What are you reading?

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  • Rdp77
    Rdp77 Posts: 8,077 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I’ve read where this has been done other places to help prevent evaporation.

    If it don’t bother me, it don’t bother me. Just leave me alone.

  • dirtdude
    dirtdude Posts: 6,219 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @silvermouse said:

    Dammit, Maud, you're driving me nuts, I'm not irritable

    Irritable Male Syndrome (IMS) Is An Actual Condition — And It Could Explain A Lot
    While not a clinical diagnosis, experts say it’s an accurate description of a cluster of symptoms that often appears in aging men.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/irritable-male-syndrome-ims-is-an-actual-condition-and-it-could-explain-a-lot-goog_l_68d553eae4b01e99f72ddfee

    I'm sure my Pops had this, that's how I learned how to cuss when he worked on the car

    A little dirt never hurt
  • WolfHunter909_
    WolfHunter909_ Posts: 92 ✭✭✭

    Right now I'm currently Reading Python Crash Course and Python Programming..The plan is to help me learn more about cyber security and learning tools

  • Yakster
    Yakster Posts: 31,541 ✭✭✭✭✭

    We used to use a chore wheel so that everyone got a turn at the chores.

    Join us on Zoom vHerf (Meeting # 2619860114 Password vHerf2020 )
  • edz
    edz Posts: 340 ✭✭✭✭

    @silvermouse said:
    @MoleRat

    Perhaps you live in the kind of household that likes to divide up the chores. You take the dishes, while someone else does the trash. If so, you are not so far off from the habits of a naked mole-rat, according to a new study.

    The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, show that individual naked mole-rats perform specific duties for their colony, including digging, transporting garbage, and cleaning the “toilets.” The study reveals that the rats undertake a form of task allocation that helps the colony function more efficiently, according to the researchers.

    https://gizmodo.com/some-naked-mole-rats-are-just-born-to-clean-toilets-study-suggests-2000670578

    Honey bees do the same. And they are probably the only animal that raises daughters to not go out and mate. Males,drones are pretty much a waste. Either breed and die or do nothing until fall/winter when the girls throw you out of the hive, and then they die.

  • Yakster
    Yakster Posts: 31,541 ✭✭✭✭✭

    In our household even the adults got chores. The chore wheel worked great, that and making the kids "cook" at least one night each week, do laundry, and shop prepared them for moving out.

    Join us on Zoom vHerf (Meeting # 2619860114 Password vHerf2020 )
  • Rdp77
    Rdp77 Posts: 8,077 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Cracks me up when people are considered “foodies” for eating something people have been eating for centuries. Chapulinas are pretty good.

    If it don’t bother me, it don’t bother me. Just leave me alone.

  • silvermouse
    silvermouse Posts: 23,537 ✭✭✭✭✭

    A cellular entity retaining only its replicative core:
    Hidden archaeal lineage with an ultra-reduced
    genome

    Abstract
    Defining the minimal genetic requirements for cellular life remains a fundamental question in biology. Genomic exploration continually reveals
    novel microbial lineages, often exhibiting extreme
    genome reduction, particularly within symbiotic relationships. Here, we report the discovery of
    Candidatus Sukunaarchaeum mirabile, a novel archaeon with an unprecedentedly small genome
    of only 238 kbp —less than half the size of the
    smallest previously known archaeal genome— from
    a dinoflagellate-associated microbial community.
    Phylogenetic analyses place Sukunaarchaeum as a
    deeply branching lineage within the tree of Archaea,
    representing a novel major branch distinct from established phyla. Environmental sequence data indicate that sequences closely related to Sukunaarchaeum form a diverse and previously overlooked
    clade in microbial surveys. Its genome is profoundly stripped-down, lacking virtually all recognizable metabolic pathways, and primarily encoding
    the machinery for its replicative core: DNA replication, transcription, and translation. This suggests an unprecedented level of metabolic dependence on a host, a condition that challenges the
    functional distinctions between minimal cellular life
    and viruses. The discovery of Sukunaarchaeum
    pushes the conventional boundaries of cellular life
    and highlights the vast unexplored biological novelty within microbial interactions, suggesting that
    further exploration of symbiotic systems may reveal
    even more extraordinary life forms, reshaping our
    understanding of cellular evolution.

    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.02.651781v1.full.pdf

  • silvermouse
    silvermouse Posts: 23,537 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 17

    Dragonflies are master predators, catching up to 95% of the prey they go after.⁠ For comparison, birds of prey only capture around 25%.⁠ Part of dragonflies’ predatorial prowess comes from the aerial acrobatics allowed by having four wings that can work separately, in pairs, or together. Dragonflies can even fly backwards⁠. Each wing is a gossamer extension of the exoskeleton, only about 3 micrometers⁠ thick—a little over 1/10,000th of an inch—yet it can hold up through the weeks to months of a dragonfly’s adult life.

    Thinner than a human hair, dragonfly wings are highly durable, with antimicrobial, water-resistant, and anti-reflective properties and more. In a new study, a group of researchers examine a variety of chemical and structural qualities of dragonfly wings (of the species Aethriamanta rezia, shown here) to seek inspiration for human technical innovation. (Photo by mmatthiessen via iNaturalist, CC BY-NC 4.0)

    More here:
    https://entomologytoday.org/2025/10/14/dragonfly-wings-marvels-strength-durability/

  • edz
    edz Posts: 340 ✭✭✭✭

    @silvermouse said:
    Dragonflies are master predators, catching up to 95% of the prey they go after.⁠ For comparison, birds of prey only capture around 25%.⁠ Part of dragonflies’ predatorial prowess comes from the aerial acrobatics allowed by having four wings that can work separately, in pairs, or together. Dragonflies can even fly backwards⁠. Each wing is a gossamer extension of the exoskeleton, only about 3 micrometers⁠ thick—a little over 1/10,000th of an inch—yet it can hold up through the weeks to months of a dragonfly’s adult life.

    Thinner than a human hair, dragonfly wings are highly durable, with antimicrobial, water-resistant, and anti-reflective properties and more. In a new study, a group of researchers examine a variety of chemical and structural qualities of dragonfly wings (of the species Aethriamanta rezia, shown here) to seek inspiration for human technical innovation. (Photo by mmatthiessen via iNaturalist, CC BY-NC 4.0)

    More here:
    https://entomologytoday.org/2025/10/14/dragonfly-wings-marvels-strength-durability/

    New outlook on them. In the past I have despised them for the havoc they can play in whipping out a bee hive,

  • silvermouse
    silvermouse Posts: 23,537 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I did not know they went after bees. Learn something new every day. Thanks.

  • ShawnOL
    ShawnOL Posts: 13,321 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I've always thought they were cool. Those and preying mantis.

    Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.

  • silvermouse
    silvermouse Posts: 23,537 ✭✭✭✭✭

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-hybrids-pollute-almost-as-much-as-petrol-cars-report-finds?mc_cid=6b026351f2&mc_eid=965c24ad20

    Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) pump out nearly five times more planet-heating pollution than official figures show, a report has found.

    The cars, which can run on electric batteries as well as combustion engines, have been promoted by European carmakers as a way to cover long distances in a single drive – unlike fully electric cars – while still reducing emissions.

    Data shows PHEVs emit just 19% less CO2 than petrol and diesel cars, an analysis by the non-profit advocacy group Transport and Environment found on Thursday. Under laboratory tests, they were assumed to be 75% less polluting.

    The researchers analysed data from the onboard fuel consumption meters of 800,000 cars registered in Europe between 2021 and 2023. They found real-world carbon dioxide emissions from PHEVs in 2023 were 4.9 times greater than those from standardised laboratory tests, having risen from being 3.5 times greater in 2021.

    “Real-world emissions are going up, while official emissions are going down,”

  • edz
    edz Posts: 340 ✭✭✭✭

    @ShawnOL said:
    It was a con job all along.

    Wonder how much of this was done with sending money to China since they produced many of the batteries.

  • silvermouse
    silvermouse Posts: 23,537 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Dunning, co-discoverer of the Dunning-Kruger effect, investigates the misinformation gap built into our brains: We don't know what we don't know

    Our ignorance is an everyday companion that we will all carry for the rest of our lives.

    https://www.zmescience.com/other/interviews/the-psychologist-who-defined-the-dunning-kruger-effect-says-youre-probably-using-it-wrong/

  • silvermouse
    silvermouse Posts: 23,537 ✭✭✭✭✭

    In May 1921, American polymath Walter Russell entered a 39-day coma-like state, during which he claimed to have accessed “the source In May 1921, American polymath Walter Russell entered a 39-day coma-like state, during which he claimed to have accessed “the source of all knowledge" Upon awakening, he frantically wrote down what he had seen—pages filled with philosophical, scientific, and spiritual revelations that would later form the foundation of his manuscript The Universal One. Though he sent his findings to 500 leading minds of the time, nearly all dismissed him as mad—except one. Nikola Tesla, the visionary inventor, was so struck by Russell’s insights that he urged him to seal the work away for a thousand years, insisting that humanity was not yet ready for its truths.

    Walter Russell’s revelations reimagined the very structure of reality. He argued that matter was not solid but crystallized light slowed by thought—that everything around us, from rocks to human bodies, was composed of light patterns, shaped by consciousness. He believed the universe was fundamentally mental, not material, and that all things moved in rhythmic cycles—expansion and contraction, like breath. He dismissed opposites like good and evil as illusions, asserting instead that everything sought harmony and balance. To Russell, death wasn’t an end but the release of compressed light returning to its source. Even time, he claimed, wasn’t linear, but a spiral where past, present, and future coexisted.

    These ideas were radically ahead of their time, blending metaphysics, wave dynamics, and a deep sense of universal unity. He believed electricity was a living spiral of energy, not merely electrons in motion, and that the vacuum of space was in fact a vibrant sea of untapped potential. Health, in his view, was the natural rhythm of the body, and disease was simply a disruption of that flow. Though ignored or ridiculed during his lifetime, Russell’s work now draws new attention in an era where quantum physics and consciousness studies begin to echo the same questions. To many, he is no longer a forgotten eccentric, but a prophet of a paradigm yet to come.

    source: Facebook, lol.

  • ShawnOL
    ShawnOL Posts: 13,321 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Parkinson's Discovery Suggests We May Have an FDA-Approved Treatment Already.

    https://www.sciencealert.com/parkinsons-discovery-suggests-we-may-have-an-fda-approved-treatment-already

    Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.