I haven’t done this in ages. How about an open thread? Just talk about whatever you feel like, except politics –we already have a long-running thread dedicated exclusively to political topics. Go ahead and tell me about all the things I’ve been neglecting for ages.
Well it just so happens ,had to phone of my credit cards earlier ,got into the security questions .
Fav book Catch 22 ,fav super hero ,forgotten ,a bit surprised when the answer was PZ Myers .lol.
Hi. I heard an interview with Dr. Diana Fleischman, evolutionary psychologist recently. PZ, do you know her work? I wasn’t convinced by some of her arguments.
I can’t get “Toss a coin to your Witcher” out of my head and damn it, scientists should invent brain scoops for ear worms.
I semi-unintentionally spent all seven days of Chinese New Year in my apartment (resting my ears and brain, writing, cleaning house), only stepping out twice for supplies. Then I go out this evening for some groceries, and EVERY face was covered in a mask because of the coronavirus. It’s been along time since I felt so out of place.
I don’t know Fleischman, that she’s an evo psych person probably means I don’t want to.
Will this be as long as that other thread?
George Conway Lists All of Trump’s Geopolitical Faux Pas in Epic Twitter Thread
At the bottom of every page it’s still 2014.
True. I’d need to dig into the templates to fix that, though.
Months of smoke in Australia, coronavirus in China, this is how the world ends – wearing a face mask.
Squids plus dinosaur teeth (OK, OK, flying reptile teeth), what’ not to love? https://www.sciencenews.org/article/squid-fossil-offers-rare-record-pterosaur-feeding-behavior
Hey, that doesn’t count, I already did that one.
Just saw this and it freaked me out – https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/29/trumps-geofencing-could-be-a-potent-political-issue/ – the Trump re-election campaign tracking mobile phones taken to Trump rallies by people and combining the information obtained for political purposes. This one would even surprise Orwell. It surprised me and I thought I was immune to being surprised about the dirty tricks now being used in politics in America. Tell me again about the “World’s Greatest Democracy”?
@3 Have you considered listening to something good, instead?
Jerry Kushner reads books then sells out the Palestinians. Wonder how J. Coyne will rationalize this.
Yeah, I said it.
Recipes?
Tonight, because I cannot be arsed to cook, I’m having a TV dinner. Which I will eat in front of the TV.
chigau: eggs and tomatoes? Fried cheese sandwich?
@ 2 arthur
Do you remember where the interview was?
Evolutionary psychologists usually are pretty nutty but the pubs listed on her C.V. often look rather interesting and solid but totally out of my area and that is just going by the titles.
She may be a lot less nutty than most E.P’s
I have read other papers from University of Portsmouth Psych Dept and they seem to have a solid dept but I can say the same for Toronto’s Psych Dept and they have Jordon Peterson.
@jrkrideau the Adam Buxton podcast. I was pretty skeptical of her claims, and wondered if she’d come up on PZ’s radar yet.
Coronavirus is a general name for a group of viruses, most of which cause minor upper respiratory tract infections (aka colds). SARS was also a corronavirus. So, China just pops up a terrifying mutant cold virus every few years?
Kobe Bryant. Apparently his helicopter was running without recommended safety equipment. So if the NTSB had teeth, he and the other 8 people on board would probably be alive today. When someone says “deregulation” and “cut the red tape” what they mean is that they want to run unsafe helicopters and similar things.
I feel like garbage. A co-worker ended his life on Monday night. His significant other found him after the fact. :(
Marcus
For that I would need eggs, tomatoes, and bread. I like turkey TV dinners.
I also watched Bubba Ho-Tep.
dianne, before the news came up, the only Kobe that I knew was beef.
Well, I certainly shan’t have such an accident, mine would only be pedestrian.
(I don’t get the feels for retired multimillionaire sportsballers who commute by helicopter)
—
Nothing like unsanitary, crowded animal markets with close proximity to people to expedite cross-species pathogenic transfers, and the Chinese do those better than anyone.
PS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huanan_Seafood_Wholesale_Market
All I can say is that I feel anxious, tired, and afraid. I hate my job. I hate most of my family. I hate my lonely, unproductive, unsatisfying job. I’m drinking too much. I hate watching our civilization slide into the dumpster fire that are current events and being powerless to stop our ultimate destruction. I don’t want to die before know actual penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse with a female of my l liking (not just hand and/or mouth stuff). I long for the sweet release of death. I want someone to really love me. I want a new kitty in my life. I want to sleep a full night’s rest and to wake up feeling refreshed and happy. Otherwise, if U can’t have any of the above, I long for the sweet release of death.
Knowing my luck, I’m not going to get any of these requests. All I can hope for is to die before the final apocalyptic end befalls is all.
Akira, I can guarantee you will indeed find the sweet release of death.
I don’t recommend expediting it, though. Why rush?
There’s always hope, however unfounded.
FWIW, when I’m kinda depressed, I revisit (or reflect upon)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn — puts things in perspective.
BTW, Ivan = John = Juan. My very name!
@19, the last working theory I’ve heard from my various epidemiology mailing lists was a strong suspicion that the reservoir is probably a bat, likely infecting hogs and from the hogs, making the jump to humans. still highly speculative though, but apparently, some of the sequences were primarily observed in bats in the past.
What is rather surprising to me is, people and the media are freaking out over a virus that’s about as nasty as influenza of any year other than 1918. The 1918 strain would be freakout worthy, most others, not so much, due to a rather low morbidity and mortality rate.
SARS and MERS this one is not.
Thankfully!
@12, geofencing sounds like something I could have fun with. Get a burner phone, register it to Merle Ambrosius, transfer the SIM to a developer’s handset I have, then get creative with the software, randomizing locations to appear as if I’m teleporting to distant places, generate false traffic, including jibberish traffic on a VPN port and generally waste their time or if I’m lucky, crash their analysis software.
The name, a mildly modernized version of Myrddin the Magician. Contact list would contain Arty, Lance and the rest of the knights of the mythical round table.
The only downside would be if the NSA was monitoring, I’ve done something similar while they were pen testing my network. Then, I’d get a knock on the door and guys with beer coming in and I really don’t like beer all that much. It is mentioned in my file that I prefer distilled spirits, especially Black Bush Irish whiskey, mead, MadIra wine or a quality port wine.
One barrel for me, a barrel for the guests. ;)
wzrd1:
Why are you surprised?
It’s novel. The WHO takes it seriously, but you don’t?
Considering people have, you know, died from the coronavirus, I’m taking it way seriously.
I’m playing this on the Xbox one if it looks fun to anyone.
http://www.thexboxhub.com/intense-interplanetary-strategy-game-worbital-now-available-on-xbox-one/
@28 Yes, it had occurred to me that young Democrats with burner phones could swamp the rallies and dilute the database, but that would mean listening to Trump…
Just bought a Kia Soul EV. Full of surprises. But the biggest surprise for me is that the thing I like best about it is not having to put a key in the ignition. It seems like such a small thing. Push the button on the fob to unlock the door and put it back in my pocket. Then get in, strap up, put a foot on the brake, push a button to boot up the system, rotate a big nob to put it in drive (parking brake turns off automatically. Car won’t let me drive with the parking break on.) and away we go. Amazing that cutting out two steps – putting the key in the ignition and releasing the parking brake – makes such a big difference.
wzrd1@28, have you seen the film Contagion? I was fascinated. Biology is my worst science though, so I don’t know how accurate the depictions were, but the exposition at the end that explained the sequence of events that led to patient zero blew my mind.
@21 – Autobot Silverwynde
I’m sorry to hear that. It’s of course particularly awful that his SO found him. I don’t know you, so anything I were to add would be some combination of trite, academic, and/or meaningless. I’ll still say I heard you, and I’m sorry it happened and I wish you well.
@33 – zaledalen
My 2015 Nissan Note has keyless ignition. The auto parking brake release is a new idea to me. My car beeps if I don’t fully release the brake. It also beeps if I drift out of lane without signaling, and (a different beep) if I signal a lane change and there’s a car I might hit. All very nice, but I worry about coming to rely on it.
Lovely weather in paradise today, only 43C in the city of Adelaide. I remember when 38C was considered seriously hot.
Lofty – And yet here in Taipei today, it was 10°C, with winds making it cold enough that the government issued a warning.
Prince George’s County cop (not far from Baltimore) charged with murder after shooting a seatbelted, handcuffed-behind-the-back suspect 7 times.
So, yes, it’s important to charge cops for their crimes instead of simply excusing them on the basis of their cowardice (the usual strategy). But what’s interesting to me is how the cop charged is Black. It’s very interesting to me that the folks who defend police violence at any cost disappear when the cop charged isn’t white.
Even the motions towards an eventually fair system of accountability have to be racist as fuck along the way.
Sorry for raining on the parade last night. I’m feeling… better?
As Emily Litella used to say, “Never Mind.”
Since someone said it earlier, Jerry Coyne has an interesting research paper just out if anyone’s interested.
Rapid and Predictable Evolution of Admixed Populations Between Two Drosophila Species Pairs Genetics 1/1/2020
Whoa, the sun is gnarly!
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=299908&org=NSF&from=news
…..
Ha! Ha! Trump’s wall is stupid!
…..
Wha? Wait for the pen, your brain is gaslighting you.
Re Trump’s wall blowing over- I live about 100 miles north of Mexicali and Calexico, where that happened. We had a lot of major wind up here, too. I have a 20 foot tall antenna that picks up air traffic signals ( I feed flightaware.com). As it was vibrating like a tuning fork, evidently I need to rig another brace for it. Gotta wonder just how the foundation works on the wall- that picture is pretty ridiculous.
New paper on cephalopods’ brains!
Circumcision. There was a discussion of this some weeks ago here and I never got around to adding my two cents. So
Intact men are more sensitive(see below).
Circumcision Cuts Penis Sensitivity
Intact men enjoy four times more penile sensitivity than circumcised men, according to the “Fine-touch Pressure Thresholds in the Adult Penis” article published today in the British Journal of Urology International. The study was conducted to map fine-touch pressure thresholds of the adult penis in circumcised and noncircumcised males to compare the two populations.
http://www.nocirc.org/touch-test/touchtest.php
I discovered this myself about 1993 listening to the Dr. Dean Edell show on radio and reading “The Joy Of Uncircumcising “by Jim Bigelow. By stretching my foreskin over the head of my penis I discovered that after about six weeks of it being covered I was about three times more sensitive and enjoyed sex much more.
As to the controversy of cutting and HIV see this http://www.nocirc.org/circ&aids.php
Table top roleplaying. I’m making my own game and settings, bit by bit. Trying to make more interesting games than kill monster, steal treasure, work well.
https://allusgamersrp.com
Also noticed some articles last year about how RPGs help developing school kid skills in math, memory retention, problem solving and social skills.
The series finale of The Good Place was beautiful.
I tried to watch it, but I tuned in late, and the “go back to the start” feature didn’t work for me, so all I saw was the end of the show and a cast interview afterward. It should be available to me tomorrow. (Who knew it was still possible to tune in late and miss a show?)
All: Become a beekeeper.
It’s not that hard, it’s fun, it’s relatively inexpensive, and sitting there and doing nothing–just watching the bees come and go–is therapeutic. And like I tell my wife, I have NEVER met a fellow beekeeper who is a true a**hole. Maybe some day it’ll rub off on me!
As an extra added bonus, I don’t think I have ever met a Drumpfh supporter who is also a beekeeper.
@#30, WMDKitty — Survivor
Right now, there have been over 9700 reported infections, and the death toll is apparently around 225. (It’s a little hard to find a source which lists current values for both at once, so I may be off a bit.) That’s a current mortality rate of around 2.3%. It will undoubtedly rise — some of those 9700 infections are recent and will almost certainly die instead of getting better — but probably not by an order of magnitude. So if “taking it seriously” means “don’t turn it into a joke, and take common-sense precautions against things which spread respiratory disease” then sure, but we’re still talking ordinary flu-like mortality, not ebola or something.
@Crip Dyke 45
That is fascinating. There’s so much more than I usually see in a general anatomy paper.
The X17 particle sounds intriguing, but alas, it’s got a whiff of the cold fusion wishfulness.
Couldn’t find it when I made that other post, but here’s an old comic from a now-defunct competitor of Wondermark.
How big oil exploits the legal system to intimidate critics: https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2020/01/30/how-big-oil-exploits-the-legal-system-to-intimidate-critics/#more-57026
Rain, glorious rain. A large tropical low has spent the last 24 hours firehosing the south of the continent and our place has registered over 50mm or 2 inches overnight. This will kick in the recovery of the burned areas around the country. Oh, and I hate it when reports say that land has been “destroyed”, “decimated” or any other such goofy superlative. It’s been burnt or burned, scorched, fried, whatever your local customs consider the result of a fire.
A pictorial essay of the recovery in NSW:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-01/natural-bushfire-recovery-underway-binna-burra,-blue-mountains/11916742
#48 SC
I agree.
“Guy catches adorable groundhog eating his veggie garden — and lets him have whatever he wants”
Video at the link.
Musical Interlude: Those were the days
memoriae Thunderdome and its progenitors
—
Also, for mine, she’s far too young to sing that song!
@Lofty #56
Wonderful, wonderful, news! I hope there’s not too much danger from “flash flooding” when all that water hits such a dry area (?) – of course, the Land is adapted for these kind of cycles, I’m just thinking about people who might be in the way…
Thanks for the link to that photo essay, it’s beautiful. The S.O. and I drove around eastern Oz, many years ago now, and so some of the places mentioned – Lamington, Kosciuszko, and the Blue Mountains – are familiar to me. I loved these places then, and think I would appreciate them even more now, watching the greenery come back; wish I could go back right now! (May do so, next year.)
Walnuts are a good snack. That is all.
In the news:Yamatji Nation Claim resolved granting native title and funding deal in Australian first.
Strangely addictive, and great fun for me:
The website game: https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
Its basis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer
Canine agility!
What are y’all giving up for Lent?
With CR in mind — nice descriptive link, too:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/whats-the-point-of-writing-every-possible-melody/607120/
chigau, giving up Lent for Lent.
PS The Pope says for Catholics to stop trolling on social sites for Lent.
(Well, it amused me)
This Pope is a bit of a putz.
March is coming in like a lion.
@KG #64 – Thanks for posting that – that great leap at the end of the trial really makes it!
“who’s a good doggie? You are, yes, you are!”
PZ, even as I write this “harveycooper” is spamming various threads.
Change your clocks!
Whatever for? E.g., mine is working just fine, powered by a rechargeable battery, and the previous one (which broke due to carelessness) was (mostly) recycled. And it’s very very unlikely to be infected with Covid-19.
I suspect one might mean adjusting to accommodate Summer Time (or Daylight Saving Time, as it is known in some parts (are there really clocks in those lands?)), or, if you hang on upside-down, to Standard Time (at this point in the orbit). The mildly deranged penguin (who is accustomed to hanging-on sideways, as well as bouncing around and even upside-down), on the other wing, suggests adjusting clocks to Cheesime, which is basically meal-time, which is all the time, provided cheese is involved. At which point the clocks are not-relevant and can be recycled. Individuals with “un”-recyclable clocks can eat them (albeit they are unlikely to be cheese; Covid-19 flavourings may vary).
Internet ‘is not working for women and girls’, says Berners-Lee:
test
Colourful:
Seven new species of Australia’s colourful ‘dancing’ peacock spider discovered
John Morales #77
that was amusing.
thanks.
It’s my birthday tomorrow. I will qualify for the bus pass.
As long as I fill out the forms….
Holy Smoggy Batzrubble, Batman!
Someone fed a bunch of BDSM erotica and the bible to a machine learning system (GPT-2).
“Do you want to go to hell? Because this is how you get a whole layer of special hell designed SPECIFICALLY FOR YOU.“
Owlmirror, what, this?
https://github.com/orange-erotic-bible/orange-erotic-bible/blob/master/the_orange_erotic_bible_v1.txt
I miss Smoggy.
(For a while, I kept misremembering Sluggy Freelance ;)
Never thought I’d like YT commenters, but here we are.
Tuning a guitar.
Guitar Lesson 1.
For some “good” news: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-17/norfolk-island-morepork-owl-new-generation/12150012