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I think one of the things that fundamentally bothers me when conspiracy theorists get into scientific topics is the basic laziness of it.

There are a lot of things about the universe that are hard to understand or that nobody understands, but to a remarkable extent it's basically an open book. It takes a lot of effort though. It works in complicated and subtle ways that the human brain isn't trivially suited to comprehend. Trying to understand all that is a huge adventure.

These people imagine that all of the big questions of existence have easy peasy answers but that they only seem hard because someone is deliberately hiding the answers from them, like some annoying nerd who won't let them copy their homework. We got the answers all handed to us on a silver platter but they're locked up in a government warehouse somewhere next to the Ark of the Covenant.

Mon père était à la télé dans l'émission "C'est toujours pas sorcier" (à 9:50 et à 2 reprises après) : france.tv/france-4/c-est-toujo

My dad was on TV talking about meteorite iron found in archaeological artifacts prior to the iron age. They know it's from meteorites due to the high nickel content not found in ordinary iron objects.
(video requires IP address from France; I use ExpressVPN)

@holothuroid @johncarlosbaez I haven't looked at the map too closely but it looks like the 13-year and 17-year populations do not generally overlap in space, and same-period but different-phase populations don't overlap either. This would confirm that something left in the environment contributes to self-stabilizing around one particular period and phase.

@holothuroid @johncarlosbaez It would be nice to understand the determinism for these periodicities (I want to believe there's a conserved 4-year cycle in there and a super-cycle (x3 or x4) + 1 normal seasonal cycle). According to cicadas.uconn.edu/broods/, spurious broods are common. It's not clear what happens to their descendants. More speculation tells me that it's possible that the large broods leave something in the environment that prevents spurious/smaller broods from being successful. That would ensure regional stability.

@pussreboots I'm not autistic but I'm really curious about this. Do you mean the liquid, the powder, the plastic bottles, or something else?

@jason@don.hammons.llc for identification purposes, you should get a forum that covers your area + a book. For California, these Facebook groups are great:
- The California Mushroom Identification Forum facebook.com/groups/7734655693: identification only
- Mushroom Hunters of California facebook.com/groups/6414096293: anything else about wild mushrooms

Then there are groups devoted to specific activities around mushrooms (eating, growing, ...) or specific mushrooms. Amanita Muscaria Science and Magic facebook.com/groups/amanitasci is an interesting one.

First piece of 2024! Here's some music I was listening to, a cover of Depeche Mode's Somebody by hante: youtu.be/l84NU2ZWo9I

@toiletpaper @freemo I noticed that most cops are way better at staying calm than I am. So, thankfully, I live in a wealthy neighborhood that doesn't require gates or guns.

@toiletpaper @freemo idk man, you don't want me to point a gun at you, you're still safer when it's done by a cop.
(me = random example of someone who's not interested in learning how to use a gun and therefore should probably not have to use one until that day comes)

Did you know the W3C published Ethical Principles for how the web should work?

w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principl

I find them so inspiring. And they guide what developers should be doing, too.

“The web should empower an equitable, informed and interconnected society. It has been, and should continue to be, designed to enable communication and knowledge-sharing for everyone… we need to consider the ethical implications of our work when we build web technologies, applications, and sites.”

I like the hobby of mushroom hunting. In particular, I like mushroom identification forums because their members stay down to earth. You won't find people patting each other on the back for being inexcusably terrible, due to the consequences of making mistakes.

On vouvoie les gens qui font des choses importantes mais on tutoie les gens importants.

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