TheVat

I've answered this before, both on websites and in one of my jobs. Though phytic acid is often portrayed as an antinutrient villain on various amateur-run food websites, the professional consensus is that the mineral uptake inhibition is a rather weak effect and not significant for those without a pathological GI condition or severely limited diet. If one is worried, simply soaking oats (or other grain including the bran) overnight in excess water with a spoonful of lemon juice will neutralize the phytic acid. Then pour off the excess water in the morning. Same with beans. But most people in rich western nations eat canned beans - the pre-soak and cooking has already been done and taken care of the phytates. (Sourdough bread lovers may be happy to learn their phytates have been neutralized, as well) If you had, say, intestinal lesions from years of undiagnosed coeliac disease, then taking the extra steps might be worth your time. Check with a doctor and/or registered dietitian first.

Really? This is quite a serious charge, that public funds are being spent on private religious facilities. Do you have documentation for this, along with what percent of taxes go to mosques v public infrastructure and services? Have you contacted a national law enforcement group? Which shops? What percent of retail merchants? How much of this is due to general economic downturn and poverty, as opposed to being due to immigrants with some agenda? Where are these money laundering places documented, such that they came to your attention? Where did you see, or hear of this? Has this happened to your children? How often is "often" and what kinds of propositions or threats are made? Is the rate of such incidents higher than in largely native-born areas with comparable income levels? What is the average age of the child, in such encounters? Are we talking more about sixteen year old girls getting wolf whistles or 9 year old boys being recruited for pedophile rings? Such details matter, in terms of level of police response. And again, where might we access documentation of your claims? Not to mention insulting the scientific method which sees personal anecdotes and rumours as not constitutive of evidence. This being a science forum, this might be something Sunshine wants to amend.

I can't even begin to imagine reading the mindbending riddles of Kafka on the Shore is one sitting. "Nakata is not very bright." Murakami novels seem to me magical and having much warmth with interesting characters, but I don't get pulled along the way conventional plots can. Haven't read Kara and the Sun, but have it reserved at the library since I heard they were making a film version. I guess this is OT, since neither book is likely to answer the question of totalitarian ideologies and good faith debates. Or maybe Kara does have some totalitarian elements in its future society, based on the description I've read. 😀

Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell, seemed meticulous in its research to me, if you ever do get back to big, heavy, hardbound. My experience of about five years of retirement is that momentum is everything - i.e. don't ever stop reading books.

Some excitement here - we live about 25 miles from the detector, located at the SURF Lab, in the old Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, SD. DK if they still have Neutrino Days*, but that was an annual weekend up there when you could visit the lab. Possibly the only nerd tourist attraction in the Black Hills. OK, there's a geology museum in Rapid City, too. Sort of. * WIMP Days was also considered but for some odd reason didn't make the final cut.

This flurry of ludicrous and unsupported assertions about the plight of the white male and the notion that gaining civil rights somehow hobbled the prospects of white males. And that Trump sees a truth that somehow had not been noticed. This kind of race-baiting drivel is the heart and soul of totalitarian ideologies and their leveraging of grievance and xenophobia. And also your notion that the man needs "to have power" over his family, and that this can't be achieved when women have equal rights, compensation and opportunities to pursue careers that interest them...this sounds like sexist trolling of a very stupid variety.

No sarcasm whatever. I've often understood vast stretches of history by reading wiki entries for an hour. Just a few days ago, I learned that World War Two killed millions and left entire cities in ruins. Apparently it was quite a mess. I wanted to write a strongly worded letter, asking they not do this sort of thing again! And I think your protection of career politicians and their families by not voting for them is quite the clever strategy. Especially if they're Black. We don't want Black people attaining political office if they have adorable children and lovely spouses who probably haven't heard of racism.

An hour! Well done, you! This is quite the revelation. That's so nice of you, to be looking out for his family for him. Really, I'm inspired and henceforth will not vote for any candidate with adorable children.

I was thinking more about him investing millions in a president who loathes electric cars and the infrastructure they require. Nor does Musk's large battery (for utilities) initiative get much respect from the Turnip. It is true that agencies like NASA maintain contracts with SpaceX, and saved it from bankruptcy, but am not sure how much that owes to the Turnip. Just saying - maybe Musk has done better bribing county officials in Texas.

I suspect the Milo ejection was just for show. "See? We're not racist! We will even deport white Englishmen!" Milo was convenient, since Loomer had already put a target on his back, so they could kill two birds with one stone. This would make Timothy Mellon and Elon Musk the worst investors in the history of the nation.

"Dear" Mr POTUS, Why are you and your MAGA brigade so afraid of letting people vote? Could it be that your policies and leadership really suck? AP NewsPostal Service work to comply with Trump's executive orde...A whistleblower for the U.S. Postal Service is warning that a new mail ballot system being hastily built to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order restricting that method of voting couldThe U.S. Postal Service is poised to launch a hastily built, error-riddled computer system that could jeopardize the process of mail voting relied upon by one-third of all voters, according to a whistleblower statement released Tuesday by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal. The effort is part of the implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting and has been temporarily halted by a federal judge. The ruling is being appealed by the administration and the directive may ultimately end up back before the U.S. Supreme Court. The disclosure from the unidentified whistleblower contends that the Postal Service has been scrambling to try to build a complex system that would normally take a year or more in only three months, sometimes in defiance of the judge’s orders halting work. The goal is to have it ready for use in the midterm elections. (...) A report by the Brookings Institution published in 2025 found that mail voting fraud occurred in only about four cases out of every 10 million mail ballots cast.

Straw Lager (tin keg), a mallard Dr. - all? A mage knit regal warts. Bomb mallard, eh, taco? No deities use I, tied on, O cathedral lamb mob.

Denver Zoo Conservation AllianceLucy the African Pygmy Goose - Denver Zoo Conservation Al...Where They Hang Out At the zoo: in Bird World In the wild: swamps, marshes, shallow lakes, slow moving rivers and other bodies of water in Africa Favorite Foods At the zoo: greens, specially formulat Apparently a species of Least Concern with the IUCN. Quack!

Yes, that's the principal conclusion of all the research. Ducks are totally f-ed. NAAM, the National Association for the Advancement of Mallards, was the primary funding source. 🙃

(gift link) https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/08/el-nino-effects/688429/?gift=43H6YzEv1tnFbOn4MRsWYhe5nEFgk7C87XxiXaHSqXw&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share This El Niño Will Be Unlike Any in the Past Eight DecadesDie-offs and floods have started already, a prelude to supercharged storms and droughts. By Joshua Partlow In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, along the equator, scientists have drawn a box. It’s a big box, two-thirds the size of China, yet hardly anyone lives inside it. This rectangular swath of open ocean is monitored by satellites and a network of moored buoys that measure minute changes in the temperature of the water, with an eye toward anomalies. Every few years or so, driven by changing winds and currents, the water temperature in this part of the ocean starts to rise; even a half degree Celsius above normal over months warrants a designation that an El Niño phase has begun. That’s enough warming to unleash floods and fires, drought and famine, around the world. The box is called Niño 3.4. Right now, it’s hot in the box.(...) ...Most of the world experiences El Niño’s ripple effects as the heat building up in the equatorial Pacific radiates into the atmosphere and around the globe. This means great gouts of rain in supercharged storms in some places; in other areas, crop-killing dry spells that can extend for months. Along the Pacific Coast of South America, torrential rains and landslides have forced the temporary closure of a main route to Machu Picchu, in Peru; deadly floods have swept through arid regions of northern Chile. Countries such as India and Ethiopia are enduring some of their driest summers on record. El Niños tend to mean more rainfall across the southern United States and drier stretches across a band in the North. Strong El Niños can mean record-breaking heat, and this one is shaping up to be unlike any catalogued in the past eight decades. A 2-degree-Celsius increase in the Niño 3.4 box typically earns the title of “Super El Niño”; we’re already past that threshold, and experts project that the warming could peak at roughly twice as high.

Interesting stuff, with quite a complex snarl of possible causal chains between orbital eccentricities, axial tilt, and climatic effects. What I've gathered about Milankovich is that the main effect is on the magnitude of seasonal temp changes - IIRC, he focuses mainly on large landmasses in the N hemisphere where the swings are more pronounced than in the oceans. It will be interesting if they can really connect all those dots, between orbital and obliquity forcings and things like Fe deposition in marine sediments. I might have switched from bio to geo in college, if calzones had been involved.

And get their health information from quacks?

Yep. I recall when Portland was in the RW crosshairs as Shithole of the Month. Anyone who has actually been to Portland had a good laugh - has to be one of the prettiest and most livable large cities in the nation.

The supervolcano under Yellowstone we live 360-400 miles east of (prevailing westerlies would bring us ejecta) reportedly still has the capacity for super-eruptions. Ashfall fossil beds are found at our present distance or greater, produced by ultraplinian events from Yellowstone. In NE Nebraska, 400 miles farther east, ashfall was a foot deep on average but more concentrated in depressions, up to ten feet. As we are closer, and between a couple of ridges in a scoop-like neighborhood, I would see us as lucky if our chimney opening (about 26 feet above grade) remained above the ashfall and allowed us some air exchange. I suspect ash would undermine the power grid quickly, so if eruption seemed imminent I'd want to keep battery powered sabre saws charged, in case we needed to cut our way out of the attic to leave, and help neighbors also escape. N95 masks, snowshoes, and emergency backpacks fully stocked. Or the house collapses and we join a future fossil-rich tephra layer with anomalous inclusions of aluminum and lithium. 🌋 Not for another million years, I hope.

Go Daniel Dennett! Alf did flatten Ned Lein, a dog.

Haha. Do you think the aliens would take both of them off-planet in an exchange? That would really clear a lot of tedious crap from American newsfeeds.

Heavens! A curated assemblage of pertinent facts! I admit I didn't know much about the UK system until I saw Dirty Pretty Things a few years ago. Which, though not a curated assemblage of facts, did make me aware of the no-work requirement for asylum seekers. It did leave me curious about the work ban. If the asylum seekers are only getting a pittance from the government, wouldn't it give them a bit of dignity (and possibly help with joining UK life, if they end up staying) to at least work part-time in areas where labour is short supply? (Or will they all end up preyed upon by kidney black marketeers, as in DPT?)

Sounds like one of those words that means whatever people want it to mean when they're trying to form a sense of personal identity combined with a sense of belonging. A lot of people just check the trad boxes, nationality and religion. That doesn't work for me too well, since I'm a blend of ancestral nationalities and religious sects, plus several who more or less rejected parts of those. One even burned down a forest belonging to a king, to protest excesses of the monarchy. They didn't talk about him much on that side of the family. No wonder he's disgruntled. It probably made him start to hate English cooking.

"We will trade Taylor Swift for safe, commercially scalable fusion." Classic, I remember it. Shows how one can deceive employing literal truth.