in particular) POV - point of view Please feel free to add relevant acronyms or query the meaning of any I have missed off.

I want to invite anyone in the Baltimore, MD area to come visit us for one of our weekly meetups. We get together to work on all things related to science and technology. We mostly focus on the technology portion right now but I would like to get more people who are interested in science to start hanging out with us as well. Visit http://baltimorehackerspace.com for more information. FYI, this is not some lame group of guys. We have mathematicians, robotic engineers, bio engineers, and more all hanging out together sharing ideas and working on projects. Together we can accomplish anything.

Welcome to SFN! In order to help people who are unfamiliar with internet forums, I have put together a small tutorial to expedite the development of the posting abilities of the forum as a whole especially the new members. SFN is a great place to talk about various subjects with an amazing community. We have a forum for just about anything related to science and we even have a forum to talk about non-science related things. Most of the forums are open to all users. However, some forums do have restrictions in order to minimize issues inherent in boards with such forums. Politics, Philosophy, Ethics, and Religion are all restricted to posters with a minimum of 30 pos…

By merit or lottery, somehow you earned a short interview opportunity to ask / offer / learn something from an alien entity in planet earth. What would you say ? 🤔

I am currently reading a new book The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything by Peter Brannen 2025 Peter is an american science writer and scholar and the book is fascinating. The book is almost completely non mathematical, but he does manage to weave together a coherent story of modern investigations into the headline objectives using Chemistry, Biology and Physics, supported by an impressive list of references. Here is a scan of a couple of pages.

Bowie, Jagger, Whitney Houston, the cast of the Blues Brothers?, Few can hold a candle to Elton John and Roger Daltrey Except maybe Keith Moon and Tina Turner

I would like to create a little room here for the wonderfully unexpected, beautiful,... (add your adjective) in Nature. Unexpected and/or beautiful could be interpreted as curious/spectacular, or similar. I mean to use these examples in order to keep the kids interested in Nature. The youngest ones get bored very easily. Examples could be: a rare animal, plant or protist, an almost unbelievably beautiful geological phenomenon, an amazingly complicated molecule that looks like a tinker-toy assembly, spectacular phenomena in water eddies and such. You get the idea. My getting-started examples: Glasswinged butterfly A family of butterflies that eat …

Digital products and services keep getting worse. In the new report Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future, the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved into enshittification and how to resist it. The report shows how this phenomenon affects both consumers and society at large, but that it is possible to turn the tide. Read more on: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/breakin... Shitty translation (premium users only): https://www.forbrukerradet.no/news-in-english/digital-products-and-services-are-getting-worse-but-the-trend-can-be-reversed/

Last week I had a blob of chapati dough start to ferment on me, so I grasped the opportunity to try my hand at making sourdough bread roughly in accordance with: Good FoodWhite sourdoughMaster the art of how to make sourdough bread with our step-by-step recipe. Learn how to create a starter, levain and the loaf itself with our expert tips.I've just sampled my second loaf (bit of crust lightly spread with bacon drip) and can definitely declare it to be edible. Few questions: The recipe I'm using seems to involve an awful lot of faffing about. Is this all absolutely necessary? I've already upped the baking time from 35 to 45 minutes (at gas mark Nigeria). The crust isn't bu…

Greetings. To survive long term, humans need long term : Air Water Food Gravity Atmospheric pressure Exercise Sleep Heat Social interaction Activities Sewer Medicine Reproduction Schooling What else would you add ?

It is not often you see a book at his level from Springer Verlaag, but they have an up market reputation as publishers. I recommend Molecular Storms (2023) as good background (almost) non mathematical reading with many insights. It is physically well put together on decent paper with many colour diagrams and written by a professional Physicist with modern ideas. In particular it explores many of the subjects that have been discussed recently at SF. Entropy, Emergence, randomness, the origin of Life, the role of time, cosmology the physics of biochemistry and and more. Every Chapter has good modern references at the end. Here is a scan of an introduction to order and di…

An activity I’ve been enjoying the past couple of weeks. https://anthropeum.com “Each daily game features ten artifacts from the Met's collection. For each artifact, you place a pin on a map (your best guess at where it was made) and select a time period. Points are based on how close you get on both dimensions. After your 10 rounds, you'll see your score on a distribution curve of everyone who played that day.”

Paul Neil Milne Johnstone (1952–2004) was a real poet who lived in Redbridge, Essex. Johnstone had attended Brentwood School with Douglas Adams. There Johnstone edited a broadsheet, "the Artsphere Magazine," that included mock reviews by Adams as well as Johnstone's own poetry. His name was used by Adams as the author of the worst poetry in the universe in the original radio broadcast, and first edition of HGttG, though this was changed to Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings for all subsequent versions. Johnstone went on to achieve moderate prominence in the poetry world as an editor and festival organiser, including the 1977 Cambridge Poetry Festival. So here's a thread for b…

I think that now I have a clear understanding of what friendship is. The human psyche is "developed" in such a way, that friendship always requires a shared, noble goal. The absense of such a goal ("the meaning of life") also triggers a need for alcohol and other drugs (people say that they drink because of "boredom"). And when normal, non-sectarian companies of friends arise, people in them inevitably become interested in politics, then some of them begin to criticize authoritarian governments, and then the governments punish them for it—I'm talking about Western autocrats (deep state) too. Consequently, normal and natural friendship is usually replaced by sectarian and …

Halupedia, a resource comprised of AI hallucinations https://halupedia.com/

Here are my thoughts. Raising IQ negates the reward system. It doesn't feel rewarding. There's no feedback loop to say well done. It "might" feel good when getting better grades or a promotion. But even then the promotion is a competition and I've even heard that top high school grades are actually limited to keep the top Universities from letting anyone in down the line. Solving a puzzle which someone has been stuck on for a while may "potentially" feel nice. But then the person may feel a sense of dread about how it would have felt better and been more beneficial if they solved it sooner, like if they were on a tv game-show. What are your thought on this topic?

Hi. In need of suggestions how to do this I have never done before: Mover crews do not do it. Do not know if asking UPS to pickup works if needs being better packed. Unsure if an Uber driver would. Need to pickup an item or two at a warehouse that does NO shipping, and send it via UPS/Fedex/USPS to KY. If carton is flimsy, to secure it with duct tape or properly. and take it to a shipper. Or do you know the way it is supposed to be done, or a person in New Orleans that does the service ? Paid, of course. Tried the UPS store, they do not pickup. Tried Taskrabbit and found the nastiest automated non-human computer-only interface that does not want to interact with an old f…

It is essential to ensure that ingredients are well mixed when bread making. I normally use 3 types of flour, sometimes more. How do you ensure a good mix ? I use a riffle spoon for the dry ingredients (including yeast), see the photo in the mixer bowl, before adding the liquid ingredients.

Just a thought about the nature of economics...