TheVat

Passing along something Geordie posted on another forum, from an FB feed. Hypothetically, if someone was accused of having sex with goats by over 30 different people and regularly denied it, but also dropped very public hints about how much he liked to have sex with goats for decades, and ran a goat pageant to find the best looking goats, and was best friends with someone who who got convicted of fucking goats and trafficking goats to friends all over the world who also liked to fuck goats, and his name was in the classified goat fucker chronicles 5,000 times, and he wished other goat fuckers well in prison, what do you think the odds are that person is also a goat fucker?" Ragnar Blackwolf

I've been down that research alley. Yeah, quite a contrast. I turn off AI search on my Chrome browser. Wind turbines are the least offenders for powering data centers, IIRC the atmo physics analysis. @sethoflagos might know more on that. Don't understand that "simply". PV converts Sun that would have heated rural ground (in most installs). PV, via the computers it's powering, is turning solar radiance into hot air venting from the server building. Is that more warming than heated soil radiating? Seems like albedo would need accounting for, plus some other complications.

Deep spots, golf on a familiar trail, I'm a fan of log's top speed.

Yep, I had checked to see if there were conference proceedings, but those won't be out for a while as it's only been four days since it ended. I was hoping Fowler might have something on a preprint server like bioRxiv, but nothing like that so far. I'm having trouble finding a detailed AAAS conference schedule which mentions an Anna Fowler. She's listed as a grad student at ASU, but the pop science coverage only makes reference to her doing an analysis of more than 20 studies on people’s near-death experiences, as well as studies conducted in animals peri- and postmortem. So she did a systematic review with some meta-analysis and not actual lab or clinical research. I notice media bottomfeeders like The Telegraph included some of Ms Fowler's more outrageous claims, e.g. (regarding prompt organ harvesting) "This is done to ensure the organs are fresh and not damaged for their transplantation into a patient in need, but Ms Fowler says that in these cases a donor may still be conscious while their organs are harvested." I can see why she drew a cluster of reporters with such horror movie speculations. Rather irresponsible - that kind of thing gets amplified in the echo chambers of the Web and you could get people changing their organ donor status.

Can't find the original paper or the data it contained. There's lots of "may" in this report, but I don't see how the dots are being connected to leap from random neural firings to consciousness. This needs the cited study. And there's a larger body of research showing synaptic connections (the connectome) breaking up within a few minutes, so Fowler needs to show how countering forces could keep the connectome intact. Cellular autolysis and ion deregulation would seem to make any continued functional neural activity quite difficult.

The New YorkerThe BoyosphereOn today’s episode of the podcast, why mommies are obsolete and naps are for the weak.

Not my field, but there is a branch of developmental psychology that studies cognitive and emotional maturation from birth to adulthood. While individual timelines for all that varies on an individual basis, there do seem to be markers that are fairly consistent within a specific culture which highlight vulnerability to manipulation, coercion and abuse by an unscrupulous adult. Probably one solid empirical foundation are studies of those who do suffer mental health problems stemming from such exploitation in their early teens. IOW, it's not just about cognitive tests of situational judgment or impulse control or that sort of thing - it's also about case histories of adolescents and pre-adolescents who have been preyed upon. My own daughter I didn't have much to worry about, I'm happy to report. There was one manipulative BF when she was quite young, and she ended that chapter by grabbing his motorcycle helmet and whacking him over the head with it. Maybe not the ideal way to resolve differences, but I think it was a useful life lesson for that fellow.

A minister, Ronno Connor, received a plan for Panama which seemed less ambitious than the canal project... A man, a plan, Rev. - draw pup, martyr electrons, snort celery, tramp upward, vernal Panama.

One option a friend found in India was that many vegetarian restaurants in India, especially in tourist areas and population centers, are kosher certified, which is a more strict regulation of vegetables, grains, and fruit than halal. Halal just avoids contamination from pork products or alcohol, but kosher (kashrut) also requires specific treatment of plant foods. Also, this approach means you will (a) be better acquainted with how many Indians eat, and (b) avoid meat, which is where contamination is most serious. You may even find that vegetarian dishes are delicious, and your bowels will thank you.

And how does one obtain a rate, for any natural process?

My sense is that some kind of picayune technical definition of pedophilia is being used in order to somehow lessen Epstein's crimes. Even if a 14 yo girl is not precisely a child, there can be little question that someone middle-aged exploiting someone clearly not an adult in this way is committing an act deservedly labeled as a crime. Good grief I can't believe I even have to point this out. With regret, I must put this poster on ignore.

Sometimes Turnip's "foreign relations" are really just him flexing for a fellow billionaire, as with his recent blockage of opening the Windsor-Detroit bridge. The only deal here is not really about Canada, or their paying tribute to his orange magnificence, but about showing how he can toss treats to the oligarchs. (Gift link) The AtlanticTrump Has a Bridge He Wants to Sell YouThe president’s closure of a trade route from Detroit to Windsor will help a billionaire and hurt basically everyone else.

Given the POTUS' fondness for CO2, perhaps a nice gift could be pumping his office and suite full of it? I myself have heard it's an excellent sleep aid. Things like allowable tailpipe emissions are set by the EPA, which has federal regulatory authority. States are allowed to have stricter emission limits, and CA has done this often. But the EPA regs do not carve out exceptions for states to be less strict. Whatever Turnip does, some states will retain stricter regs. And since they are populous states like NY and CA that will still prod automakers to comply.

Some clarification needed. Didn't James Patterson (who wrote the source material for the series) use some media sources for parts of his book? Which media sources are you accusing of lies and manipulation? You need to back up your bashing of media with some documented examples.

Abraham Lincoln and Darwin were born the same day, same year. Darwin had somewhat nicer accomodations, at that time, than our log cabin president. Thanks to mom's being from the wealthy Wedgwood family and father being an eminent physician and FRS. And a grandfather was Erasmus Darwin, a well-known naturalist who anticipated evolutionary theory with his writings on survival of the fittest. These inspired his grandson to develop a fuller and more robust theory.

Haven't checked recently but I know the US has bought a massive quantity of sheetrock from China. If tariffs are affecting that supply path, it could also effect carbon emissions - sheetrock (gypsum board, or "drywall") is pretty carbon heavy. IIRC our purchases have switched more to Mexico and Canada. (And that path is also plagued with supply chain problems and raw material shortages, and now some tariffs, so it's been pretty crazy when I go to a building supply store recently.)

Capitalism is by its nature an amoral system. Guys like Warren Buffett (one of the very few billionaires who seems to retain a moral center) are rare. Buffett last I checked has laid plans to give away 99% of his fortune to charitable causes. Weirdo.

I guess hydroelectric could be categorized as "cloud storage." 😗

A lot would depend on degree of association, ranging from "researcher struggling for grant money, wetting his beak in the billionaire pond and not paying attention" to severe Chomsky Syndrome (i.e. remains friendly and sympathetic to known pedo/pimp/sexual abuser). My biggest disappointment is Chomsky, given his career of standing up for the poor and disadvantaged and standing against oligarchs and capitalist power. That kind of hypocrisy is a head-scratcher.

Yes it makes more sense with a single source of light at night. I must have adjusted my desk lamp at night for least shadow, without thinking much about it. By day, we had an old house with lots of windows, so there was light bouncing all over, and no deep shadow problem.

In US, sadly, there are now newer buildings with smaller windows and less reliance on natural light, so that LH layout may be no longer followed. All my pre-college schools, in the sixties and early seventies, had windows on the left. (Unless they were a chem lab or woodshop area, where we sat at lab tables, so people faced both ways. ) I was LH, but it never crossed my mind that there were light/shadow issues with writing.

The details matter because Turnip steadfastly denied that they ever happened. His insistence of no influence from foreign powers weakens any later claims he might make. Civil unrest "carnage" or drug "invasions" are easier, and the red meat his followers are hooked on. Even the RW leaning Roberts court has deferred to the doctrines of states rights - that's how we got Dobbs v Jackson, our SCOTUS ruling on abortion rights sent back to the states. Several conservative justices have made clear they view the Constitutional framework for states rights as sacred. Not even Turnip can intimidate them away from that. And a recent decision or two has affirmed that states retain control of their elections. He might use civil unrest to leverage a delay, because an extended delay allows more time to subvert the various legal and institutional checks presently in place on his regime. We've already seen what 13 months with a GOP majority Congress can do to batter away at such.

I don't think that's inevitable, given that even many conservatives value our system of each state controlling its elections - it's enshrined in Article I of our Constitution. Also, I think foreign interference is not the only pretext, and is harder to sell to Congress than, say, civil unrest or voter fraud. And again, the reality controlling 50 different voting systems could prove far more daunting than what Turnip imagines. States rights is an issue that can draw strong bipartisan support. There's also the problem that the only proven instance of foreign interference was when Turnip won, in 2016. I'm guessing he might rather lean hard on civil unrest and "insurrection" to delay the midterms.

Yes, and it's a classic joke, which I first heard as a teenager, and not in a vaccine context. It went something like: Doctor: Your baby has jaundice. Mother: I want a second opinion. Doctor: Okay. Your baby is ugly!