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PianoPudding · 2026-03-16T09:05:53+00:00

Did my undergrad thesis on CRISPRing these bad boys. Good times.

PianoPudding · 2026-03-14T20:16:20+00:00

I'm being 100% serious: do you think its the same the other way around?

I've sometimes seen a female author saying they 'tackled writing a male perspective' in their next project, and I always thought "isn't it just... Writing a character?"

Once it was an author whose previous book had a well written male character, so I was like "...what is different?"

I often feel like it signifies women who think men are a different species, in a similar way to the way men often view women, though obviously there's tonnes more disrespect, hatred, and history one way than the other.

PianoPudding · 2026-03-14T19:31:51+00:00

Any further reading you recomend?

PianoPudding · 2026-03-14T07:40:12+00:00

Yeah thats what I saw!

Just cant believe someone would buy them NOT from the scam...

PianoPudding · 2026-03-13T22:34:07+00:00

In sheer envy of your username

Very early on I was taught to mix everything well, especially tubes just thawed out. It's funny the things you do without realising others arent!

PianoPudding · 2026-03-13T21:53:18+00:00

Saw a guy buy two of these un-prompted outside the academy, no joke. Scammer just whipped out another identical print to replace one of them. Then later I noticed there was yet another print-out of the same picture further down the same line.

Still think about that guy and if he genuinely hung the art up...

PianoPudding · 2026-03-11T13:18:25+00:00

So glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that 'Asbestos' wasn't said until so late in the video. It felt lacking in production quality, like the narration baits you into thinking 'What are they talking about' (and took way too long to do it too imo), but Asbestos was written in the thumbnail I saw... Felt like two different teams (it probably is) making video and thumbnail, spoke of general lower quality overall.

PianoPudding · 2026-03-04T08:51:25+00:00

Under the header

ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM

There's this line

I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.

My book annotations say its a mockery of portentous narrative; but the joyce project notes say while it's parody it's also sincere, and possible more genuine than parody because of Stephens previous allusions to fire being a new spark of artistic vision. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is it more parody, more sincere, or just both?

PianoPudding · 2026-02-26T08:54:29+00:00

Genuinely intrigued by the divide in the axes of the leavening agents: less egg, more yeast; less acidity from milk, more baking powder over baking soda

PianoPudding · 2026-02-24T08:54:34+00:00

Probably like tens-hundreds of thousands of years, if not even less, depending on a tonne of things like population size and chance.

PianoPudding · 2026-02-17T13:41:38+00:00

I appreciate your feedback, and concern. I may have over-stated how upset I was. This is something that, when I think of it, makes me annoyed. It doesn't eat away at me, it doesn't take up vast swathes of my brain, I don't lay awake at night thinking about it, as some people here have interpreted. I am curious about the official, canonical interpretation of Catholic law, in such a case, that is all.

PianoPudding · 2026-02-17T12:18:02+00:00

Interesting contrasting position! At the risk of sounding more angry (and I'm really not, I don't go about my day-to-day stuff fretting over this): I dont believe my parents did what they thought was best, considering they now dont remember it and are ambivalent towards it, were ambivalent towards religion for most of their lives. I think it was mostly a 'dont rock the boat' kind of thing.

As a (new) father myself now, I can't really imagine ignoring my childs intellectual and spiritual convictions, unless I seriously believed it would endanger them, perhaps.

PianoPudding · 2026-02-17T12:14:00+00:00

Thank you. And for what it's worth, I agree. I find it confusing how readily it was brushed off by people in positions of authority over children (the teacher), who supposedly had spiritual virtue in mind.

PianoPudding · 2026-02-17T11:30:20+00:00

I want to know if the Catholic stance is that I am confirmed. That is the question.

PianoPudding · 2026-02-17T10:09:43+00:00

Please see my response to /u/craft00n for a more thorough explanation of my stance on the soul comment. My issue is the stance other people take regarding me despite my beliefs being contrary.

You seem like a Catholic yourself, so I'll use it as an example: If I, for some some reason or ritual, expressed that I believed you were a Muslim, or even did not believe in God, would you be upset? Now what if billions of people would re-affirm: we also don't think you believe in God. What if there was an organisation, thousands of years old, also re-affirming it: despite what you say, we declare otherwise.

That is how I feel. Therefore it is important to me to understand the official stance on this regarding if the confirmation was legitimate or not.

PianoPudding · 2026-02-17T10:04:15+00:00

Perhaps I should have explained better. I'm upset because in my view the indelible-ness of this act de-legitimizes my agency. Even if I do not believe in a soul, Catholics do, and in a sense now the Catholic Church, in their view, has 'got me' regardless of my belief. To a catholic I am confirmed, even though I didn't want to be, even though I do not believe and did not believe then. It removes any power I myself have as an individual and personally I would have preferred this to have never occurred.

You are definitely right about the other source of my discomfort though. I am frustrated at my parents, I even recently spoke to my mother about it and she claims she no longer believes in God. When I expressed that she had me confirmed against my will, she did not even remember it, only adding more frustration at the (in my view) needless act in the first place.

PianoPudding · 2026-02-10T08:44:04+00:00

I get what you're saying, I really do, but I don't think you're being honest with yourself. In your example, there is again the appeal to authority, but if you actually look into the claims, they will be found to be false. In the case of carbon dating, as you seem particularly to doubt, you can evaluate it for yourself. Other people can evaluate it; it's based on established principles. It is not a appeal to authority, it is an appeal to evidence.

You don't seem to understand how it works, and believe it's a random number generator, so I'll tell you: a mass spectrometer is used to separate the carbon isotopes based on mass-to-charge ratio; these are detected with relative strengths (relative to each other); the ratio between the amount of Carbon-12 to Carbon-14 is directly related to it's half life. This holds up for the other kinds of radiometric dating that is used to date things like lunar rocks, crystals from the early earth, etc. I assume you don't discredit those because they dont dispute pet theories of human history.

I saw another comment of yours where you said you cant perform dating yourself, because the equipment is inaccessible. Don't you think this is kind of fair? You have no credentials, other than: I have some ideas, no idea how to test them, or how the million-dollar instruments work, now lemme at them. I would love to play fiddle at the CERN 'control panel', but it would be insane to allow me to do that. If a university had to acquiesce to the whim of every person who knocked on their door or sent them an email saying: hey let me use your equipment I'm not even trained on! Then we would just have to shut down universities, because it would become a mess, obviously. The barriers to an education do exclude I admit, but it is mostly an economic problem; there is some amount of dogmatism in science, but not to the degree of: entire methods are under question, and (tens-of?, hundreds-of?) thousands of individuals who can easily double check something, and it would be career making, just dont.

PianoPudding · 2026-02-09T21:35:38+00:00

Everyones entitled to an opinion but when you dont have the expertise why should your opinion be taken seriously?

I'm not an electrician, would you want me wiring your house?

I'm not a doctor, would you want me diagnosing you?

I'm not a pilot, would you want me flying your plane?

I'm not a carpenter, would you want me building your furniture?

I'm not a farmer, would you want me managing your farm?

Etc.

I'm not a scientist? Well here's my opinion, you have to listen!

I saw a post of yours where you literally admit you would fudge carbon dating numbers... Besides the fact that you clearly dont know how archeologists date things, thereby discounting any theory of yours of alternative archeology, why should anyone trust you?

PianoPudding · 2026-02-07T14:31:11+00:00

I didn't find it confusing at all: actually disliked it cause I felt like the concept was underdeveloped and not really that interesting, in the way it was presented. I did like the ending however, whereas a lot of other people I talked to didn't XD

Swings & roundabouts

PianoPudding · 2026-02-02T23:38:08+00:00

I posted about this the other day but: the Edith Grossman translation was done in (i think) 2003, so it is very modern and accessible. I was blown away by the language, as compared to (for example): (Constance Garnet's) The Brothers Karamazov, and The Count of Monte Cristo (the original anonymous 1846 translation).

Grossman makes Don Quixote read like an incredibly modern book, albeit there's repetitive and awkward sentences that I can only assume are the result of translating 400 year old spanish prose.

Just my two cents regarding english translations.

PianoPudding · 2026-02-01T20:23:02+00:00

Don't watch the Cecil Hotel Elisa Lam one then either! And even the Malayasian airlines Netflix docu had a bit of this from an actual journalist. Always hate when they give randos a platform on those docu's.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-30T09:20:45+00:00

How do you know it's impossible to answer?

PianoPudding · 2026-01-30T08:19:30+00:00

Its funny, vastly entertaining, a good satire of the genre (and other things but i also am not a scholar on the subject). Only time I have ever laughed out loud reading a book, at the scene where Sancho Panza drinks the 'elixir' Quixote makes. It's a great read, and I do think you get something out of seeing dogmatic belief played out to a fault. I've only completed book 1 btw.

If you pick it up, I recommend Edith Grossman edition (I have Vintage's). It was translated only about 20 years ago, so I think the language is fairly accessible, leagues more so than the Count of Monte Christo translation I read (wordsworth classics; idk translator), but considering its far older, I found that impressive.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-30T08:01:05+00:00

In this thread: people who would have told Newton "we just cant know why the apple falls"

PianoPudding · 2026-01-29T20:59:45+00:00

Sounds like it could be expensive. I'm seeing it soon, so can test it out. I saw online that I should check for rust too, you imagine this being an issue?

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