TRcontrarian
Joined 6 years ago
Joined 6 years ago
Almost everyone has read or heard of Ready Player One (2011), which contains extensive descriptions of its own corporate dystopic metaverse, albeit one that I find insufferably cliche and unoriginal.
Metaverse descriptions are descended from the first cyberspace descriptions in Neuromancer (1984) which is a beautiful book worth a read.
I was only willing to try it out because I had heard it mentioned [0] on CGP Grey's cohosted podcast, Cortex, in the episode they did on productivity software subcultures. Specifically I think CGP Grey was saying he didn't "get" Obsidian but had observed a fanatic fanbase around it of people who thought it was god's gift to note-taking because it represented the links between knowledge in a unique way. Apparently I'm one of those people because I went from installing it for the first time to writing all my new thoughts down in it in the space of 3 days.
I suspect the real reason I liked Obsidian right away is that long ago I used Microsoft Onenote as a freeform notetaking app to just spew unrelated thoughts into that I could organize later. Onenote's interface was good, but there was no way to port those notes in an exportable format to a new computer when the one with a Onenote license died.
[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGrey/comments/ihkqjp/cortex_105_...
This information applies to the Italian honeybee subspecies kept in captivity (Apis mellifera ligustica) - the OP's article is about the african lowland honeybee (Apis mellifera scutella). The different honeybee subspecies are interesting: italian bees are nonaggressive, russian bees are hardy, etc.[2]
There's nothing special about workers having offspring either. When a honeybee queen gets old or weak, brood pheremones stop being able to suppress worker reproduction (worker policing fails [3]), and there are workers running around laying eggs in brood cells. Because workers have never mated with a drone, all their eggs are unfertilized and therefore hatch into drones [5]. This south african subspecies with a self-cloning female worker is really something unusual and unexpected, since those females should only be able to lay haploid eggs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_(bee)
[2] https://www.perfectbee.com/learn-about-bees/the-science-of-b...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_policing
In contrast, every regular marijuana user I've known long enough to form a judgement about their habit is very inoffensive to the people around them. It doesn't seem to bleed out into their work and emotional lives as much.
The evidence doesn't support marijuana being more dangerous than alcohol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_harmfulness#/media/File:D... Alcohol is moderately more habit forming, and several orders of magnitude more dangerous.
It actually surprised me that you can buy uranium glass online on ebay or etsy. It's not controlled or anything, and there are some very weird old curios manufactured last century. (https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...). I bought a tiny little salt cellar this way once the desire to own something radioactive overcame me.
NileRed even made a video of manufacturing his own uranium glass https://youtu.be/RGw6fXprV9U?t=1048
[1] https://darktower.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_Series [2] https://stephenking.com/darktower/ [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/02...? [4] https://stephenking.com/xf/index.php?threads/which-king-book...
Epee fencing, on the other hand, uses a heavier, stiffer sword, so when you poke somebody it can bruise.
Sabre fencing is the third modern fencing style, and allows you to score points with the blade (slashing) instead of just the point as with foil and epee. I've never done it but have heard it is the most physical style of the three.
This photo is of an epee match, but displays the still considerable flexibility of the weapon and the electrification wires that trail behind each combatant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89p%C3%A9e#/media/File:Fin...
I am disappointed to see ideas that have failed to deliver for a decade like drone delivery (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-unveils-futuristic-plan-...) and 3D printing (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2011/02/10/the-printed-wo...) have a very long buzzword shelf-life, presumably because they are enduringly futuristic. First principles should tell us that most manufactured goods will never be 3D printed. There are entire fields of engineering dedicated to manufacturing processes, because the final material properties and cost of an item are affected by things like cooling rate, grain orientation, surface finish, tensile strength, and tolerances. 3D printing is another tool in the toolbox, not a replacement for the toolbox. I personally find them useful for ideation, but useless for creating finished products. It is worth considering that the entire market for 3D printers consists of rapid prototyping and Etsy knicknacks, and that it has been saturated.