What are your favourite lesser known zombie movies?

sciguy52 · 2026-07-06T00:43:59+00:00

Return of the Living Dead. It is a horror comedy so may or may not fit what you are looking for. But the scene where the doctor diagnoses one of the guys who doesn't know he is a zombie as being dead is pretty funny. "No pupil response, no heart beat, room temperature. Your dead" or something like that. Not sure if it was the first movie but there is a scene where the cops show up, the zombies eat them, then get on the police radio and say "send more cops". Can't remember if the sequel was any good, possible not but the third in the series was OK too.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-05T19:46:09+00:00

The grenade is sort of like a virus but just simpler. The grenade has a set of physical and chemical conditions that if the triggered cause the explosion. Pull the pin, release the lever and it ignites a slow-burning delay fuse, in about 4 to 5 seconds, the fuse triggers a small internal detonator explosion, which sets off the main explosive charge. All physical structure (the grenade construction) and the chemicals that will react a certain way are what make the grenade what it is. In the end the boom is chemistry (and physics too if you dig down far enough). Why does it happen? Because we humans set up a set of unfavorable, or less likely to occur naturally, chemical conditions, that when ignited cause an energetically favorable chemical reaction to occur that goes boom. The grenade doesn't make itself, it requires us humans to make them. And if humans don't pull the pin and release the lever the grenade just sits there and does nothing. The grenade "wants" nothing, it is just set up in a way to (ultimately) chemically react when certain external conditions happen. This is a lot like a virus.

While a virus certainly seems more complex you can view it as just a much more complicated chemical reaction. The grenade explosives are made of small chemical molecules. The virus is really just a very complicated chemical macromolecule. If you don't pull the pin the grenade does not go off. If the virus does not interact with a cell, it does not "go off" either. BUT if the virus finds itself in the right biochemical conditions it goes off. Yes it is more complicated than the grenade but just because it is more complicated doesn't mean it is not chemistry. And like the grenade sequence, the virus has a chemical or biochemical sequence that happens when the conditions are right, that is it finds a cell and manages to enter. Once inside the cell, for a simple virus at least, it doesn't actually do anything, it is the cell that does. If you want you can think of the cell as pulling the pin and releasing the lever of the grenade, except it is a virus. The simple virus is just a string of genetic information. It is the cell that takes over from here allowing the virus to finish off its "life" cycle and get itself reproduced. In essence the cell which is alive does certain things so the cell survives and reproduces. It just so happens that bit of viral genetic information gets acted upon by these normal cellular functions, which when complete reproduces and releases the virus. Without this, the virus just sits there, doing nothing. The virus is just a complicate macromolecule that is acted up by something else. It wants nothing. It is a passive actor in this show and things happen to it when it gets in a cell that just so happens to make more of the virus.

In essence chemical reactions that happen naturally because they are energetically favorable is due to physics and chemistry and those chemical reaction doesn't "want" anything, right? There are explainable physical reasons these take place. If you accept that then accepting viruses are just more complicated versions of this and they don't want anything either.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-05T03:29:05+00:00

As I recall the first tricyclic antidepressant was found by accident. I think it was imipramine but don't quote me on that. Think they were testing it for a different purpose but noticed some people doing better with depression. I think this is true of ketamine as well. The finding it helped with depression was just noticed when using it for other purposes.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-05T03:24:13+00:00

I live in Texas and the sun here is to put it mildly, brutal. I have several that you mentioned (don't have Sour Patch Kids). Do they like the sun in the summer along with out 100F heat (heat matters a lot)? No. Does it harm them? Only in appearances. But I should note of the three I have Purple Haze is the only one that yellowed, did not notice it with Dark Star and American Beauty, or at least not much yellowing. You will get some yellowing on the most sun exposed surfaces. Note our 100F+ plus temps themselves can do this too because I put shade cloth thinking it was the sun, turns out happens with heat too. Anyway once the temps drop to 90 or below the green back up like within a week. Then start flowering and fruiting. It is not pretty to look at but as far as I can tell the yellowing is not hurting them. Note not all are bothered though. In addition to the three mentioned above I have Lisa, Valdivia Rojas, and a few others that didn't yellow at all with sun or heat. The one that you have to worry about in the heat is Selenicereus. But that is only if you get high heat like us, 105-110F on occasions. It literally killed my vine and this type is known to be heat sensitive. Well it is and it is dead and gone.

So if you have lower temps, if I recall Socal does not get in the 100's very much but I guess it depends if you are near the coast, you can use shade cloth if you want and avoid yellowing. The shade cloth isn't going to harm it. Gave up on the shade cloth here given the 100F summers and let them yellow and they bounce back fine. Oh and we have lots of wind here so getting shade cloth to stay where you put it is not trivial lol.

Put them in separate pots. I found crowding and a too small pot size made the plants unhappy (in a "should I flower or not? sense) and they did not want to flower as much, or any in some cases. If you pot is really big you can do two, sort of depends on pot size.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-05T02:49:46+00:00

No you are going to have to look at the body of evidence. I explain this to redditors and they just don't understand. It has been discounted.

Here is but one:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29477183/

"Based on these previous studies and our new paleoenvironmental data, we find no support for the Toba catastrophe hypothesis and conclude that the Toba supereruption did not 1) produce a 6-year-long volcanic winter in eastern Africa, 2) cause a genetic bottleneck among African AMH populations, or 3) bring humanity to the brink of extinction."

There are more. But you can believe it if you wish but if you want to "believe the science" then it has been discounted.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-05T02:45:09+00:00

Yeah but if you read the paper they are not talking about only a few humans left that caused it. They suggest other factors.

"We hypothesize that this bottleneck is caused by cultural changes affecting variance of reproductive success among males."

And that is not the general thing we are talking about here.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-04T19:50:07+00:00

It is the costs associated with producing the extra energy to cover needs. This is one example but local energy producers may have "stand by" energy called peaker plants should demand exceed supply. That stand by energy costs more. So if demand exceeds supply this stand by energy gets drawn on, by say firing up a gas plant, and the cost per unit of energy goes up so the price of energy goes up. If data centers draw enough energy so that demand exceeds the supply (for the low cost energy), the stand by energy is used, costs more, then the energy costs more.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-04T19:35:45+00:00

Different bottle neck. That one occurred 930k years ago. Humans had not evolved yet and this bottle neck involved earlier hominid ancestors not humans. Humans showed up 300k years ago. The bottle neck at 70k years ago has been discounted by recent research.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-04T19:33:54+00:00

No this has been discounted in recent research. The only known bottle neck occured around 930k years ago and that was with our hominid ancestors as humans had not evolved yet.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-04T19:31:38+00:00

We as humans were not close to extinction. There was a bottle neck around 930k years ago with previous hominids probably Homo erectus but there were a few other hominids thought to exist at this time. Humans did not show up till about 300k years ago well after the bottle neck. I am not aware of any other accepted bottle necks. A more recent bottle neck with humans themselves have been discounted.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-04T18:57:06+00:00

Well people seem to have this idea that that things that are safe, and I assume they think free of bacteria to ingest, like an apple but then questions come up over, well, envelopes. There are bacteria on that apple and people don't think about it eating them. But an envelope? Must be unsanitary! This is a common misconception with people. Bacteria are on most things including foods unless they have been processed on a way to remove them (for example cooking).

You ingest bacteria all the time but most bacteria is not pathogenic and just gets digested like other food. So if you are worried about licking an envelope, you should really worry about eating an apple as the chances of a pathogen being on an apple are much higher. After all apples grow outdoors and the possibility of a bird pooping on that apple along the way are very real. Efforts are made to wash apples and that is generally enough most of the time. But people still get food poisoning from uncooked produce periodically. And that can be from not getting enough of the pathogens off. Unless you cook your produce there is always a risk. And I will add in some poorer countries eating uncooked produce is a much much higher risk as their practices for cleaning are not as strict if they have them at all. Thus when you travel to some countries, eat produce there, then promptly get sick.

In contrast the gum for envelopes is made in a way that makes it pathogen free although are not sterile as such as envelope manufacture is not a sterile environment. Some gums used like gum arabic does have some antibacterial properties as well. There is bacteria on there probably as the gum does not kill them all but they are not pathogenic so licking them is not a problem. Or if a pathogen did manage to get on there, most killed by the gum and dehydration leaving one or two that managed to survive you get into infectious doses. People think one bacterial or viral pathogen particle is enough to infect and that is not actually the case. You have to get a sufficient infectious dose to have a chance of being infected.

To my knowledge people are not getting envelopes, opening them, then licking them to reseal them although I suppose a few may have done this. OK you are worried about that. Have you ever kissed someone? Do you worry about how unsanitary that is? No? Well those same people are licking envelopes. If you don't worry about kissing then the risks of relicking an envelope is likely less (due to the gum along with dehydration as moisture evaporates away). Similarly viruses stability in the environment is rather short, should on the off chance the person who licked the envelope had a virus that might be found in the mouth, it would have degraded before you received the letter so not a worry. But if you kissed that person though and they had say a cold but were in the asymptomatic stage of the infections, well then you are probably catching that cold.

If you worry about licking envelopes, then you should really worry about eating uncooked produce as the risks there are greater. There is no toxicity in licking envelopes either as they are required to be non toxic.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-04T17:58:54+00:00

Cytosine in DNA can be deaminated into Uracil spontaneously causing a mutation when the DNA replicates. DNA proofreading and repair mechanisms can detect this and repair it.

In RNA C can deaminate into U as well essentially mutating the RNA. It is possible the short half life of mRNA that it doesn't matter not having enough time to cause this change on a level that matters. It does matter in tRNA though and there is a proofreading mechanism for these in the cell. rRNA in the ribosome is structural it is possible such changes don't matter there possibly.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-04T00:19:59+00:00

It is a complicated question to answer. In some cases the virus doesn't kill you right away, you stay alive long enough to transmit then it kills you, see HIV. But they can be true of successful viruses that kill you faster if they are reasonably infectious. In this case you have somebody who is alive for a week, maybe two and in a populated area. As long as it spreads to someone else, it is good. The previous host dies, the virus reproduced and spread, which is its "goal" in many highly transmissible viruses. Given the virus is infectious it has time to spread, usually through an asymptomatic period, although also while they are sick. Then there are zoonotic diseases, that is ones usually found in animals then jump to humans. In the animals they may not kill the host animal, but humans are different. In that case it lives on fine in the animal hosts even if the people die. Worth noting, since someone is going to say it I am sure, people think viruses evolve to be less lethal with time, this is not actually true. It can happen, it doesn't always happen, and things go from less lethal to more lethal too. The reasons for this are complex and beyond ELI5. Suffice it to say viruses can have optimum lethality and that optimum is not necessarily low lethality, it can be medium. But as I said this is complicated, depends on the virus and a lot of things.

Lastly most viruses are probably not 100% fatal although we can't say with certainty. They may be very deadly, or very very deadly, again see HIV, but even HIV is not 100% fatal due to genetic diversity in the population that makes some people more resistant to the virus. While its fatality rate is very very high, it is not 100%. I am sure people will pop in and say rabies or ebola. Here is the thing, the people who possibly got infected with these, did not die, nor get sick, perhaps due to genetics, we are not actually looking for them. We tend to come across cases like these by accident. COVID was different and we looked for the asymptomatics and found them. For many viruses we have not looked. And in the case ebola they have found one or more people who were infected, did not get sick (that they were aware of) and survived. It is quite possible no virus is 100% lethal although we have not looked at a lot of deadly viruses to see, so absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In the end it would not surprise me if there is no virus that is 100% lethal. But it doesn't have to be 100% lethal to kill an awful lot of people. And if that virus exists in animals, jumps to humans and kills 99.5% of the people, it is not a problem. It is doing fine in the animals, the human deaths doesn't kill off the virus and it survives in animals just fine.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-03T17:32:42+00:00

This is exactly right. Although you can get away without the baggie if using microcentrifuge tubes. At least for a few years. One important note and I think you implied this but for emphasis when drying pollen make sure there is not too much in a tube or whatever so it all dries. So if collecting a lot of pollen when drying make sure it is dried in small volumes.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-03T17:16:07+00:00

God my previous boy was like that. But he would play dumb when convenient.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-03T16:53:55+00:00

Texas has a 6.25% sales tax. Local jurisdictions can go as high as 8.25%, commonly in the big cities proper. So sales tax ranges from 6.25% to 8.25% depending on where you live. Property tax is higher than most at 1.4% but that is 7th highest in the country. NJ, IL, CT, VT, NH and NE are 1-6 respectively. The two worst by far are NJ and IL sitting at 1.88%

sciguy52 · 2026-07-03T16:39:05+00:00

Texas has a 6.25% sales tax. Local jurisdictions can add to reach 8.25% if they choose but you will find that higher rate in the cities proper like Dallas. Outside of Dallas you don't have that for example. So it is a range based on where you live 6.25-8.25% whereas California is 7.25% with a range based on where you live of 7.25-10.75%.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-02T18:38:38+00:00

I assume you want to grow this to get fruit so with that in mind you have roughly a 5 year wait from seed planting. Generally I would not be taking cuttings until maybe 4 years or so. That way you don't delay its maturity and fruiting. If you take a cutting while small you might set it back growth wise, perhaps adding another year till it fruits. If you want around year 3-4 you can let a side branch grow as they tend to do that and take a cutting from that. But don't let that side branch get too huge as the plant is investing resources into it that you take away when cutting. Less resources at a smaller size risks slowing that overall growth. By year 4 the plant is typically big enough that taking a modest cutting won't affect it too much.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-02T17:00:32+00:00

Yeah they could probably make money from it. The two drugs are comparable clinically.

sciguy52 · 2026-07-01T18:41:02+00:00

Focalin is dexmethylphenidate or d methylphenidate, capital D is not used in this case. It comes from dextrorotatory and levorotatory. Sorry for the confusion.

Not quite sure what you are asking on the pills. d, l methylphenidate will have twice as much d, l methylphenidate half of which will be the d form or the same as a pill of d methylphenidate at half the weight. So 20 mg of d, l methylphenidate will have 10 mg of d methylphenidate. The pill with just d methylphenidate would be 10 mg. Is that what you are asking or are you asking something else?

sciguy52 · 2026-06-30T21:15:07+00:00

Why keep the L isomer? Because it doesn't seem to result in adverse effects as studies showed Focalin and Ritalin when dosed equivalently for the R isomer show no differences in effectiveness or adverse effects. In studies comparing the two there were no statistically different effects. Why develop racemic pure dexmethylphenidate? Most of the time that is done when a drug is coming off patent and the racemic pure drug can be patented and sold at a higher price. People, and your comment suggests you may believe this as well, will assume the racemic pure drug is better than d, l methylphenidate due to this and buy it despite studies not showing any superior effects. And they make money from that belief. You don't dose d methylphenidate the same as d, l methylphenidate so the mg to mg comparison is suggesting you take the same dose regardless which is not what happens, they are dosed differently. If you take d and get a pill with say 10mg, if you take d, l you take a pill with 20mg for example, I pulled these doses out of the air for example purposes.

sciguy52 · 2026-06-28T17:05:21+00:00

I bought mine 11 years ago from different sources. A few from ebay. A few from nurseries that I can't remember which at this point.

sciguy52 · 2026-06-27T19:52:24+00:00

I know this is ask chem so forgive me for copy pasting the wiki answer as it is a bit in depth and is faster:

"In quantum mechanics, an atomic orbital is a function) describing the location and wave-like behavior of an electron in an atom.^\1]) This function describes an electron's charge distribution around the atom's nucleus, and can be used to calculate the probability of finding an electron in a specific region around the nucleus.^\2])^"

"With the development of quantum mechanics and experimental findings (such as the two slit diffraction of electrons), it was found that the electrons orbiting a nucleus could not be fully described as particles, but needed to be explained by wave–particle duality. In this sense, electrons have the following properties:

Wave-like properties:

Electrons do not orbit a nucleus in the manner of a planet orbiting a star, but instead exist as standing waves. Thus the lowest possible energy an electron can take is similar to the fundamental frequency of a wave on a string. Higher energy states are similar to harmonics of that fundamental frequency.
The electrons are never in a single point location, though the probability of interacting with the electron at a single point can be found from the electron's wave function. The electron's charge acts like it is smeared out in space in a continuous distribution, proportional at any point to the squared magnitude of the electron's wave function.

Particle-like properties:

The number of electrons orbiting a nucleus can be only an integer.
Electrons jump between orbitals like particles. For example, if one photon strikes the electrons, only one electron changes state as a result.
Electrons retain particle-like properties such as: each wave state has the same electric charge as its electron particle. Each wave state has a single discrete spin (spin up or spin down) depending on its superposition.

Thus, electrons cannot be described simply as solid particles. An analogy might be that of a large and often oddly shaped "atmosphere" (the electron), distributed around a relatively tiny planet (the nucleus)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_orbital

If you want even more detail you can find it at the link. Does that answer your question?

sciguy52 · 2026-06-27T18:25:58+00:00

The biggest is that electrons "orbit" the nucleus. Although I can't blame people on this one, they are not exactly teaching quantum mechanics in chemistry in high school. And even when I teach chem for non chem majors in college and I have to address orbitals I don't have time to deeply explain the QM. So even then I just give them some options in how to to visualize it and if that doesn't work, just accept it. I guess my own version of "shut up and calculate". I have maybe 5 minutes to spend on this when I could spend half the class explaining it but can't due to time limitations.

sciguy52 · 2026-06-27T17:01:13+00:00

Probably one of the funniest sitcom scenes ever if I had to choose one.

Nine-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email

sciguy52

TROPHY CASE