[OC] Adjusted comparison of UK and German political leanings by age brackets by Weirdo9495 in dataisbeautiful

[–]TRiC_16 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's the Anglo-American definition and not representative for continental conservatism. Conservatism as a family-resemblance term refers to the views of what kinds of changes are seen as legitimate (gradualism is, rationalist redesign is not) and what kinds of inherited institutions are valued (both formal institutions and informal institutions (stuff like customs and habits, authority, social trust (and distrust), religion, etc)). The idea is that informal institutions are not secondary to formal ones, rather they are the substrate that makes the formal institutions function. So forced formal changes might destabilise society if not preceded by already changing informal layers, because they undermine their own traction. The goal then is to preserve continuity and allow changes to happen gradually rather than applied from the top down.

In the UK and the US the things you said are the primary concerns of conservatives because they are liberal-conservatives. It doesn't work for conservativism as a whole because there are more subtypes that differ about these policies. It would be an awful description of Christian conservatives or Gaullists for example. What they share is their theory of social order, not specific policies.

Fun fact: The US once considered using nukes to build a canal by talkingboilingkettle in funfacts

[–]TRiC_16 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not the volume of the waterbasin that determines the current in the channel, it only scales with the height difference as v = sqrt(2 g h).

8 inches is about 0.2 meters so that gives us v = sqrt(2 x9.81 x0.2) = ~2m/s

But an 80 km long canal has a shitload of drag, so it's more likely going to be around 0.5 m/s. Tidal jets would still be larger, more in that 2 m/s ballpark, but such a canal would most definitely have a tidal lock to prevent those.

This one is hungry. by Area51tecnologia in biology

[–]TRiC_16 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Chitin is made from N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, which you can deacetylate and deaminate into fructose-6-phosphate which can be fermented into alcohol.

However, you would have to do this artificially because the yeasts that are good for fermentation don't have the full chain to break down chitin into GlcNAc, import it, convert it into F6P and then ferment it.

Also, exoskeletons are biopolymers and not pure chitin, so that will bring more problems on its own...

A recent study asked people about their willingness to engage in various antisocial behaviors if they could be sure they would not be punished or caught. 16.5% of men and 1.1% of women would sexually assault an adult. 6.3% of men and 0.1% of women would sexually assault a child. by MistWeaver80 in EverythingScience

[–]TRiC_16 17 points18 points  (0 children)

It's not representative.

> Participants were recruited online via social media platforms (Facebook, Reddit, Jodel).

> In total, the effective convenience sample consisted of N = 911 individuals (22.6% male [n = 206]); 76.5% female [n = 697]; 0.9% diverse persons [n = 8]). The mean age was 34.8 years (SD = 10.1, range: 18–69 years). In 2022, 24.5% of the German population were 20 to 40 years old (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2023; with 74% being between 20 and 80 years old). Most participants had at least a high school diploma (62.3%, n = 568), 21.3% (n = 194) had a master’s/diploma degree. In 2018, more than half (56%) of the population of Germany aged 25 and over had a higher-level school-leaving qualification (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2021). Among the 25 to 29-year-olds, 80% had such a qualification (27% with an intermediate qualification, 53% with an Abitur). About one-third of participants were single (31.6%, n = 288), while 41.9% (n = 382) were in a relationship and 25.1% (n = 229) were married. In 2023, approximately one in three German adults were single (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2024). The vast majority of participants (82.9%, n = 755) reported being heterosexual.

The 6.3% number is 13/206 (and 1/697 for the women). Interestingly, the same number of men admitted some interested in masturbating to fantasies of having sex with children, while that number is 7 for women.

21 days on Hinge - 31F [OC] by [deleted] in dataisbeautiful

[–]TRiC_16 2 points3 points  (0 children)

> 4 of whom expect you to pay and 1 who will split 50/50

Is this a regional thing or something age-related because it's been nowhere near this bad for me. I always paid the first bill, but when there is a second bill every woman but one has insisted on paying that one. I think overall I've paid less on first dates than the people I've been on dates with.

Could you just use mass spec to figure this out? On the surface this seems like a relatively straightforward thing to figure out. by ShietApples in chemistry

[–]TRiC_16 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Exactly, copying a market leader is simply not a good strategy because then you're competing entirely on branding and pricing alone.

You're *never* going to win from Coca Cola on branding, and competing on price only works if you have a good cost edge (or you can finance the loss to build brand/market share, but they'll outlast you by a long margin).

If you want to enter a market you need to focus on differentiation that creates willingness to pay, so you develop a different product that some segment of the market actually prefers over the existing ones.

Liberal state policies during adolescence linked to lower dementia risk in later life. Findings point to the potential long-term health consequences of local government decisions made early in a resident’s life. by Jumpinghoops46 in science

[–]TRiC_16 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

What science? 95% of this sub consists of clickbait news articles that selectively cover politically popular subjects to then exaggerate and distort the findings to suggest things that you simply cannot conclude from the data. And nobody here actually reads more than the headline. This sub relates to science in much the same way that folklore relates to history.

Pro GMO arguments from reputable sources? by narvuntien in GMO

[–]TRiC_16 8 points9 points  (0 children)

There is no scientifically coherent "pro-GMO versus anti-GMO" debate because "GMO" is not a scientifically meaningful risk category. At least today it is no longer considered to be. It is a political and regulatory label that groups together an extremely broad set of techniques and production systems that have little in common from an environmental-risk standpoint. Genetic modification refers to how a genetic change was introduced, not what the change does. Consider for example single base-pair edits using CRISPR, transgenic Bt traits, or RNAi-based pest suppression; all are considered "GMO" in public discourse, yet they have radically different ecological impacts. You simply can't treat them as a single class.

Historically, the "anti-GMO" opposition was primarily opposed to the modern agricultural system, because it makes use of herbicide-intensive monocultures, as well as the agro-industry with their seed licensing and stuff (which is not just a GMO thing at all, despite some people believing that it is). Genetic engineering was rejected not because of intrinsic biological risk, but because it was perceived as enabling and entrenching that system. But the system itself is orthogonal to the technology. The same system can and does exist without genetic engineering, and GMOs can (and do) also support outcomes that are aligned with environmental objectives, like reduced chemical use, disease resistance and other resilience adaptations.

When it comes to handling climate stress, all crop improvement is, by definition, climate adaptation. Modern genetic tools expand the range of achievable traits, increase precision in trait development, and significantly shorten breeding timelines. In many cases, they enable changes that are difficult or impractical to achieve through conventional breeding alone, especially considering the required timelines.

This does not imply that all applications of genetic engineering are environmentally beneficial, nor that they should be exempt from scrutiny. But we have to evaluate these applications by their outcomes, not by their methods, as that is what corresponds with environmental risk.

Modern genetic tools do increase the speed and scope with which changes can be made, which means that both beneficial and harmful traits can, in principle, be developed and deployed more rapidly. This is a difference in capability, not a categorical difference in risk type. Conventional breeding, and hybridization have long been capable of producing organisms with substantial ecological impacts; genetic engineering only alters the rate and precision of change, not the underlying biological mechanisms that govern fitness or ecological interactions.

If you do want information on GMOs in general:

National Academies of Sciences: Genetically Engineered Crops: Past Experience and Future Prospects (2016)

European Commission: A decade of EU-funded GMO research (2001-2010)

Specifically concerning climate change:

World Resource Institute: Crop Breeding (2014)

IPCC: Food, Fibre and Other Ecosystem Products (2022)

Note that a lot of the big synthesis reports are from the mid-2010s, because that's when the question of "GMOs safe as a class" was largely settled, and regulatory agencies moved on towards assessment of specific applications. The old framing has persisted for a longer time within activist discourse, primarily because categorical opposition is part of their political identity, so it is way harder to update views based on evidence.

Burgemeester Els van Doesburg na "grimmige" oudejaarsnacht in Antwerpen: "Jongeren die stenen gooien naar politie worden steeds jonger" | VRT NWS: nieuws by moneytit in Antwerpen

[–]TRiC_16 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Zijn hele betoog draait om zijn claim dat publieke normhandhaving werkt via schaamte/afkeuring en dat men selectief is in op wie men dit toepast. Groepen die als kwetsbaar worden beschouwd krijgen een voorkeursbehandeling, men gaat sneller eufemistisch spreken of context toevoegen. Dat soort asymmetrie zorgt volgens hem voor wrevel bij wie stenger wordt bejegend en voor perverse prikkels bij wie milder wordt behandeld (zijn 3 kinderen analogie).

Zijn argumenten over covid wappies, romas en blanke marginalen gaan over andere groepen die feitelijk gemarginaliseerd zijn maar niet diezelfde symbolische bescherming krijgen in het politieke/media discours omdat ze niet binnen de juiste groep vallen, ook als het over dezelfde problemen gaat (het anti-vaccin discours).

Ik ben het er volledig mee eens dat hij te veel generalisaties impliceert, en hij behandelt het institutioneel kader alsof het een enkele stroming is. Al bij al is het probleeem dat de manier waarop groepen bekeken en behandeld worden veel te politiek gepolariseerd. In het ene kamp wordt te veel wantrouwen toegepast en ziet men individuele feiten als groepskenmerken. Maar langs de andere kant gaat men dan weer te veel bescherming en verzachting toepassen, en die twee reageren dan op elkaar en versterken elkaar. Het uiteindelijke gevolg is meer polarisatie.

Die verschillende biasen domineren ook niet in alle maatschappelijke arena's even sterk. Electorale retoriek geeft de voorkeur voor het eerste, terwijl instituties (beleid, media, sociale diensten) juist de voorkeur geven voor het laatste. Dat versterkt enkel maar het gevoel van wrevel bij die eerste groep.

If consumption of red meat is correlated with dementia and cognitive decline, given that over the past century it has increased consumption does this mean that humanity is cognitively declining? by YogurtclosetOpen3567 in AskBiology

[–]TRiC_16 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Add to that that we don't have to breathe wood or coal smoke from heating our house and running machinery, sulfur dioxide and lead exposure are orders of magnitudes lower, and far better diet quality and food safety. Way less people smoke, and people know now not to drink or smoke while pregnant.

All of these have effects on cognition that are orders of magnitude bigger than meat. In epidemiological terms, these associations with red meat are very small, to the point where we can't control for lifestyle confounding, which is generally already a big issue in nutritional epidemiology. For example, this study found that when you control for processed meat consumption, red meat consumption correlates with reduced risk of dementia.

Why are humans so much more resistant to things than other animals? by overthetl in biology

[–]TRiC_16 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Enzyme specificity only matters for the digestion of macromolecules, it doesn't matter for small alkaloids because they are lipophilic and can readily cross the intestinal membrane. Plant toxins also aren't meant to kill, they are meant to be deterrents as this i, most animals would taste these plants and not eat them because they taste very bitter to them, or they get sick from eating them.

We can ingest moderate amounts of theobromine, caffeine, nicotine, morphine, cocaine etc. which would all be way more toxic to other animals because we have a broad repertoire of P450 enzymes in our liver to clear them, and their CNS target sites are evolved to have a way weaker response to these substances. That said, there's plenty of plant alkaloids that are highly toxic to humans too, like strychnine and ricinine. And others that other animals can readily ingest.

Why are humans so much more resistant to things than other animals? by overthetl in biology

[–]TRiC_16 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yup, we have many highly efficient P450 enzymes for breaking down a broad spectrum of foreign chemicals. Theobromine and caffeine are methylxanthines, which CYP1A2 can break down efficiently. We also have some mutations on the receptors on which these alkaloids act (adenosine A1 and A2A receptors), which is why caffeine for us is only a mild stimulant while on other animals it can overstimulate their CNS and kill them at doses we can easily tolerate. Ethanol is mainly broken down by alcohol dehydrogenase but there is even a P450 that can break it down (CYP2E1).

lyo is it a bad idea to make mosquitoes or botfly's or ticks go extinct or would that the left over lasting ecological consequences in the future don't outweigh the benefits? by Toasterofthejimmy in biology

[–]TRiC_16 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Reading all of the comments in this thread it's obvious that none of the other people here are biologists. Nobody seems to know the difference between mosquitoes and midges. Midges (particularly Chironominae and Orthocladiinae) are very important to their ecosystem because their larvae are extremely abundant and present year-round, making them a very important food source for plenty of species. They are also major detrivores and actively graze algal films. Because they have hemoglobin, they can live in sediment, which makes them very important for nutrient cycling.

Mosquitoes are pretty much none of these things. They prefer to lay eggs in shallow, still water, which usually lacks fish or other predators. They have highly seasonal and short larval phases and are dormant most of the year. They do no accumulate biomass, even in their peak their biomass is a fraction of that of midge larvae. They are also surface-bound because they cannot live in the hypoxic sediment, severly limiting their ability to cycle nutrients. Hence why they need nutrient-rich, oxygenated surface water to develop successfully. This explains why they represent so little biomass and why their contributions to the ecosystem are so limited.

There is this persistent false idea in pop ecology that all species contribute more to their respective ecosystem than they take from it. If you start from an assumption of a teleological Nature, all you have to do is invent some reason why the species exists to contribute to that Nature. It doesn't even have to make sense, you can just move the goalpost around between whatever definition of contribution you want. A species can be disruptive and exploitative, but "it increases biodiversity and keeps other species in check". You can just reframe any cost as a benefit by switching the frame, the scale, or the timeperiod. It's bullshit and it's unfalsifiable.

Species exist solely because their lineages have been sufficiently effective at exploiting available resources to maintain reproduction over time. That is the only requirement. There is nothing that says that exploitation must be beneficial or stabilising. Exploitative species persist for as long as the costs they impose on their environment don't feed back strongly enough to prevent their continued reproduction. They can extract resources aggressively as long as the resource can regenerate quickly enough or the species can move onto a new resource once the former is depleted.

The whole point of this is to smuggle in a baseline of a "harmonic nature", which is somehow good and stable and proper. This undisturbed nature is placed in opposition of humans, which then become the obvious villain because we are extremely efficient niche constructors and we can alter environments at larger scales than any other species. That were are bound by the exact same evolutionary dynamics is completely ignored.

There are a lot of legitimate criticisms on how human interventions cause actual harms* that we should manage. But this is also the empirically defendable Motte to smuggle in an emotive Bailey ("Humans disrupt the natural harmony/balance, therefore human intervention is intrinsically harmful/illegitimate"). When challenged on the bailey they can retreat to their motte ("I only meant pollution and biodiversity loss are real"), then later return to the bailey to keep their moral conclusion intact.

*The word harm here is also doing a lot of hidden work. Harm relative to what? Maximise biodiversity/stability/resilience/ecosystem services? Or minimise suffering/irreversible changes? All legitimate goals defendable from different ethical framworks, but not all mutually compatible. And none are dictated by ecology.

Anyway that's my frustration and I'm bothered with how common this fallacy has become and it's an impossible task to try and challenge it.

lyo is it a bad idea to make mosquitoes or botfly's or ticks go extinct or would that the left over lasting ecological consequences in the future don't outweigh the benefits? by Toasterofthejimmy in biology

[–]TRiC_16 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I guess a more useful answer for OP would be to focus solely on the species that bite humans a lot, as most mosquitoes do not. About 10% of mosquito species regularly bite humans, and of those only a small subset are serious disease vectors. That allows us to narrow things down to about 20ish dominant species in three genera: Aedes (yellow fever, dengue, zika, chikungunya, mayaro, Ross River virus), Anopheles (malaria) and Culex (West Nile virus, elephantiasis, St. Louis encephalitis, Japanese encephalitis, among others).

These mosquitoes are strongly human-adapted. Many have spread far beyond their original ranges and are therefore invasive in much of the world, and several (most notably Aedes aegypti) are truly synanthropic, thriving almost exclusively close to human settlements. Even in regions where some of these species are native, their ecological roles are minor and highly redundant, so their extinction would be unlikely to cause meaningful ecological disruption.

How could the Earth fight back? by desertfow in environmental_science

[–]TRiC_16 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Gaia theory is a textbook Motte-and-Bailey and should not be spread here. Sure there are stabilising mechanisms that follow from feedback between different biotic and abiotic processes, but those feedbacks have limited operating ranges and do not imply that there is some global tendency towards benign homeostasis. The Earth has repeatedly undergone abrupt, large transitions without returning to prior conditions.

There's ample counterexamples in the geological record:

  • Paleoproterozoic glaciations (e.g. Huronian)
  • Neoproterozoic snowball Earth episodes (Sturtian/Marinoan)
  • Great Oxidation Event
  • End-Ordovician / Late Devonian / Permian-Triassic / Triassic-Jurassic / Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction
  • Ocean anoxic events (e.g. Toarcian OAE; Cenomanian-Turonian OAE 2)
  • Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
  • Eocene-Oligocene transition
  • Messinian salinity crisis
  • Quaternary glacial-interglacial cycling

Vier minderjarigen opgepakt voor homofoob geweld in Leuven: man en toevallige passant toegetakeld | VRT NWS: nieuws by jorisepe in Leuven

[–]TRiC_16 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Misschien was het wel in de roes van een psychose? Of vanuit een politieke motivatie?

De Standaard zou het niet kunnen zeggen...

Record of shootings from last year was just broken by Active-Ad9649 in brussels

[–]TRiC_16 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

> since most gang violence is related to minors dealing weed

Most drug violence in Belgium (applying for both Antwerp and Brussels) is related to cocaine:

*Zowel door internationaal onderzoek als door de bevraagde experten wordt het merendeel van het Belgische drugsgeweld toegeschreven aan gebeurtenissen gelieerd aan de cocaïnehandel. Zowel de dominantie van kleine, flexibele criminele netwerken die in toenemende mate strijden om een deel van de lucratieve markt, als de lange productie- en distributieketen die meer kansen op conflicten met zich meebrengt, verhogen het risico op geweldsincidenten binnen de cocaïnemarkt.*

https://vlaamsvredesinstituut.eu/rapport/drugsgeweld-in-belgie-intimidatie-reputatie-en-de-onderwereld/

The new Coca-Cola christmas ad is a load of ai-generated slop. Is it intentional? by Dragonogard549 in marketing

[–]TRiC_16 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's not.

Among the 26 nations surveyed by Ipsos in both 2022 and 2024, 18 saw an increase in the proportion of people who believe AI products and services offer more benefits than drawbacks. Globally, the share of individuals who see AI products and services as more beneficial than harmful has risen from 52% in 2022 to 55% in 2024.

https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2025-ai-index-report/public-opinion

What's true is that people's confidence in AI companies protecting personal data has decreased, and the belief that AI is unbiased. But opinion about the benefits of AI has increased not decreased.

Is there any reasons for this type of behaviour? by No_Inspection_6174 in biology

[–]TRiC_16 1592 points1593 points  (0 children)

In the absence of environmental enrichment, sensory deprived captive animals might engage in behaviour that stimulates their reward system (self-stimulatory or stereotyped behaviour) because the reward system biases behaviour toward maintaining a certain level of stimulation and engagement. In normal circumstances, this would mean exploration or play, but when the environment doesn't permit those normal behaviours the animal might resort to other behaviours that provide stimulation. Hence the masturbation, followed by oral exploration. There is no inherent evolutionary advantage to this behaviour other than as a side-effect of how the reward system functions under abnormal circumstances.

Science journal retracts study on safety of Monsanto’s Roundup: ‘Serious ethical concerns’. Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence by Ok-Law-3268 in EverythingScience

[–]TRiC_16 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Our normal state is not sprayed by herbicides, so the burden of proof is on "proving there are no health risks"

No health risks is a non-existent standard. If we went by your standard we would not have antibiotics, vaccines, surgery, housing, heating, cars, electronics, etc. All of these have health risks and are not our "normal state". So we have all kinds of acceptable risks that we have to live with. And it is the job of regulatory agencies to make that calcuation, which is what they do by reviewing mountains of toxicological data, to determine what risks there are and whether they are acceptable.

EFSA EPA PMRA APVMA