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[Spastic Hamburger]

So NASA once used spider as guinea pigs to see what happens when you give them various substances. Fascinating stuff

Also, dug up some old articles on roaming cats from the BBC and ABC Australia. Interesting study and there have also been some newer studies on that as well, such as this one out of Denmark.

Was a bit hard to dig up the studies on roaming cats as the search engines kept thinking I was looking for buying guides for cat trackers even though I had “study” in the search query. It’s getting harder and harder to make search engines behave these days 😛

[Spastic Hamburger]

Kit Kat bars now have instructions on the wrappers telling you how to peel the wrapper off. Why, I have no idea.

“It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”

• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by Spastic Hamburger.

[DeVaultSetter]

Very interesting – the full 1995 article is at the archive:
https://ia601801.us.archive.org/21/items/statistical-crystallography-a-practical-method-to-quantify-toxic-effects-on-spider-web-patterns/Statistical%20Crystallography%20A%20practical%20method%20to%20quantify%20toxic%20effects%20on%20spider%20web%20patterns_text.pdf
It all started in 1948 apparently.
The cat here prefers to hang around, as her majesty considers the food to be … reasonable. In her younger days she was a little more explorative, a ramshackle shed over the road was a favourite haunt. 🙂 Does your cat occasionally miss an evening at home?

Yeah, in a Google page on Edge, the search button in a search box is now AI, so you have to press enter instead to get the “normal” search. 😛

Why bother reading the wrapper when it’s all on YouTube?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Z2pge7NdyQQ

[Spastic Hamburger]

I actually don’t have a cat 😛

Those articles are some that came in a long time ago which I felt like checking up on again 🙂

We do have quite a few outdoor cats in the area. They mostly stick close to home as that’s where the food is and don’t tend to wander off outside of the neighborhood.

What amazes me is that people actually need instructions to unwrap their candy bars 😛

And came across this tidbit the other day: https://hackaday.com/2016/08/03/electrostatic-loudspeakers-high-end-hifi-you-can-build-yourself/

Looks like it could be a fun project but I’m not sure about using dish soap for the conductive layer. That just seems like it’d be a temporary solution (no pun intended) at best. Something like this may be a better option

• This reply was modified 4 weeks, 1 day ago by Spastic Hamburger.

[DeVaultSetter]

Fascinating! Interesting comments as well, the last one from 2020 warns of the downsides of using SF6 in the breakers. Not too hot on electrostatic loudspeakers unfortunately.
The copper foil sheets would make a difference for shielding as well – Marantz comes to mind for that.

This I Don’t Believe

He spoke on the radio recently, pretty much on a down-home vibe. Why yearn for benefits derived from monetary gain when all the wonder is right with us. Is this not enough? A slight drawback for the next generations is that youthful wanderlust requires coin, and more of it these days it seems. Outer space? Just don’t go there. 😛

[Spastic Hamburger]

Here’s an interesting list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

Lots of Japanese companies and breweries on there

[Spastic Hamburger]

So is anyone doing anything with blockchain anymore outside of crypto-currency? There was a lot of activity surrounding the concept several years ago and then, after a couple of years, poof. Nothing.

[DeVaultSetter]

$100 or so per night for a small double room at the Angel and Royal doesn’t sound too exorbitant, no doubt special discounts willingly lavished on special visitors bedecked with cherub regalia.
Trinity House is more like a state corporation, is there a parallel on the US?
Curious that Shirley Plantation is the oldest in the List of oldest companies in the United States despite having no mention in the world list.
The Certificate Transparency edict makes use of distributed ledgers which contain details of issued certificates. Wonder if it’s possible to say trace the existence of an expired certificate all the way back to its issuance in year dot (~2012)?
There’s this, Why We Want to Believe in Aliens and Why We Still Haven’t Found Them which brings in the question if we ever found these aliens, would we still have the need to believe them? Do have a sneaking suspicion that they will end up in a special category of our animal kingdom. The other question is, if we never believed in aliens, would we ever still to want to find them, other than to prove belief is bluff, Everest is surmountable or history is bunk etc.. The elephant in the room is the alternative perspective, when the same question can be relayed to the other side: Why Would Aliens Ever Want to Believe in Humans and Why They Still Haven’t Found Us?

[Spastic Hamburger]

There are some cool places on the US list, such as the Greenbrier 🙂

Most of our transportation and utility companies are set up as wholly owned or at least partially owned subsidies with the government being the primary party. There have also been a few occasions where we nationalized an organization not owned by the government, such as during the 2008 financial crisis when we took over GM and a few banks. Those holdings were finally divested a few years ago. We’ve been bringing that practice back in the last few years, such as the government taking a stake in Intel to help keep it from going under.

Yeah, the Wikipedia lists are often inconsistent and missing data that they have on other pages. Wikipedia has definitely gotten better but some stuff is still falling through the cracks. I’ve seen similar issues with the pages on dog breeds.

Even if we never believed in extraterrestrials, we’d still be exploring the stars. In which case, I think the reaction when we did come into contact with them would be much worse as we would have never considered the fact that we could be sharing a universe with another living entity

Now we’re getting into the Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

There are several reasons that may be true but I still feel that there was some sort of contact thousands of years ago due to various things the ancients believed. Granted, it was probably fleeting or we’d have more solid evidence but there are too many stories in the ancient scriptures to discount the idea entirely

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