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…

Not long ago I found myself growing a beard for the first time in my life - and doing so on the advice of my doctor who asked me to stop shaving while an eczema like inflammation was being treated. This was a novelty. Not only have I never grown a beard before, but neither did my father or any of my male relatives, so I had no fund of beard-growing lore to fall back on. I have spent the last couple of weeks finding out the hard way by trial and error what is involved, and would appreciate any other tips people could pass on. Growing a beard seems to be quite a painful process at first. You suffer from intense itching which can apparently last from 10 days up until a full …

hi for my notepad i'm trying to find if there is an existing term/Wikipedia page about the fact of searching/finding the explanation about how/why stuff exists Is cosmology the ultimate thing? Imagining the universe might be contained in something else, is there a term about going to the root? Imo it's difficult to imagine going to the ultimate origin of things, until there is nothing at all I can't imagine something coming from nothing I can't imagine something always existed So my belief now is that the human brain or just mine lol is currently not able to conceive/understand what is everything I guess the answer goes beyond the existing words, above "all" and "n…

Every time that I needed to deal with paint; was the same unavoidable messy spills. Today I fixed the always nasty situation. Cut-off 2 litre soda bottle necks; drilled 25 mm holes on lids and force inserted from inside. Made a couple. The lid can be transplanted to a next paint can when emptied. No need to make many. Simpler in plastic than metal lids. Am happy, this has to be a good thing.😀 There is larger necks in juice bottles if preferred... Edited... Someday I will learn to attach images...

Please help me to find political or scientific forums in the Web. Previously I wrote about politics at thephilosophyforum forum: The Philosophy ForumThe Philosophy ForumAn independent community-run forum for philosophical discussion, since 2015The Philosophy Forum An independent community-run forum for philosophical discussion, since 2015 www.thephilosophyforum.com www.thephilosophyforum.com But several months ago I was banned there, after creating a thread about Time Patrol, similar to this thread: The decision of the forum moderator to ban me seems even strange, because this thread was highly philosophic and "not too pseudo-scientific" for that forum. Maybe this …

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/