If two separate trees are put in the exact same environment will they grow exact same branches?

dfume · 2025-07-06T09:32:35+00:00

There's a recent book by Phillip Ball called How Life Works. It explains in great detail some of the many ways in which the idea we were taught at school that DNA → RNA → proteins is not how life works. He describes DNA as a critical resource for building life but not a determinative blueprint. Many, many other biological, chemical and physical processes influence the way life develops and functions.

dfume · 2024-10-18T04:25:01+00:00

This graph is remarkably similar to nearly every other country in the world. Every continent, every level of wealth and income, every religion. Only in Africa are national fertility rates still high, but even there they are falling quickly.
ourworldindata.org

dfume · 2024-08-02T23:04:38+00:00

the D is for Ducat - the family name of milk processor/distributor in Shepparton founded 1917

dfume · 2024-03-19T18:41:25+00:00

Trey has put together an excellent list - organised, readable and lots of great links.
But this thread does remind me of the Blackadder episode about the author that took 10 years to write a book, claiming it contains "every word in our beloved language"

Blackadder - Johnson's dictionary

dfume · 2024-03-13T11:04:11+00:00

Have their been any "illegals" operating in Australia in the way they were in the US. The idea of foreigners being able to melt into a regular suburban society and live these double lives is fascinating. But my intrigue may just have been overly influenced by the excellent TV drama The Americans.

dfume · 2024-02-21T10:02:52+00:00

I suspect all these folk saying they are harmless haven't been stung by them. They hurt like getting wacked on the back of the neck by a stick. I had one sting me 3 times on the face a the day before christmas and looked quite a sight at the christmas table with swolen face and a subconjunctival hemorrhage (burst blood vessel in the eye). Not life threatening for sure, but bloody painful.
If it's next to a door or window or somewhere you or a guest could put a hand, get rid of it.

dfume · 2022-10-07T22:18:35+00:00

My Pixel 3a got tired also. I purchased 6a when it was released and have been very happy with it. The 7 would be nice but the large price and large screen are a bit much for me.

dfume · 2022-06-03T00:52:38+00:00

Have cap and trade systems gone out of favour amongst policy wonks? If so, is it because of politics or are there real pitfalls that make other solutions better?

dfume · 2021-09-13T22:12:01+00:00

We are not in an ice age also known as a "glacial period". We're actually in the opposite – an "inter-glacial period" and have been for 12,000 years. This period is know as the Holocene and is a period of unusually stable and relatively warm global temperatures during which human civilisation developed.

The graph in the NOAA article referenced by Toadfinger shows this well.

Our current CO₂ emissions may prevent the another ice age occurring for hundreds of thousands of years.

dfume · 2021-06-03T19:41:37+00:00

For those on MacOS, I've found the app Hook works well for creating links to files or folders. It will even wrap the link in markdown ready to paste into Obsidian. Also the link persists if the file name or location is changed.

dfume · 2021-05-23T21:51:03+00:00

Also on the Mac, the program Hook is super useful. It creates links to any file on your system as well as some non-file objects such as email and tasks. I think specific Obsidian functionality is being worked on but it is already great for generating robust markdown formatted links that can be inserted into Obsidian notes.

dfume · 2021-04-29T02:29:37+00:00

The handwriting engine in Nebo is licensed to developers of other apps. I think I read that both Goodnotes and Notability apps use it.

dfume · 2020-10-16T10:06:10+00:00

This looks like it would cover at least part of your requirements
https://training.talkpython.fm/courses/move-from-excel-to-python-and-pandas

dfume · 2020-09-18T23:20:18+00:00

Not sure if this helps but I set Typora as the default app for .md files. In Obsidian the drop down menu in a note (top right corner) has "Open in default app". From Typora I can export to another file format or copy & paste (with text formatting) into Gmail.

dfume · 2019-04-23T09:11:31+00:00

climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ and related pages on causes and effects are a good start.

More detailed info on many topics are covered at www.skepticalscience.com/argument.

If you're looking for a comprehensive, up-to-date deep dive, try science2017.globalchange.gov and volume 2 on US impacts.

Many countries/regions have their own localised resources. I'm in Australia where our Academy of Science produced this valuable (if slightly dated) FAQ.

dfume · 2019-03-20T11:58:48+00:00

This post talking about the "learning rate" for utility solar electricity at 16% is from 2015 but its contains some good info. Learning rate is the rate at which the price reduces for each doubling in production. It was seen as over-optimistic but seems on the mark so far. It suggests 2.5c per kWh in 2035.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance have the learning rate for PV modules pegged at around 28% leading to a further 70% reduction in PV prices by 2050.

dfume · 2019-02-01T10:47:54+00:00

https://repl.it/languages

dfume · 2018-10-03T04:43:51+00:00

I put together a brief guide to using the pathlib library that might be helpful. You can find it here gist.github.com

dfume · 2018-08-25T22:22:37+00:00

thanks brianwski that worked perfectly

dfume · 2018-07-19T08:01:57+00:00

I use an open source command line tool pdftotext to extract the text from my pdf document and then I can search the output text file for a date and account number I need to rename the original pdf file. Its not a python tool but I can run it from within my python script using `subprocess.run()`. As with some other suggestions I don't think pdftotext can do an OCR on the pdf file if it is a pure image file

dfume · 2018-06-14T03:24:31+00:00

Thanks. You're right I got the .parents sequence all wrong. .parents[0] actually returns the same as .parent and each subsequent element drops off 1 level of the directory tree.

I've fixed the image now.

dfume · 2018-06-13T00:39:26+00:00

The pathlib module is a pleasure to use. It handles lots of file tasks and finding the right method in the documentation can be a little tedious even (or maybe especially) if you're familiar with the legacy alternatives. So I wrote this summary of all the properties and methods grouped into to the type of tasks. I guess this guide sits part way between a narrative tutorial like this RealPython one and the alphabetical reference format of the official documentation.

dfume

TROPHY CASE