exchemist

To make you feel more at home, you mean?

😆

Hoho, don't worry, I haven't. Just reported it. But indeed they are trying new methods to get round the anti-spam measures.

And now I've just been sent a private message, by some new shitbot calling itself @ArzuOzoguz123 , saying just "Hello".

By the way, right on cue, here is an example of the kind of semi-plausible, but borderline necro, pointlessly content-free and thus suspicious, post from a new joiner (last one in the thread):https://scienceforums.net/topic/126922-url-shorteners/ Pound to a penny this entity will post a link with spam in it within the next few days. I suppose one could argue that this type of probable spammer could in fact be weeded out by moderation asking, by email, for more information but it would be a lot of extra work, I should think.

Yes I’ve had it return a 503 error as well, though I don’t know what that signifies. But I did wonder if there was a DDOS attack in progress to shut them down. If they were kaput because of the lawsuit I’d expect their Wikipedia entry to mention it. I was however pleased to see Kennedy has an entry in the Encyclopedia of American Loons: https://americanloons.blogspot.com/search?q=Kennedy. So dissent is still alive and kicking in some corners of the internet. And, as I say, Snopes is still working.

Because that does not stop them spamming in their second post. How can a moderator tell, from an initial post, what the intentions of the new member are? You can already see that some of these spammers start off with plausible or semi-plausible "sciency" posts, wait a few days and then come back with the spam. It's tricky. But this is all being discussed on the other thread anyway. Best not to duplicate it here I suspect.

You are descending into woo, by the look of it, with this "invisible threads" stuff. Where is the evidence for this idea and what does it explain? In science, you cannot just make shit up. Your theories have to be testable by observation of nature. As to your question about creating life just by mixing molecules together, the answer is almost certainly not. Life requires a whole set of structures as well as biochemical reactions. There are a lot of sub-assemblies. The goal of research into the origin of life is to understand how it may have occurred, not to try to replicate it.

Yes, I reported one too - but then recalled that we were told not to do that as it made more stuff for the mods to wade through, the spam posts themselves being fairly obvious. Oops. 🫢 I see there has been more discussion about countermeasures.

For the last few days I have ben unable to reach Rationalwiki. There does not seem to be any commentary on the internet about this, and I suppose there may be an innocent explanation. However I have an uneasy feeling about this, in view of the attack on academic freedom by the Trump administration. I would expect Rationalwiki to be something of a target, as it focuses on debunking pseudoscience, conspiracy theories and misinformation. Snopes I see is still however functioning normally. Does anyone have any information about this?

Somebody seems to have shot @Dirtbikesports , just as he or she was starting to tell us what all this paves the way for.

Certainly could have been candida about it.

Actually it seems, from what I have quickly read, that Kahm yeast ("kamma yeast" seems to have been made up by the bot) is a description encompassing a variety of yeasty growths, including candida varieties. So the bot was not entirely off-target, though we are probably lucky it didn't start burbling about vaginal swabs etc.

Wy yu sudenly tork bullox at end?😁🤡🔫

What do you want to discuss?

It seems to me this is making rather a meal of something simple. Surely there is a natural progression in degree of certainty from "I think" to I believe" , and then to "I know", is there not? "I believe" to me implies sufficient certainty to base decisions on, while bearing in mind there is still some risk of being mistaken. This is a completely normal state of affairs, which probably applies to a large part of what we do as human beings. If we were to wait for complete certainty we would be paralysed with indecision. Given that we live, perforce, in a world of shades of grey, I do not see it is as irrational to base decisions on a high probability of being right rather than waiting for complete certainty.

For non-cyclic alkanes the 2n + 2 rule applies. For single ring cycloalkanes is it 2n, because the joining together of the ends to make a ring takes the place of what would in a straight chain be 2 H atoms. For more complicated structures like the norbornane example, it is frankly not worth memorising a rule as they won't come up often. Just draw the structure and count them!

Propane is C3H8 (the 2N +2 rule). Propyl would be with one H missing, as it is a group joined to something else by one of the bonds to carbon, so C3H7- , unless the propyl group itself has further substituents. Yes, iso means it is branched with a methyl group on the 2nd carbon atom. Your example (b) seems to follow that OK as there is an isopropyl group (C3H7) on the 5th carbon atom of the octane backbone. Your example ( c ) likewise follows that rule OK, as there is an isopropyl group, this time written as CH(CH₃)₂, so again C3H7, on the 4th carbon atom of the decane backbone. In your example (d) the confusing factor is that the pentyl, C5H11, side chain on the 5th atom is written as a propyl group but with itself having 2 further methyl substituents. Each of these takes the place of what would otherwise be a hydrogen atom, so the propyl chain is now C3H5 instead of H7, with 2 methyl groups bolted on in place of the missing H atoms. Further note: There is a page on nomenclature here that may be helpful:https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Organic_Chemistry/Map%3A_Organic_Chemistry_(Smith)/04%3A_Alkanes/4.06%3A_Common_Names

Heh heh. I just hope it is useful and that you can understand my explanations.

The idea of horse dung, presumably.

It's a shame. I think the viola has a rather lovely sound, rather as a contralto often has a richer, sexier sound than a soprano. Bach's 6th Brandenburg for instance.

The Bunter sandstone would be a particularly fat stratum, presumably? 😁. Yaroo........

But this wing is being held rigidly at a certain angle to the medium. In your scenario that is not the case, surely?

Excuse me if I am being a bit dim here, but doesn’t CPT symmetry mean you invert all 3 parameters together? So your inversion would mean a positron, circulating in the opposite sense and going backwards in time, wouldn’t it? So it’s only gaining energy if time runs backwards. That seems sensible enough, surely?

What makes you think it should be gaining energy, when obviously (experimentally) it is losing energy. Surely it would only do that if time were to run backwards?