I am skeptical of the premise that long chain hydrocarbons can only be explained by life. Mostly because that logic fails whe examining how life arose on Earth in the first place. If complex organic molecules can only form life, then how did life arise on Earth to begin with? Life itself is complex organic chemistry and large organic molecules. If complex molecules like polypeptides and RNA can’t form without life, then life can’t come into being in the first place. Particularly with these long chain hydrocarbons it’s not that hard to imagine exotic conditions where they might be able to form. It is certainly easier to imagine these conditions than imagining the self replicating RNA or polypeptide strands that most likely became life as we know it. If they had found chains of nucleic acids or amino acids I would be a lot more willing to buy that it’s a sign of life. But hydrocarbons? It’s definitely interesting and a very good thing to look into (particularly in terms of the origins of life) but it’s far from a smoking gun.

That said, I am very interested in this finding because, at the end of the day, I do think it is relevant to biochemistry. Mostly that there are two possible explanations and both are important. If it’s not proof of life on Mars (I don’t think it is), then it is proof that complex organic molecules have formed elsewhere in relatively normal chemical conditions in the universe without existing organisms, which is a major unsolved problem in trying to determine the origin of life.

I can’t believe the but for the first time in my life I am now just straight up telling normal people to just buy Apple shit instead of Windows or Android devices. For the average person, it will be a better experience and Apple is at least a bit more trustworthy. These morons have destroyed everything that made themselves better than Apple and now there’s no point in buying their shit. I think Linux and FOSS are much better paths but the average person will simply just not be able to handle running Linux as soon as something goes wrong. As for a phone I’m legit considering just downgrading to a dumb phone because I’m sick of all of it and everything sucks on the Internet these days anyway.

Because their real answer of “Because you dumb fucks will buy it anyway” wasn’t nice enough for the press lol. Seriously as long as you dumb asses keep buying old ass games from Nintendo for way too much money they will keep letting you do it.

Perhaps a privileged take but I’d be completely willing to pay way more for games with no micro transactions or other “live service” BS. Like if economics make it so that it doesn’t make sense to sell most high budget games for $70 without micro transactions then sell me one at $100. Video games were way more expensive when I was a kid and prices haven’t risen with inflation at all. Consider that Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time retailed for $59.99 in 1998 while Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom cost $69.99 in 2023. That is a 16.7% increase over 25 years, or an average increase of 0.619% each year. Meanwhile, average CPI inflation is usually ~2% per year.

This reminds me of a hilarious side quest in The Witcher 3 where a wizard gets locked out of his tower because he didn’t know it was equipped with a Defensive Regulatory Magicon (DRM) when he bought it and the only way to fix it is with Gottfried’s Omni-opening Grimoire (GOG). GOG is the game store started by CD Projekt to sell DRM free copies of old games.

Speed Queen.

Tbh this is also shocking to me as an American. I am not sure if this is only for marketplace plans or a specific kind or what

It actually is true. Sure the most expensive Maytag is basically the same as the least expensive one with extra computers on it, but if you look at brands like Speed Queen they’re built to last with simple repairable parts. If you haven’t been to a Laundromat, you’ve probably never heard of them, but they are the Queen of laundromat equipment. Why? Because Laundromats lose money when their shit isn’t working and they need rugged equipment that will work for a long time and that they’re able to do maintenance on. When looking at household goods where it seems like you can’t buy good stuff at any price anymore, look at what the pros are using. They will get what they need and someone will be making it for them.

Yeah my next washer dryer set will be speed queen because I am sick of buying cheaply built computerized shit and it’s possible it’s the last one I’ll ever buy.

Yeah people don’t realize that appliances were a LOT more expensive back then too, especially as a proportion of income. A washer dryer set in 1959 cost $380, at a time when the median household income was only $5,400. That means to buy a washer dryer set, they would have to spend 7% of their pre-tax income. Currently, the cheapest washer dryer set will set you back $1300, and the median household income is $83,000, so it’s about 1.5% of the annual household income. If you’re willing to pay what people were proportionally willing to pay in 1959, you can still buy a washer dryer set that will last a lifetime. Most people just aren’t.

The same morons also say hi to ChatGPT. They can’t help it.

You’re forgetting the “Nobody is going to stop me” exemption. The constitution is just a piece of paper if nobody is willing to defend it.

I feel like I’ve been hearing this stupid “PhD level intelligence” claim about every LLM that’s come out since ChatGPT was first released, including GPT-3.0 which it launched with. It kind of amazes me that people keep falling for it and not questioning how the new model having “PhD level intelligence” is both a true claim and also noteworthy when the claim is made about every new model.

Yeah that immediately set off the bullshit detectors. Everything else in this post looks stupid but that sounded like utter crap

There is a board game called Wavelength where you play on teams and try to get your teammates to guess where a randomly placed dial lies on a spectrum. The game is really about guessing what your teammates will think the two extremes are because everyone has different ways of thinking. For example, on a spectrum of cold to hot, you could think of it from like ice to fire or from absolute zero to the Planck temperature. It’s very interesting and I think it’s good to play because it shows that people’s perceptions differ even on pretty basic things.

A lot of hate in the comments but IMO this is one of the few things that LLMs are actually really good for. It’s a shit job nobody wants to do that LLMs are really good at. Notice that they said 70% and not 100%. Yeah that means they’re probably going to have 30 people doing the work that 100 people used to do but people are still in the picture overseeing things. Automation isn’t, by itself, bad. The bad part is that our whole society is built on the idea that your entire value as a person is based on being able to work and make money and job loss is way worse than it should be.

There is also a legend that Solomon was once outwitted by Asmodeus, who flung Solomon deep into the desert and shapeshifted to pretend to be him and rule in his place. Solomon then had to find his way back and take back his kingdom from Asmodeus.

There is a tradition from numerous ancient and medieval sources that Solomon had command over demons because he was the wisest man who ever lived and knew their name and all the ways to control them. This developed into the idea that Solomon had such control over demons that he could force them to build a temple for God against their will, and this is how the First Temple was built. This belief was common in the middle ages but not ever officially sanctioned by the Church.

For more reading-

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_of_Solomon

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lesser_Key_of_Solomon

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament_of_Solomon

One nitpick- Solomon using demonic assistance to build his Temple is extrabiblical lore. I believe that Solomon’s command over demons might be mentioned in the Talmud, but not in the Bible itself.

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