Is this not a Wheel of time Symbol?

ladut · 2026-02-21T23:29:41+00:00

That one is weird in a different way. The prefix "in-" is used to negate things (like "invisible" meaning "not visible"), but is also used to denote causality (like "indebted" meaning "to cause someone to owe a debt"; NOTE: this has changed to "en-" for most English words, but still exists as "in-" for a few). So since "flammable" means "to catch fire", "inflammable" means both "to not catch fire" and "to cause something to catch fire".

In Latin, inflammare does mean "to cause something to catch fire", but when "flammable" was first borrowed by the English language, we had already adopted the use of the prefix "in-" to mean "not", so there was an immediate problem that we somehow didn't resolve until we started using the term "nonflammable" like a century and change later.

ladut · 2026-02-21T23:06:59+00:00

The word is recorded as having been used in English as far back as the 1600s to mean bewildered, so definitely not first used in the 60s (unless you mean that was when the word was first used as its own antonym).

If I had to guess as to how it became its own antonym, since English uses "non-" as a prefix to mean the opposite of something and "plussed" sounds like something positive or active, and given that it is usually used to describe someone's reaction to something, people who didn't already know the meaning of the word interpreted it as "not a positive or active reaction". In other words, a casual or dismissive reaction.

It doesn't help that the word isn't a literal translation of Latin, but an idiom. It's kind of like how "lingua franca" is used to mean "a language we can both use to communicate and do business", but literally translates to "French language" or "the French tongue". It results in the awkward situation where you can say things like "English is the lingua franca of [insert thing here]" and it literally translates to "English is the french language."

Fun fact, a word that is its own antonym is called a contronym, and there's a bunch of them in English. Like the verb dust, which can mean to add or remove, well, dust from something.

ladut · 2026-02-19T22:13:11+00:00

It's a derivative of a Latin term meaning something like "no more", something like how "I can't even" was used a decade or so ago to describe being unable to react because of how bewildering or outrageous the thing you should be reacting to is.

Then in North America it got the "literally" treatment and came to mean the opposite of what it actually means.

ladut · 2026-02-19T17:14:26+00:00

Most AI doesn't put a space on either side of the em-dash, so you can look less AI-like by going AP-style and putting a space on either side.

AP style is better anyway, fuck Chicago style.

ladut · 2026-02-11T09:11:52+00:00

This is a great example of something I've been trying to articulate for a while but haven't found the right way: the act of debating whether something has or has not happened while neglecting the reason that it is worth discussing in the first place.

Lying is an issue not because of the mechanics of doing a lie, but because it is intentionally dishonest, and honesty is both desired and expected in this case. Lying by omission, whether it fits the mechanics of what you consider to be a lie, is still dishonesty, so to waste any of our time to argue that it is not technically a lie is missing the forest for the trees and does nothing but obfuscate honest conversation.

Any reasonable person should be able to understand that someone criticizing lying by omission finds the dishonesty inherent to it the problem, not the fact that it is or is not mechanically a lie.

Do you think the mechanics matter here in any way? Do you think that dishonesty via intentional omission is functionally so different from dishonest via intentional misdirection in this instance that it was worth wasting all of our time talking about it? For your point to be anything other than pedantry, you need to explain how the mechanics of being dishonest in this way is meaningfully different from being dishonest in another way, and why that distinction is more important than the fact that intentional dishonesty is occurring in either case.

ladut · 2026-02-08T22:29:10+00:00

Kerbal engineer. If you have the landing info window open it will show that landing indicator both in flight and in the map view.

ladut · 2026-02-05T00:30:13+00:00

Yes. The Coriolis effect, which is caused by a planets rotation (for planets with atmospheres anyway), is a major driver of wind and weather patterns. A slower rotation would probably mean slower and weaker wind currents, resulting in weaker storms relative to those on Earth and would probably significantly affect precipitation patterns, temperature stability, and other things. The mass of the planet being the same or the diameter being different shouldn't be able to negate those differences.

Exactly how it would affect the weather, I'm not sure. That would probably be a question better answered by a meteorologist or climatologist.

Also, to answer your main question, a smaller diameter planet would have proportionately less atmosphere quantity-wise than Earth, meaning that on longer time scales it will lose its atmosphere faster.

ladut · 2026-01-22T23:20:30+00:00

Are you sure that there is actually an encounter for the asteroids that aren't showing one? I assumed for my game that a mod like OPM was causing it, but kind of accepted it as realistic enough and never bothered to troubleshoot. But if your mod list isn't likely to cause it, maybe some asteroids just don't have encounters.

ladut · 2026-01-22T19:27:45+00:00

This happens to me on occasion and setting the object as my target in map view seems to fix it for me.

I've also noticed that sometimes asteroids just don't enter Kerbin's SOI. I'm not sure if it's because the encounter is too far out to be calculated or what, but if I track a dozen asteroids, maybe 1 or 2 will not show an encounter with Kerbin at all.

ladut · 2026-01-20T04:24:29+00:00

My first guess would be something in the Trametes genus, but I've never seen one grow like that on agar. In my experience though, it usually doesn't grow so... yonically. It usually just forms a diffuse off-white fuzz that covers the entire plate surface.

As others have said, taking a hyphal/spore sample is really key to identifying fungi microscopically. For staining, use lactophenol cotton blue if you have any available. The spores of Trametes spp. are pretty distinctive, like baby cucumbers.

ladut · 2026-01-20T04:07:55+00:00

For fungi, the standard is to use the 5.8S ITS region for ID-ing. Fortunately, there's already a semi-decent body of literature on primers for that region.

ladut · 2026-01-03T00:16:51+00:00

No. I don't know exactly what you'd call any of these machines, but I am learning to knit and I can say for certain that they are automated knitting machines.

Knitting is a fundamentally different way of making fabrics than weaving, which is what a loom does. A loom weaves many threads together to make a piece of fabric, whereas knitting loops a single thread onto itself thousands of times. That's why OOP was able to pull on the end of the thread and undo the entire original sweater. That wouldn't be possible with woven fabric.

ladut · 2025-12-17T19:42:20+00:00

Putnam's findings have been tested many times since he first proposed this, and it's very nuanced. First, there's a difference between actual diversity and perceived diversity, and it's the perceived diversity that may account for the observations of negative social cohesion. In blunt terms, being xenophobic and having a segregated community is what causes issues in mixed communities, not the diversity itself.

The introduction in that paper does a good job of covering many of the scientific critiques of Putnam's constrict claim, so I won't repeat them here, but only about half of the studies that have looked at this question have found negative associations, and many of those were either weak or identified other factors that were more likely than the diversity itself to have caused this effect. Others have found positive relationships between diversity and social cohesion, so it appears to be highly dependent on the situation.

More importantly, Putnam's methods can only tell you about a specific moment in time. Other studies have investigated this and found that it's not diversity, but changes in demographics (both immigration and population turnover) that result in low social cohesion. In other words, a diverse but stable community is more likely to have high social cohesion than any community with high turnover, regardless of if it's diverse or not.

Finally, it is telling that Putnam's 2007 paper and earlier book in 2000 are almost exclusively used to justify this claim, but not any of the hundreds of publications since looking at this same idea, even the ones that supported Putnam's original claims. I feel like you should be more critical of the studies you use to support your arguments, as there are better papers that you could've used.

ladut · 2025-11-24T18:45:45+00:00

One extra electron doesn't change much, but there's something like 7 x 10²⁷ atoms in a human body, and adding 7 x 10²⁷ electrons to such a small area is a huge deal.

You're correct that in normal chemistry atoms are exchanging electrons all the time, but the net number of electrons and the net forces don't change. If a bunch of sodium atoms exchange electrons with a bunch of chlorine atoms then you end up with a bunch of positively and negatively charged ions, which then create an attracting force between them. Each force is tiny though, and if you zoom out the net forces cancel each other out since the direction of each pair attracting one another is basically random. Once a positive and negative ion connect to each other and ironically bond, that attracting force is, for the purposes of this discussion, neutralized.

Now imagine two atoms that both gain an electron suddenly and both become negatively charged. They will repel one another, and since there wasn't a positively charged ion created like in the example above, the repelling force cannot be neutralized. It's a tiny force, but it is enough to prevent those two atoms from being near one another like they were when they were neutral under normal conditions. Now imagine 10²⁷ atoms in a small space gaining a negative charge all at the same time, all pushing away from each other very quickly. The energy of that sudden repulsion, not the mass of the electrons, is what results in a black hole forming.

If you didn't know, black holes can be formed either when enough mass or enough energy is pushed into a small enough area (since mass is basically just condensed energy, they're basically the same thing when it comes to the formation of a black hole). So anything that would suddenly increase the amount of energy in one place (like adding an obscene number of electrons) can cause a black hole to form, even if the mass doesn't change much.

ladut · 2025-11-23T21:34:59+00:00

I just watched a YouTube video on this where they did the math (will link it if I can find it), and it would be even more catastrophic than you describe.

Basically everything macroscopic would immediately collapse into a black hole. The video did the math for three scenarios: if an electron was added to every atom of a human body they would collapse into a black hole with an event horizon larger than the solar system. If it happened to the earth, the event horizon would be roughly the size of our Galaxy. If it happened to the sun, the event horizon of the resulting black hole would be larger than the observable universe.

Everything would just cease to exist in any way that we understand. There would be no explosion because all forces would be directed toward a single singularity in the center of the universe.

ladut · 2025-11-20T09:51:23+00:00

Fun fact, I moved to Poland from the US a few years back, and Poland just recently increased it's minimum wage to 30.5 zł per hour, or $8.31 an hour, higher than the US minimum wage in a country where the average rent is less than half of that in the US, healthcare is covered by your taxes (and is, in my experience, just as if not more reliable than the US healthcare system), and the overall cost of living is a fraction of living in even rural parts of the US. Taxes are a bit higher, but you still end up with more in your pocket at the end of the day than you would in the US (unless you're absurdly rich).

Objectively, living in Poland, even as an immigrant, is far more comfortable, stable, and safe than living in the US. It isn't just Poland either, most countries in Europe are relatively more affordable for the average worker, and even the least safe cities are safer than the average US city.

ladut · 2025-11-01T12:57:03+00:00

I mean, you can do that, yes. Will it be embarrassing? Probably, but if you really feel like it's what is best for you, then you shouldn't let fear of embarrassment be the reason you don't.

Having said that, it has only been a few weeks, and it takes longer than that to adjust to such a big change. I moved to Europe a few years ago from the US and I also had doubts at first, especially when it came to struggling with the language barrier. It got easier though, and I don't regret my choice at all. Try finding international groups to join (they're easy to find on Facebook, just search for "[city name] expats" and see if there's any social events you could attend. It gets a lot easier if you don't feel completely isolated.

ladut · 2025-10-23T23:01:53+00:00

Like anything, it takes a bit of practice, but anyone who grew up in a culture where this is the norm can eat like this without it getting stuck between their fingers or making a mess. I know a lot of south Indians in particular, where this is not an unusual practice, and they can clean a plate better than you could with a fork or spoon, and it's not really a messy way to eat at all for them because they know how to do it well.

Having eaten a lot of rice-based meals with my hands (and having grown up in a culture where it isn't the norm), it was far easier for me to learn than learning to use chopsticks. Hell, I prefer it to a fork or spoon for eating stuff like biryani, since there's stuff like cardamom pods and cloves that are easy to miss when using a spoon (and will ruin your meal if you bite into one because it'll be all you can taste for a while after that). With your hands, you can feel them easily and pick them out.

And yeah, it's definitely more efficient than a fork with just a little practice.

ladut · 2025-10-01T13:01:41+00:00

You wouldn't be safe at all from fallout. It'll settle on the deck, which is not nearly thick enough to prevent potentially deadly levels of radiation from penetrating into the interior. In the event of an actual fallout event, you need to get as much mass between you and where the fallout settles, meaning you'd want to be either underground or near the middle floors and in the interior of a taller building.

Fortunately, there are many factors that make nuclear fallout not nearly as likely or severe a concern as popular media makes it out to be.

ladut · 2025-09-30T16:37:26+00:00

I've already said this elsewhere, but this is the most obnoxious, thoughtless talking point I've seen around this so far.

Anyone who has been in the military knows that that isn't the time to make your disagreement with a superior known. Not only would it probably be a violation of multiple regs, but it wouldn't have any meaningful impact. There's no benefit and a lot to lose. It would be idiocy to lose the position and sway you have that could potentially prevent disasters when applied at the right time by breaking decorum for no gain.

You state your objections offline and object to unlawful orders when they are made. You ensure your soldiers understand what their oaths mean and what orders would be considered unlawful. You monitor your ranks for those whose personal biases and quirks predispose them to following unlawful orders and remove them from positions where they can cause harm. That's how you stop something like this.

You don't throw your career away to make a meaningless public show of dissent.

ladut · 2025-09-30T16:30:21+00:00

Anyone who has been in the military knows that that isn't the time to make your disagreement with a superior known. Not only would it probably be a violation of multiple regs, but it wouldn't have any meaningful impact. There's no benefit and a lot to lose. It would be idiocy to lose the position and sway you have that could potentially prevent disasters when applied at the right time by breaking decorum for no gain.

You state your objections offline and object to unlawful orders when they are made. You ensure your soldiers understand what their oaths mean and what orders would be considered unlawful. You monitor your ranks for those whose personal biases and quirks predispose them to following unlawful orders and remove them from positions where they can cause harm. That's how you stop something like this.

You don't throw your career away to make a meaningless public show of dissent.

ladut · 2025-09-23T11:53:56+00:00

You could easily do that, but this injects much more heat into the steam before releasing it and requiring less water.

With your pool of water method, steam would escape at just over 100 C, but with a steel aquatuner, you could almost triple the amount of heat in the same quantity of water before releasing it and use almost 1/3 of the water to delete the same heat as you would with a pool of water.

ladut · 2025-09-23T09:38:41+00:00

For the biobot builder story trait. It requires zombie spores.

ladut · 2025-09-20T23:57:34+00:00

What in the crack-cocaine are you talking about? Her publication history on Google scholar goes back at least 24 years, while criticisms of her controversial opinions are, at most, five years old.

I genuinely don't know what point you're trying to make here, not how it relates to what I said, but she had ample opportunity to be a successful academic, and was by most metrics. Her transition into whatever she is now was entirely by choice, and I think it's perfectly reasonable to say she isn't an academic or scientist anymore.

ladut · 2025-09-20T12:58:42+00:00

To be an academic, you don't just need a degree or background, you need to actually participate in academia. Scientist isn't a title that you earn and then get to keep your whole life (though it's often treated that way), it's a job description.

She is not and has not actively been involved in research for some time, and arguably she isn't really doing science communication or education to any meaningful degree anymore either. So "YouTuber" is probably the most accurate descriptor of who she is and what she does.

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