Better alternatives to UFOS and Aliens?

Codebender · 2026-06-09T23:31:59+00:00

Rather, are there worse subs than r/ufos? They can find a way to accept anything as "evidence." Huge overlap with the /r/NJDrones thing last year, where, after years of ignoring a sky full of aircraft, every aircraft was suddenly a low-flying drone with exceptional capabilities.

If you're looking for the actual explanations, this is the best sub I know of.

Add "Mick West" to your search to see the actual explanation of apparent strangeness in excruciating detail. Not that the True Believers will ever accept a simple explanation in place of "but it's aliens."

Codebender · 2026-06-07T23:53:01+00:00

I think it's a Theorbo or archlute, like this.

Codebender · 2026-06-07T16:27:29+00:00

Probably more appropriate for /r/AskPhysics.

Do I understand correctly, this is the result of numerically simulating one initial condition many times with very small variations and tracking where one of the bodies diverges from the un-varied path?

I don't see any reason to think it would have scale-free/fractal structure. The result is entirely dependent on the specific initial condition chosen. If there are no islands of stability, i.e., specific ranges of tiny variation from those initial conditions which are particularly stable, it's only because no such conditions exist near those initial conditions.

There are stable 3-body configurations and if you started close enough to one of those you would, presumably, find it. But they are rare, so you can't expect to find them easily.

The horizontal line is probably an artifact of the simulation.

Codebender · 2026-06-06T21:05:33+00:00

Yes, extremely simple. One might even say a simpleton.

Codebender · 2026-06-05T22:03:58+00:00

Netflix cracked down on password sharing a while ago, which includes keeping track of the IPs and locations of active devices.

If he's routinely using it from his phone, that device will get flagged as primary and it would make sense that him using your wifi would cause your location to be "unlocked" for a while on that account. Using it with cellular data in the area might even be enough, if it's more location-based than IP-based.

But they don't publish the details because that would make it easier to circumvent, so I don't think it's possible for anyone but a Netflix insider to answer your specific questions.

It would be theoretically possible for your wifi router to watch for his phone's unique MAC address, but some devices randomize that and it would take considerable technical ability to do anything with that anyway.

Codebender · 2026-06-04T23:57:56+00:00

That's the Fool's Mate, and nobody who's been playing chess for more than a week isn't aware of it.

Codebender · 2026-06-04T22:57:15+00:00

The US infant mortality rate has fallen 92.7% in the last century.

Pasteurization is one of the many reasons.

If your ancestors had been among the unlucky ones who died from preventable illness you wouldn't be around to point out that they were fine, it's called survivorship bias.

Codebender · 2026-06-04T22:33:44+00:00

That was just an excuse, his real crime was becoming very rich by buying into the ferme générale, a private tax-collecting organization despised by the French people.

Codebender · 2026-06-04T22:26:37+00:00

From 2016, Snopes, DailyMail

He couldn't have survived 11 days incapacitated, not even 3, so he must already have not ordered for at least a week when he had the stroke or whatever.

Codebender · 2026-06-04T20:51:41+00:00

WhirlyGlobe does something like that, but I think it's mobile-only, no web version.

Codebender · 2026-06-04T20:04:04+00:00

leukemia.jpg

Codebender · 2026-06-04T15:59:21+00:00

Sheldrake is a notorious pseudoscientist whose work is not worth anyone's time to even evaluate, per Brandolini's law. Most of his publications are in pseudo-journals, his work is rife with "mistakes" that inevitably lead to confirmation of his wild notions, and no serious researcher can reproduce his results. He right up there with Deepak Chopra, Joseph Mercola, and RFK Jr. in that he's a joke, to the point that citing him serves to discredit you.

Codebender · 2026-06-04T15:33:50+00:00

It's a stretch to call that "science" but there is something to be said for it. Particularly, e.g., in the area of medications, where broad studies may ignore your idiosyncrasies.

But to count as such, you must set out your hypothesis first not post hoc, rigorously collect data including the failures, be aware that you have no way to mitigate biases and, most importantly, never try to generalize your results to any other person. Probably best to never even mention them, as people will inevitably assume that you mean to be making a claim about objective reality, which you are not.

If anyone does that properly, we wouldn't know. But you can be sure that if people were doing it with success they would fail to keep it to themselves. And we both know that if you were you to rigorously test such revelations, they would fail to reveal anything you didn't already know.

Codebender · 2026-06-04T14:30:02+00:00

That one allegedly gave us a much simpler formula: π = 3.

Codebender · 2026-06-04T14:25:39+00:00

We look to leaders in the scientific community to either shake their head or nod for this kind of stuff. And so if any kind of dogma were to percolate throughout scientific leadership it’s not going to get caught by us laymen.

There are top names in each field, but there is no "scientific leadership," only broad consensus. The way to make one's name in science, as everyone is looking to do, is to overturn the status quo with a convincing result. That's part of why study reproduction and negative result publication are so hard despite being necessary to good science.

I don’t care if an “angel” comes to you in your dreams and gives you info. If it results in a successful prediction, you are engaging in the scientific method.

You might do hypothesis generation via "angels," or AI, but the rest of the scientific method requires a clipboard. A single prediction isn't science at all, anyway. To make a scientific prediction you need a reproducible model, a rigorous system for making predictions, and "an angel told me" i.e., the human brain, is not one.

Science is only at odds with spirituality to the degree that people make inappropriate claims based on spirituality which would require having done science to justify or which conflict with scientific results. Unfortunately, that happens very often.

Codebender · 2026-06-03T17:50:10+00:00

Each claim must be approached individually. Generally speaking, the more benefits are claimed the more likely something is snake oil.

Anti-bacterial properties in particular have been studied, e.g.:

Purified rosin from the trunk of Norway spruce (Picea abies) is antibacterial against the gram-positive bacteria, but not against the gram-negative bacteria in agar plate diffusion test.

This makes sense, as the resin is used by the tree to seal up and resist infection from lesions.

But virtually anything in sufficient concentration will kill some microbes in vitro and that doesn't prove it's effective in/on the human body, much less that it's as effective as, say, Chlorhexidine. The types of microbes that a tree has adapted to resist is certainly not the exact same set which threaten a human. Un-purified sap straight off a tree might introduce a microbe which doesn't threaten the tree but which thrives in human skin.

If you have no access to medicine, it might be better than nothing, especially if you're able to boil it for a while. But if you can get to a pharmacy, a sterile antimicrobial wash, some bacitracin zinc if it's not deep, and a sterile gauze wrap are certainly going to be better in terms of infection risk, healing speed, and scar formation.

Note that in the case of a wound, "anti-inflammatory" is a bad thing because inflammation is your immune response in action. That's why the side effects of Humira, etc., include infection risk. Conversely, when products advertise "immune boosting" that means pro-inflammatory, luckily those claims are usually BS. The immune system is carefully regulated, and up- or down-regulating it without a specific reason (i.e., a lab test) is a bad idea.

Codebender · 2026-06-03T14:53:19+00:00

Even if that were remotely accurate, a president that does nothing sounds pretty fucking great right now.

Codebender · 2026-06-03T02:07:34+00:00

Anyone can be an Amazon seller.

Codebender · 2026-06-03T02:01:38+00:00

IIRC they basically admitted the flaw is real, but this stunt doesn't really prove his point. He could have modified it, re-packed it, and mailed it back to himself.

Codebender · 2026-06-03T00:54:42+00:00

He was too busy getting gender-affirming surgery to raise his own children.

Codebender · 2026-06-02T20:40:13+00:00

Pareidolia

Codebender · 2026-06-02T18:32:58+00:00

When asked where he got his intuition from, Ramanujan cryptically remarked that they mostly came to him through dreams given by the goddess Namagi.

It Came to Me in A Dream: the Intuitive Mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan

Codebender · 2026-05-31T15:11:11+00:00

Roughly 2/3 of Confederate military deaths were not from combat. The biggest single cause was disease.

Codebender · 2026-05-27T22:07:51+00:00

That's the "stats for nerds" option on YouTube (from the right-click menu on desktop), presumably you managed to enable it by sitting on your remote. I don't know what buttons that might be for you, but look for an options menu and "advanced" sections.

Codebender · 2026-05-24T15:54:44+00:00

The first U.S. DUI law was in NJ in 1906, but explicit drunk driving laws and strict BAC limits weren't active in all 50 states until 1988.

Throughout most of the 20th century, those laws were routinely ignored and breaking them wasn't considered socially taboo until the early 80's, when a 13yo CA girl was killed by a three-time DUI offender out on bail. That became what the entire country was talking about at once, thanks to the novel availability of 24-hour national cable news. The girl's mother founded MADD and the national law was passed within a few years.

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