Good for her, well done! Not as pretty of a tattoo as a well-drawn organic molecule, IMO, but publishing is hard and worthy of celebration when you succeed.

I have an Astell & Kern SR25 MKII DAP (digital audio player) and I use it quite frequently. The sound quality far surpasses what my phone can produce when connected to any of my speakers or headphones.

It plays FLAC files and any other audio file type you can think of. And it acts as an offline music library when needed (64 GB of memory plus a 1TB microSD).

The better the headphones/speakers I use, the more it outshines anything coming out of my other electronic devices. I use it almost every day.

Miserable Old Bigots?

When they played this live last year it was incredible. It’s a real crowd energizer.

If a ‘Wheel of Time diehard’ includes someone in the middle of their 6th reread, then I guess I contradict your assumption. I thoroughly enjoyed the 1st season, even with its minor flaws, and predict the 2nd season will be even better. I generally enjoyed the plot deviations and saw them as improvements.

If anything, a WoT fan that is honest with themselves should a) be able to overlook minor flaws, since the books have plenty, especially book 1 and b) realize that plot deviations are a must because an at most 8 season series cannot follow all of Jordan’s arcs and details faithfully - combine, rearrange, and cut is absolutely required.

To me, the heart of the story is there, the characters are well-acted, and the music is great. Sets and writing were good in season 1 with some room for improvement, IMO.

I am actually pleased that you think the world-building “borrowed bits and pieces of different Earth cultures and threw them in a blender.” That’s completely intentional and follows from the metaphysics and history (e.g., the Age of Legends and subsequent breaking of the world) in the books. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea though, sure.

Finally, with a small sample size of friends and family I am having a much easier time getting them into WoT than I did GoT (the last fantasy show I really got into). Reasons (I am paraphrasing their words) include:

More accessible color pallette and atmosphere

Less gratuitous violence (especially towards women)

More magic and “fantasy” feel

Refreshingly not a standard medieval setting

Being able to share it with more people in my circle has obviously enhanced my enjoyment. They are all super pumped after seeing the season 2 trailer.

In addition to the great suggestions others have already provided, check out Emma Goldman’s writings if you haven’t already. They might appeal to you and she has some interesting takes.

Here’s a good starting point: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/GoldmanCW.html

"Drivers have long raised the insufferable heat they can face when out for a day of deliveries, especially in the hotter parts of the country. The fleet of UPS trucks doesn’t have any air conditioning to keep the drivers safe and comfortable during their long hours on the job. During the summer months, package cars can reach upwards of 130 F. This has led to far too many UPS drivers suffering from heat stroke on the job, and some have even died due to the excessive heat. With worsening global warming, these issues will only become more severe. "

This is why we need unions and direct action more than ever, and can’t rely on government entities (ultimately beholden to capitalist interests) to protect our health and safety while we’re on the job. What the fuck good is OSHA if it is allowing heat illness and heat stroke deaths to happen without holding UPS accountable? They should have had their operations shut down until they outfit every truck with AC, and be fined into oblivion until they do so. Instead, OSHA does squat. Health & safety regulations are written in blood but OSHA’s bloody hands refuse to even touch the paper.

You are saying that sucralose (or a metabolite thereof) could alkylate DNA - and theoretically proteins too - correct? Like what sulfur mustard gas does?

I did a quick search and couldn’t find any papers demonstrating a mechanism of action for that, although I skimmed a few that postulated that a dichlorinated hydrolysis product might be the true carcinogenic agent. Do you know of any studies that demonstrate that the alkylation can happen, either in vitro or (ideally) in vivo? Or maybe some better search terms to use, that could be my issue…

I am truly curious about this, I never knew the chemical structure of sucralose until I read your comment and subsequently looked it up.

Nickel or iron would be a lot cheaper and could get the job done with some tweaking, good suggestion. I’ve done aromatizations of cyclohexene derivatives with sulfur in the past that have been pretty high yielding too (which is why I mentioned it), and bubbled the hydrogen sulfide gas through bleach and other aqueous oxidants to prevent stench. Sulfur is dirt cheap, but it was used stoichiometrically.

As you say though, the biggest step forward was already done by this group - switching feedstock to biomass. I hope to see more and more of this type of research to deliver on the promise of ‘green chemistry’, which in my past experience has been used as a label somewhat dubiously just to make a journal submission stand out.

Aww, lovely cat! I bet that white chest and belly fur is just the softest stuff ever!

Thank you, I just finished the whole thing. It was a great read, and now I need to go and wipe my eyes from all these onions I’ve been chopping. :)

I appreciate the elaboration and if I understand you correctly, I definitely think I agree.

The way I see it, if the instances & communities that make up the Fediverse grow like a garden (rather than an invasive weed - please bear with this analogy, lol) then eventually we should get small but active plots with new ghost pepper variants or even duran trees (talk about deranged!) that people can check out or share with those that are interested. That would be very cool, and would be a maturation I look forward to and will contribute to as best I can.

Exactly. I don’t understand why so many people have this mentality of ‘the fediverse must grow, or it’s a failure’, but I think a lot of them are from the recent reddit exodus (I am too, for the record) and are addicted to the firehose of content that a massive social media platform brings.

I participated less and less on reddit in recent years, after joining in 2007, partly because it became such a behemoth. Nowadays, I am enjoying the modest size of my lemmy instance and the values I’ve seen espoused throughout. It’s like a small(er) get together of like-minded people rather than an open-door rager - the first has always had more appeal to me, personally.

Very interesting articles - both the phys.org one and journal submission it describes. I appreciate the research group’s use of solvent-free and one-pot reactions wherever possible, it really shows their commitment to finding the most sustainable overall process.

The aromatization steps using palladium (0) are of course standard processes used by the oil refining industry, but I wonder if there are other methods (maybe using sulfur?) that don’t involve the use of rare metals…probably wouldn’t have the same atom economy as using catalytic Pd though, I am just curious rather than criticizing their choice.

I first saw her Tiny Desk performance and became an instant fan. This album is under the radar in the US but is one of the top 10 I’ve heard over the past 2 years. Great choice, gon.

I first saw her Tiny Desk performance and became an instant fan. This album is under the radar in the US but is one of the top 10 I’ve heard over the past 2 years. Great choice, gon.

I haven’t see any measurable proof of one, or any experiment proposed that would render the idea of a soul falsifiable or not. Honestly, the current debate in philosophy/neuroscience on the existence (or non-existence) of free-will seems like a more important question, that if answered in the negative would have major implications on even the definition of the word ‘soul’.

Fun question though, I’ve enjoyed reading the diversity of thought on the matter in this thread. :)

Seems like I read this same headline a few times each year. Soon, rampant heat illness/stroke is going to make the recent pandemic look like a tiny blip when it comes to human mortality data.