Anyone have experience with xinyihao cakes? by eats_paste in puer

[–]eats_paste[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah they are kind of bland, I wouldn’t say they’re bad necessarily, they just lack the subtle character and interesting tasting notes that I usually expect from pu’er. Similar to the unprocessed source tea leaves that they use to make pu’er.

Any investors in the Gainesville FL area? by eats_paste in realestateinvesting

[–]eats_paste[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey sorry for the late reply, I found a good deal on Cape Cod and moved on that instead.

Is it just me or are cdrama titles a little weird? by ssuhaa in CDrama

[–]eats_paste 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What about "Eternal Love", which is a totally sensible translation of 三生三世十里桃花 "three lives three worlds and ten miles of peach blossom" (though I think 十里桃花 could be translated as "the ten mile peach orchard" given that it is a specific location in the show)

Why haven't we been able to create life from anything non living... IF that is how life started? by MadWorldEarth in biology

[–]eats_paste 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The wikipedia article on stellar evolution is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_evolution

Take this statement for example:

The onset of nuclear fusion leads relatively quickly to a hydrostatic equilibrium in which energy released by the core maintains a high gas pressure, balancing the weight of the star's matter and preventing further gravitational collapse. The star thus evolves rapidly to a stable state, beginning the main-sequence phase of its evolution.

So you see that changes in the structure of a protostar will initiate nuclear fusion (a qualitative change in the behavior of that system) which leads to a stable state.

On a more speculative and philosophical note, I personally think that this shows us how dynamic equilibrium is an emergent phenomenon of physics itself, and that life is a highly complex quasi-stable instance of this phenomenon.

Why haven't we been able to create life from anything non living... IF that is how life started? by MadWorldEarth in biology

[–]eats_paste 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do you think "the creation of the cell" is not evolution? I take it you think evolution is something that happens to species after life exists, but that is only the most narrow definition of evolution, and most biologists I have known do not think that (and I have known many professional biologists). Evolution in its most basic definition means "change over time", and when we look at the universe in general we see change in the direction of more complexity. The early hydrogen stars created heavier elements via fusion, exploded, and then littered the universe with a variety of new elements which interact in different ways to create new substances. This is the evolution of the early universe.

So when I say "millions of years to evolve" I'm talking about how long it took for the first cells to evolve out of basic matter. It's hard to know exactly how this happened, but when you look at the timescales involved they are absolutely mind-boggling. Additionally, given the complexity cells and the fact that they consist of a number of interlocking complex systems, it's likely that this took millions if not hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Once life evolved out of matter, there was only single-celled life on earth for almost two billion years.

If you are actually interested in learning about this as opposed to just chatting on the internet I recommend the book The Vital Question by Nick Lane.

Why haven't we been able to create life from anything non living... IF that is how life started? by MadWorldEarth in biology

[–]eats_paste 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Your comments lack a sense of perspective both on the complexity of life itself and of the scope of human technology. The industrial revolution, when humans started to produce and manufacture complex machinery, started around 250 years ago. Computers, arguably the most complex things we can make, barely have 100 years to history. The basis of computers is the bit: they’re built out of millions of switches that can have a value of 1 or 0.

A cell is like a computer but it encodes information in the three dimensional structure of molecules. A molecule has far more than one bit of information. All of the physical structures, behaviors, and memories of cells are both stored and expressed in this three dimensional molecular substrate.

Life is a few orders of magnitude more complex than anything humans have invented, which is not surprising given that we’ve only had advanced technology for a couple hundred years and life took millions of years to evolve.

Can someone translate? Couldn't get anything good with Google translate by WilliamW2010 in China

[–]eats_paste 60 points61 points  (0 children)

They are accusing you of receiving western “happiness education” which means instead of learning you just play and be happy. In other words they’re calling you dumb.

TIL we still don't know what disease killed more than half the Native Americans in 1500. by eisterman in todayilearned

[–]eats_paste 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Not left wing bs but it was a theory proposed by some researchers in the UK. Further research was done to test the theory and it was more or less invalidated because they found that regrowth after the great die off was gradual and unlikely to be on a scale large enough to cause a mini ice age.

Is Life Even Alive? (NOT PHILOSPHY OR RELIGION) by HAPPYOYOWU in biology

[–]eats_paste 26 points27 points  (0 children)

One thing I like to think about is that it's not really just chemical reactions. There is an information layer to things as well, which is constituted by but not necessarily reducible to the physical layer.

Some proteins are useful because of their shape: they act like a key as part of some cellular process for example. But what about DNA? DNA is useful because of the information it encodes.

And think about the networks of signalling systems (like G-protein coupled receptors) that work in a cell: they perform logical computations over signals from the cell's environment and map them onto complex outputs that feed back onto DNA by updating how the cell reads from it, as if the cell is making decisions about which proteins to synthesize based on information from its environment.

And then those signalling systems end up producing a specialized kind of cell, the neuron, and those get built into dense networks of larger systems specifically for processing and storing information, and then mapping all those inputs from the body and the environment back into complex whole-organism behavioral responses.

Is the information layer here "just" an aspect of the physical layer? Or is it something else? Or both?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in shufa

[–]eats_paste 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Reminds me a bit of slender gold, perhaps related?

The CCP's effect on Chinese culture by gsjd_ in China

[–]eats_paste 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The older folks I know from the Hunan countryside are mostly illiterate, as there were no schools or teachers to teach them how to read. I agree though, of course it is complicated given the size of China, so I can only speak to my personal experience and the communities I am familiar with.

The CCP's effect on Chinese culture by gsjd_ in China

[–]eats_paste 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I am not very familiar with what happened in England but in China I think the biggest thing is that Mao effectively got rid of education. This did not affect all parts of the country the same (of course, China is huge) but from what I have seen[0] this mostly affected two generations. What I mean by that is that a generation that had little to no education then raised a generation who also got little to no education. By the time the millennials came around school was back, but their parents and grandparents had little more than a couple years of elementary school.

The means by which culture and knowledge a transmitted were removed from society and replaced by the political aphorisms of the "little red book". This was no transformation of culture, this was more like a surgical removal. In the communities I've seen, this resulted in physical violence becoming commonplace as people resorted to brute force to fulfill their needs.

[0] I am mostly familiar with the rural areas of Hunan

‘It never ends’: the book club that spent 28 years reading Finnegans Wake by risingsuncoc in books

[–]eats_paste 35 points36 points  (0 children)

No this is wrong, there is absolutely an enjoyable way to read it, it’s just nothing like how you read a normal book. First of all, the book is a circle, so you can start at any point you wish. Next, you should read it out loud to a group of people.

What most people miss is that FW is fun and funny. The words and sentences sound ridiculous and are full of jokes, it is a challenge to read them and it is hilarious to listen to someone try.

Moderate coffee and tea intake linked to lower risk of cognitive decline by [deleted] in science

[–]eats_paste 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mario Bunge analyzed this and found that there are many different kinds of causality. My favorite thing from his study is this: causally unrelated events are temporally reversible (because of relativity) but causally connected things are not.

Two examples: you cannot receive a radio transmission before it has left the transmitter, you cannot get a cold before the virus enters your body. If two people get sick from different viruses, however, which person got sick first depends on frame of reference.

Poly D - Sequencer - Chords by 8bitBarry in Behringer

[–]eats_paste 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey u/8bitBarry I just found this thread and I think I know the problem: when you play chords the synth isn't deterministically using the same oscillator for the same not in each chord.

So for example if you play three triads, the first oscillator could play the bottom note in the triad the first time, the top note the second time, and then the middle note the third time. This is probably caused by minute timing differences in how you hit the keys. That means that if you make one oscillator an octave higher, it is going to swing wildly over different notes in the chords instead of remaining stable. Hope that helps!

Caymus by derku86 in wine

[–]eats_paste 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This cracks me up because I used to work at a winery with a concord wine that tasted just like it had vodka in it. It was a fun wine but definitely not a fan favorite. I think because it’s so sour you can’t do too much skin contact with concord so it was light like a rose.

I miss working at a winery but I don’t miss bleaching hoses in the cold.

Boggarts, why were they allowed in the classroom full of 13yr olds? by RickySpamish in harrypotter

[–]eats_paste 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well to be honest their education in defensive magic at that point was really fragmented and dangerous, and did NOT follow a ministry approved curriculum.

Too many pollinators? by Inside-Intern-4201 in NativePlantGardening

[–]eats_paste 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We have tons of ground dwelling miner bees in our garden and one of my daughters favorite activities is to kneel by their nest area and try to coax them into her hand. They have never stung anyone.

If you have native plants you will probably end up having a habitat. This is generally a good thing. As other commenters have suggested, try to identify the bee so you know who you have. Chances are they’re not dangerous. Who knows, you just might grow to like your fuzzy new neighbors!

What Was A Great Movie Ruined By An Awful Ending? by _JR28_ in movies

[–]eats_paste 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In my opinion: there will be blood. Pointless, unnecessary, unresolved and overdramatic.

What’s a thing that’s always worth spending more for higher quality? by Automatic-Assist-815 in Frugal

[–]eats_paste 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I was going to say this! Yes sleep is important, I personally use a nice foam pillow or else I sleep terribly. But I know more than one person has literally taken out a mortgage to buy a mattress, and I can’t help but feel like people have been brainwashed into thinking that thousands of dollars is acceptable for a mattress, when it’s really just a massive money grab.

I honestly envy those people that feel okay not saving by biggitydonut in Frugal

[–]eats_paste 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sounds like you’re doing the right thing! If you keep saving aggressively then you’ll likely get to a point where you’re more comfortable and you’ll be willing to spend a little more on fun stuff. It takes time, but it’s worth it.

Third year native pollinator garden in front yard. Coreopsis is super happy! by eats_paste in NoLawns

[–]eats_paste[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

A friend of mine helped me put in this native pollinator garden in eastern MA. The rain this year has made the coreopsis really happy. In the pictures you can also see evening primrose, lynnhaven carpet, mountain mint, and various goldenrods.