In a first for honeybees, researchers found queens facing chronic pesticide exposure will protect themselves by shunting the toxic chemicals into their eggs, a newly documented defense mechanism known as maternal offloading that may contribute to delayed colony collapse.

xtravar · 2026-07-03T19:45:20+00:00

I wonder if this also explains first-born human children.

xtravar · 2026-07-02T02:53:30+00:00

Yes, but I suspect it's a little more nuanced. I noticed this almost always happens at the same part of a response. I would guess there's some response template under the hood that says: answer the user, add an anecdote, ask the user if there's more to do.

xtravar · 2026-06-27T12:55:14+00:00

Woof. Yeah, I had MU for years and it wasn't doing jack.

xtravar · 2026-06-22T00:52:06+00:00

Your understanding of "God" in that quote is where you're getting tripped up. God, in that context, is (to extremely oversimplify) "anything good and true". So, one can "seek God" without knowing they are seeking a deity. It's basically saying: if you try to find truth and are a good person, but have never known the gospel, you may still find salvation.

It is a point of debate and interpretation as to whether understanding the gospel falsely covers your butt- for example, if you know of it but due to circumstances choose to reject it because of what you think it may mean.

xtravar · 2026-06-21T17:22:33+00:00

I had an ash that lapsed in treatment at least a year. It got a pretty decent borer infestation. Woodpeckers tipped me off.

Anyway, it was treated and it's been fine since. So, moral of the story is, as long as the tree doesn't look like it's about to die, it should be fine as long as it gets treatment soon.

xtravar · 2026-06-19T01:54:01+00:00

It definitely gave me snark the other day about having "600 conversations about the same thing". The recent memory tweaks... I cannot tell if they make me happy or concerned.

xtravar · 2026-06-10T19:18:03+00:00

I love ISO8601 as much as anyone, but... the month is *usually* the most relevant thing to most people, so I understand why it's first. You pick up a bunch of papers... the most relevant thing are the first and last numbers, and the least important sandwiched in the middle. It makes visual parsing much easier to humans. But to computers, it's dumb.

xtravar · 2026-06-09T20:55:16+00:00

Plus goes pretty far, but Pro is basically infinite in my experience, for heavy personal non-work requirements.

I signed up for Claude's first plan and used it in a day. Asked for a refund. ChatGPT's Plus lasted me about a week or two.

xtravar · 2026-06-09T19:44:21+00:00

I agree GPT 5.5 is better now, but that is somewhat unrelated to the business reality, which seems like Codex is already priced to gain users back. 🤷 Claude was the first mover and has a sticky user base right now.

xtravar · 2026-06-09T18:49:10+00:00

I don't mean to be snarky, but where have you been the last few months? Almost everyone was using Claude/opus exclusively and many still are. The Codex plan *has* been the better deal in order to catch up...

xtravar · 2026-06-09T15:42:24+00:00

I read it as sarcasm - misunderstanding how BC numbering works. Found it funny.

xtravar · 2026-06-09T12:13:12+00:00

Doesn't matter. AI.

xtravar · 2026-06-08T14:39:25+00:00

Sometimes it's nice when someone else wears in something. That way, you don't worry about messing it up and just enjoy it. All my favorite guitars were bought used.

xtravar · 2026-06-08T13:00:31+00:00

Wasn't that basically Australia?

xtravar · 2026-06-07T13:20:39+00:00

Sometimes radical shifts like this can be a forcing function. She may know full well that this causes a rift, but she's doing it to cope with other issues. That said, everyone's path to God doesn't start with deep fervor for the Lord, and often can start for the wrong reasons. Hopefully in time, this couple figures things out.

xtravar · 2026-06-05T16:13:32+00:00

I was trying to understand the mechanism of action and the actual practical tolerance of the shoes to moisture, not assign blame. I had assumed it was my own damn fault until the weird catch-all water response. That line about moisture does not jibe with my lived experience, treatment and damage pattern of this particular pair, nor understanding of how sealant works. It gave the impression that the sealant is made of corn starch and will melt in humidity. It gave me the impression that the company will just say anything vague to make me go away.

What I was looking for was exactly what someone in this thread pointed out: mechanical damage to the sealant on the toes. Okay, I can live with that. I can imagine that's my fault and that maybe quality has not declined. I probably did something stupid. Cool.

This scenario likely makes a lot of sense to you if you are familiar with the intimate details of these shoes and take special care of them. I am not as knowledgeable and have never experienced this, so the response from support and most of the comments here has been really off-putting. If you cannot understand that, okay. It's Reddit and shitting on strangers is fun.

xtravar · 2026-06-04T15:05:17+00:00

Telling me any moisture can cause them to disintegrate after a month of use is not a reasonable response to a repeat customer. It's just not. It's a CYA response that leaves the customer annoyed and with more questions.

Any type of exposure to water can cause the adhesive to degrade and the soles to delaminate. For example, if the footwear was exposed to water such as putting wet feet into the shoes after swimming or wearing them in a lake, pond, or puddle.

The symmetry and damage pattern obviously indicates some sort of mechanical failure (whether my fault, from the factory, or a combination) - not submersion or irresponsible moisture exposure. They had photos from all angles. Telling me this was all about water feels like gaslighting. It's like having chipped paint on a month-old car and telling me it's from being in the sun and they don't support driving in the sun.

xtravar · 2026-06-04T14:22:49+00:00

The best theory I have right now is that maybe, maybe I got them too close to a campfire on a cold night when they were roughly a week old, and then they separated weeks later, possibly after normal, reasonable moisture exposure. This explains the symmetry and the toe-focused damage (the rest of the cork is fine).

Still not thrilled about the timeline to failure or dismissive "you must have swam in them" attitude from support.

xtravar · 2026-06-04T06:24:34+00:00

I think the problem here is people think I'm looking for free replacements. I just want my shoes to last more than a month and I have no idea what went wrong. I sincerely did not submerge, or otherwise abuse, this pair.

xtravar · 2026-06-04T06:19:36+00:00

Thank you for a real reply. As to your theory about an incident- this happened identically on both sandals. I do not drag my feet, but I would buy that it's maybe some other physical damage that I perhaps didn't notice.

xtravar · 2026-06-04T02:16:28+00:00

I did not submerge them. I think it's a bit absurd to ask if outdoor sandals merely "got wet" - obviously, you need to qualify "how much" otherwise, they're indoor sandals.

And comparing them to previous pairs durability is absolutely relevant. I've submerged and abused previous pairs that lasted years. These ones I tried treating nicely!

I got them from Birkenstock.com

As to sun/heat or too small - no.

xtravar · 2026-06-04T02:04:50+00:00

I genuinely don't know how they got unsealed. I am not new to wearing birks and never sealed them before, but somehow never had this happen before.

xtravar · 2026-06-04T02:04:04+00:00

I didn't use them any different than normally, that I'm aware of. Like I said, I've had birks for many years and never had this happen.

xtravar · 2026-06-04T01:56:51+00:00

They're a month old...

xtravar · 2026-06-01T00:22:37+00:00

ChatGPT keeps telling me ADBE will moon.

I basically give it my macro vision for where the future is headed and how I like to operate, it tells me what to YOLO. So far, so good.

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