(biologist - artist - queer)
You’re the only magician that could make a falling horse turn into thirteen gerbils
Just curious, when you say “those products are still on the shelves”, do you mean they’re selling product from the lot numbers that were recalled?
You should be able to tell the grocery store employees and have them remove it if they’re selling recalled products, but also I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re only selling products that are no longer part of those recalled lots
Edit: WAIT you said “still not on the shelves”, sorry! Ignore my comment lol
shoulda said “yarrr, ye dumb bastard!”
awesome!! I’m psyched you caught it and enjoyed it :-)
I feel like I’ve seen this take a lot more in the past ~5 years than I did before. Not just that zoos are unethical, but that any animal ownership (or really interaction of any kind) is inherently abusive.
You’re certainly entitled to feel however you want about animal ownership and act accordingly, but personally I feel like it’s honestly kind of a weird take?
Humans are obviously not the only species that develops symbiolotic relationships with other organisms (in a diversity of power dynamics), but we are also not the only species who take on specifcally ownership or shepherd roles for other species (like spiders with frog pets, or fungus farmer ants, among many many other examples). Thus, the ontological position this opinion must operate from is that humans are somehow distinct and superior to nature, such that we have separate and unique responsibilities not to engage in mutualistic ownership with other organisms, on the basis that like, we’re somehow “above” that? That we’re so enlightened and knowledgeable that we exist in a category of responsibility distinct from all other organisms?
Of course, a lot of our relationships to animals can be described as harmful in other terms without needing to take this specific stance. Like, our relationship with many agricultural animals can be critiqued through the harm done to their individual well-beings and through the harm their propagation does to the global environment. Or irresponsible pet owners can be critiqued for how their unwillingness to control the reproduction or predatory abilities of their pets can harm local ecosystems, like an introduced invasive species might. Or valid criticisms of many zoos when they prioritize profits over animal welfare, rehabilitation, ecosystem restoration, and education. Or that the general public picking up wild animals is a problem because it disturbs their fragile ecosystems and traumatizes them, especially when done on the large scale of human populations (but distinctly not for ecological study, wild animal healthcare, education, etc., like Steve Irwin et. al) But none of these are specific criques of the mutualistic ownership relationship itself as much as problems with the way we handle that relationship.
Idk, I’m interested to understand your opinion, especially if it has detail I’m missing beyond “we shouldn’t have pets, zoos, or farms because we’re better than that”!
how reliable do you think herbs-info.com is?
(the answer is probably: not very)
that is pretty metal and sick, you’re right
the tradeoff is that the ring of fire means you can’t look directly at it even at peak totality…
but either is so friggin hype
pictures cannot capture the ephemeral, indescribable beauty of the moments of totality
total eclipse wins every time
get effin HYPE
That’s valid! I agree. I think in this case it would be reasonable for the model to give multiple (or like, at least one, jeez) images with white queens. I don’t disagree with anyone in that sense. I just also don’t think it’s worth pitching a fit when the dumbass model that has been trained to show more racial diversity produces (frankly comical) hallucinations.
The ethos of the trainers is a good one. Attempting to counter the (demonstrated, measurable) bias of many models toward whiteness is a good choice. I prefer that the trainers choose to address the bias even if it (sometimes, in early versions) makes the model make silly mistakes like this. That’s all.
it’s true that this would mislead children, but the model could hallucinate about literally anything. Especially at this stage, no one-- children or adults-- should be uncritically accepting what the model states as fact. That said, I agree LLMs need to improve their factual accuracy
Although it is highly debated, some scholars suggest Queen Charlotte might have had African ancestry, or that she would be considered a POC by today’s standards. Of course, she reigned in the 17-1800s, but it isn’t entirely outlandish to have a “Queen of Color”, if we aren’t requesting a specific queen or a specific race
People of color did live in England in the middle ages? Like not diverse in the way we conceive now, but here are a few papers discussing the racial diversity at the time. It was surely less intermingled than today, but it’s not like these images are impossible
Other things are anachronistic or fantastical about these images, such as clothing. Are we worried about children getting the wrong impression of history in that sense?
Of course increasing visibility and representation of all kinds of marginalized people is important. I, myself, am disabled, so I care about that representation too-- thanks for pointing out how we could improve the model further. I do kinda feel like people would be groaning if the model had produced a Queen with a visible disability, though… I would be delighted to be wrong on this front :)
It’s also like, I guess I would prefer it to make mistakes like this if it means it is less biased towards whiteness in other, less specific areas?
Like, we know these models are dumb as rocks. We know that they are imperfect and that they mirror the biases of their trainers and training data, and that in American society that means bias towards whiteness. If the trainers are doing what they can to prevent that from happening, whatever, that’s cool… even if the result is some dumb stuff like this sometimes.
I also don’t think it’s a problem for the user to specify race if it matters? Like “a white queen of England” is a fine thing to ask for, and if it isn’t specified, the model will include diverse options even if they aren’t historically accurate. No one gets bent out of shape if the outfits aren’t quite historically accurate, for example
You say you don’t like poetry, yet you write a lovely free-form poem. Suspicious…
Oooh it’s even cooler than that!! You’re spot on, acid is the problem. And acid from food, candy, coffee, etc. is harmful for enamel for sure.
But sugary stuff that isn’t acidic also rots teeth. Why? Because the bacteria in your mouth do what’s called lactic acid fermentation. Basically, when they take a sugar molecule and want to make “usable” energy out of it (in the form of something called ATP, or adenosine triphosphate), they end up creating lactic acid as a byproduct. In essence, the stuff living in your mouth makes acid out of sugar.
We also need to break sugar down into ATP, but we do something called cellular respiration instead. It uses oxygen and creates CO2 as a byproduct! That’s why we need oxygen to breathe, and why we breathe out carbon dioxide. But, when you work your muscles hard (lifting weights, sprinting), you might use the ATP in your muscles faster than your body can make it with cellular respiration. In that case, your cells will also do lactic acid fermentation! That’s what we’re feeling when we “feel the burn” (well, that and micro-tears in the muscle, in some cases).
Source: I’m a biologist! And I love sharing weird facts like this! Thank you for the excuse to write this out :-)
Other commenters have good suggestions also, but one option I haven’t seen mentioned would be to buy a powdered acid and make your own dilutions
It’s easy to get citric acid in a dry form (like the crystal coating on sour candy), you can get 10 lbs (enough to make many gallons) of it for like $30-50 online. I put a small scoop in my dishwasher to keep my cups from getting foggy from our hard water, and I use it to descale our kettle and in our laundry, too.
Just be careful, acid dilutions are no joke. Whether you get the cleaning vinegar or make a citric acid solution for yourself:
use nitrile or latex gloves when working with the acid solutions
wear something to protect your eyes, glasses are probably good enough but goggles are better
if you have an acid solution and want to dilute it, pour the acid into the water, not the water into the acid!!!
flush your skin or eyes with water immediately if the acid gets on you or your clothes
These rules might seem like overkill but better safe than sorry!
Citric acid is slightly stronger than acetic acid so if I were you I’d make like a 20% solution to have a similar effect to the cleaning vinegar (so like 100 g powdered acid to 400 mL water). You might have to mix it on the stove so that the water is simmering to get the acid to dissolve.
Again, be careful! But as long as you’re smart about it, take your time, and prioritize safety, you can definitely use this for descaling and cleaning (and cooking!)
OF content creators date non-creators all the time, just like other sex workers. There’s more to relationships than sex, and content creation isn’t the same thing as actual sexual intimacy and connection
First, I want to fully admit I didn’t watch the video. Apologies ahead of time if that causes me to be redundant or reductive.
Second, I’m also a biologist, although a molecular one.
Third, I agree with almost all of your premise and train of thought. We’re certainly more likely to get the likes of “bacterial mats” than intelligent life anywhere, and especially within a distance that we will ever realistically encounter.
I do wonder, though, how you (or maybe the video guy, but obviously not enough to watch the source material before making an ass of myself…) conceptually reconcile the small sample number of known planets with life (n=1) with the mindblowingly impossible number of worlds.
You say that intelligent life evolving only once indicates that it is difficult for evolution to “discover”, which is surely possible to be true. But given that we haven’t seen the evolutionary conditions on other hypothetical worlds, from what we know, the evolution of intelligent life has a perfect 100% success rate of occurring on planets with life.
In fact, you mention the independent convergent evolution of eyes as an indication that eyes are a “good idea”, and that they must be relatively easy for evolution to discover if they evolve independently, repeatedly. But evolution is subject to the whims of selective forces, so a different world would surely select for different traits. Eyes (or other extremely common evolutionary pathways… looking at you, crab body) might be less frequently selected for or be entirely useless, but intellegent decision making and tool use might evolve in ways we can’t even conceptualize in our context.
This also extends to the claim of how our world is evolutionarily dynamic (which you point out is hard to quantify in context). We don’t know the dynamics of evolution on other worlds, if it happens at all. Recombination could be a unique characteristic of DNA-based life on Earth or it could be extremely common. Other worlds might have longer or shorter evolutionary time lines, also, since our sun’s “working life” is shorter than average due to its size and density. Without another example for reference, we don’t know whether we’re evolving quickly and with diversity or slowly and conservatively.
I guess, I don’t think you are wrong, exactly. I just think you are necessarily making assumptions based on how things work here in order to extrapolate how things might work there– one has to! But the whole discussion (which continues, like this, to this day) revolves around just too many unknowns. We just don’t know, and can’t know.
Climbing down from my high-horse, though, I have to admit I’m biased, since I have a pet-belief that life is basically guaranteed to exist elsewhere (how freakish would it be for it to only happen once out of so, so many chances?). I honestly feel like there’s a good shot that it’s incredibly common, at least in a basic form. In essence, I suspect that if we find bacterial mats (or soup) on Enceladus or Europa then it’s basically certain that life is everywhere. But we won’t even likely know that in my lifetime, so… I keep dreaming!
I don’t think that’s true? They have a dysfunctional guilt/shame system but they still have other feelings, right?
deleted by creator
Pretty much every day, multiple times a day, with strangers, acquaintances, and friends. I think it usually brightens people’s day, and with strangers, I think delivery and content is much more important than what I look like or who I am.
For content, I only compliment choices, not attributes:
“Cool shirt!” is good, “Nice legs!” is not
“I love your haircut!” is good, “Your hair has such a nice texture!” is not
Tailored compliments are even better, ex. “That book (or other media) is awesome!” is great, if I really do like it, and it can start a conversation, but obviously I don’t lie and pretend I know it when I don’t.
For delivery, I keep it light and casual. I am mindful to only do it when they aren’t preoccupied, like on the phone or reading something. For tone, I guess I pop the compliment, smile, and movie on. For example, if we’re walking past each other-- I don’t slow down, and I look away immediately after giving a friendly smile. I don’t mean that I don’t care about their response, because of course I’m mindful to be sure I didn’t offend them, but I don’t burden them with needing to respond with gratitude or happiness. I think of it as, I want this person to have the (hopefully pleasant) information that their choice was seen and respected by a stranger. I don’t want anything back from them.
I would say 95-100% of the people I compliment seem to be genuinely happy I did, and of the ones who don’t react positively, I’d say the vast majority react neutrally. In the rare case where my compliment has totally failed, I usually go “Oh! I’m sorry” and again, disengage.
Obviously, with friends and acquaintances the options open up a little more, and usually I do follow up/continue the conversation instead of moving on. But it’s similar in the philosophy that I’m usually just trying to give them positive information, and not seeking anything in return. Compliments are not a tool to get people to talk to me or be friends with me. That can and does happen, but it’s not the point. Honestly, I think that’s the part that most people struggle with, if they feel like they don’t get good responses with compliments. It’s not for us.
I do think I’m probably an outlier, because I give compliments a lot. But I continue to do it because it seems to really make people smile!
Oh, good point! Yeah, in our old house (copper plumbing) plumbers usually did repairs with cpvc, not sure why.
Why post this summary article from an obscure news group when you could have posted the actual report from the former official?
It’s written in accessible language, so it’s not like it’s too technical to understand or anything…