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No, the natural log doesn’t distribute!!
  • The strong law of small numbers strikes again!

  • Tinder Now Letting Rizzless Sad Sacks Pay $500/Month to Message People Without Even Matching
  • why would I want to use it?

    You wouldn't, but that's fine with Match Group: JP Morgan[^1] are loving this new monetization strategy. If they think they can get more money out of their users they will, the experience and usefulness of their app be damned. Very similar to aggressively monetized mobile games, but extra icky since they're monetizing human relationships.

    [^1]: I'm sure other investment firms are pleased as well, but JP Morgan was the firm mentioned in the article

  • A brief note on lost posts
  • Did the fix end up working in the end, or did restoring everything from backups mean that the fix didn't work out either? (I don't use Jerboa or any other lemmy apps, so mainly just curious.)

  • [question] Is it pointless buying virgin olive oil if you're just gonna heat it?
  • Always nice to see studies of these things! I feel like there's a lot of olive oil lore out there, it's cool to see that some of that lore checks out scientifically.

  • [question] Is it pointless buying virgin olive oil if you're just gonna heat it?
  • Glad you found it useful! When I started writing it nobody else had answered and by the time I posted it a bunch of other people had replied (that's what I get for walking away while writing it).

  • [question] Is it pointless buying virgin olive oil if you're just gonna heat it?
  • (I'm going to write with confidence, but I'm not an expert, just grew up around chefs. Please feel free and welcome to fact check me.)

    Yeah, EVOO is made by cold-pressing the olives, and regular olive oil by hot pressing. Cold pressing releases less oil and also several tasty compounds that come along for the ride. Hot pressing releases more oil but also other compounds that don't taste as nice, so generally regular olive oil will then be refined, removing most of the compounds that give it flavor. If you compare, you'll find that real EVOO[^1] tastes distinctly olive-y, and regular olive oil has very little flavor at all.

    When it comes to cooking, traditional advice is not to cook with EVOO because it's got a low-ish smoke point[^2], whereas regular olive oil (which has been refined) will have a higher smoke point. EVOO's smoke point isn't actually that low, but I generally avoid high temp cooking with it anyway in favor of things like avocado oil (my personal go-to), peanut oil, or vegetable oil which are very tolerant of high temperatures. You absolutely can cook with EVOO though if you only want to keep one kind of oil around the house or something.

    To clarify: heating up EVOO and cooking with it is fine as long as you don't smoke it. It won't make it any less extra-virgin or anything: to get those less good-tasting things into your oil, you need to heat up the olives themselves.

    So are you wasting money if you do cook with it? Maybe.

    Do you want what you're cooking to taste like olive oil? If you do, cook with it! Real[^1] EVOO has a distinct taste that won't go away when heated (unless you smoke it). It's great for making stuff like olive oil cake! If you don't care or don't want that flavor in whatever you're cooking, then yeah it's probably a waste of money. There are many less expensive oils that will work well and have neutral flavors or different flavors that you might prefer, including regular olive oil.

    [^1]: All of this is avoiding the issue of regular olive oil being passed off as EVOO when it actually isn't. If you want something interesting to read about this evening, try researching olive oil fraud.

    [^2]: In case you don't know, smoke point is the temperature where an oil starts to burn, which tastes bad, isn't very healthy, and will probably set off your smoke alarm.

  • Square Enix stock has dropped 30% since Final Fantasy 16 launch
  • I heard about it before release... albeit I heard from a friend that I play XIV with, so that's certainly a selection bias.

  • How long would a hand-written password for The Legend of Zelda be?
  • That was a fun watch, thanks! Now what about TotK... 🤔

  • Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of September 10th
  • In FFXIV, I’m in the post-Shadowbringers DLC content. I’ve taken a bit of a break from the MSQ to get the Nier-themed alliance raids

    Are you me? I'm just a bit into the post-ShB patches, and I just finished unlocking all three Nier raids. They're really fun (although I agree: challenging). If you happen to be on Crystal DC and want to party up for some raids or something, lmk!

    Think I might try a healer class next, just not sure which one

    As someone who is very much a non-healer main, I quite like Sage. My first healer to 90 was actually Scholar, but a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was really into Summoner for a while: when I'm going to heal I usually hop on Sage.

  • Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of September 10th
  • I've put a few hours in and I agree, it's just a fun little game that slowly pushes you bit by bit into slightly more challenging stuff. I really like how well the game meshes the diving and sushi restaurant aspects, too. (Plus, I'm a scuba diver -- still pretty new to it -- and I'm a bit on the larger side, so it's a nice bit of representation.)

  • Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of September 10th
  • The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood! It's a really good visual-novel-style game, but with the added element that you craft your own tarot-style divination deck and then draw cards from it during some conversations, and which cards you draw influence what kinds of readings you can give for people. It is established early on that since you were a kid your readings have never been wrong, and fittingly the game warns you early and repeatedly that your answers will affect your fate, dramatically. Well, no kidding! When I was playing yesterday I had a choice that I'd made hours earlier come back and bite me in the ass, hard. Almost made me want to quit and start over, but I've decided to see this play-through through and if by the end I still feel like I need to fix my mistakes I'll maybe play it a second time.

    tl;dr if you like beautiful pixel art, enigmatic beings from outside of space and time, witches, tarot, and/or choices that actually matter in your games, do give this one a go! I'm not done with it yet but I'd already love to chat with someone else who's played it!

  • how's your week going, Beehaw
  • Yesterday was very productive and then I got to spend the evening gaming with friends, so that was nice! Today I have jury duty, and potentially for most of the rest of the week... It's fine, but my fingers are still crossed that I end up getting dismissed and can go back to my sorely neglected research tasks!

  • Wingspan publisher Stonemaier Games’ next board game is full of bees
  • Sentient, spacefaring bees, according to the article! Not what I was expecting but still, sounds pretty intriguing!

  • Robots Are Already Killing People
  • Agreed. Strong (and effectively enforced) worker protections are just as important as tech-specific safety regulations. Nobody should feel like they need to put themselves into a risky situation to make work happen faster, regardless of whether their employer explicitly asks them to take that risk or (more likely) uses other means like unrealistic quotas to pressure them indirectly.

    There are certainly ways to make working around robots safer, e.g. soft robots, machine vision to avoid unexpected obstacles in the path of travel, inherently limiting the force a robot can exert, etc... And I'm all for moving in the direction of better inherent safety, but we also need to make sure that safer systems don't become an excuse for employers to expose their workers to more risky situations (i.e. the paradox of safety).

  • The Oldest Living Shark
    www.livescience.com What is the oldest shark?

    At nearly 400 years old, the oldest-known living vertebrate crossed the oceans the same time as the Mayflower.

    What is the oldest shark?

    Link to the relevant study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaf1703

    3
    Analemma Calculator - M. Tirado
  • This is really cool, thanks for sharing!

  • We Might Have Accidentally Killed the Only Life We Ever Found on Mars Nearly 50 Years Ago - JSTOR Daily
  • Yeah, cryptobiotic crust! I've seen it in the Sonoran desert. It doesn't look like much, I think if I hadn't been warned ahead of time not to step on it I might have just done it without thinking. Given that just footprints can take on the order of decades to heal I think a dune buggy ban makes sense in areas where it grows.

    I'm still surprised to learn about the microbes in the Atacama: it's the driest place on earth, and I would have expected the salt deposits to make it even harder for anything to live there. Yknow what they say I guess: "Life, uh, finds a way."

  • We Might Have Accidentally Killed the Only Life We Ever Found on Mars Nearly 50 Years Ago - JSTOR Daily
  • Some pretty interesting ideas. I was unaware that anything was living in the Atacama salt deposits, which certainly lends some credence to the idea that something could be pulling moisture out of the air on Mars, thin as it is.

  • How's your week going, Beeple?
  • That's great news, and fantastic timing! Good luck on the interview, though I'm sure you've got this.

  • How's your week going, Beeple?
  • That's a real mood, yeah.

    I just recently decided to stick with mine. I was having a lot of doubts: feeling like I wasn't making and progress, like I wouldn't actually be able to finish the projects I started, impostor syndrome shit, etc. I'm happy I decided to stick with it. I just cleared some big milestones and I'm in the middle of a nice long vacation now, and I'm feeling excited again about my work.

    On the other side of things, I've got a friend who decided to leave his PhD program with a masters a few years ago. He's now heading up product development for a robotics startup, doing quite well for himself.

    I don't think there're any wrong answers here. Do what will make you happiest. Maybe you just need a vacation, maybe you're ready to move on. And remember that education is never wasted: even if you decide not to finish out the PhD, you've still learned a lot and that's valuable with or without the piece of paper and title.

    Best wishes, friend, whichever way you decide to go ♥

  • Alright !Food, let's talk bots.
  • Report 'em too, if you're not already! It helps the mods and the admin team find them so that site-wide bans can be issued.

  • How Quantum Physics Describes Earth’s Weather Patterns | Quanta Magazine
    www.quantamagazine.org How Quantum Physics Describes Earth’s Weather Patterns | Quanta Magazine

    By treating Earth as a topological insulator — a state of quantum matter — physicists found a powerful explanation for the movements of the planet’s air and seas.

    How Quantum Physics Describes Earth’s Weather Patterns | Quanta Magazine

    Not what I initially expected this article to be about, but I do love this kind of cross-cutting research that takes ideas from one field and applies them to a seemingly entirely different field. (Also makes me wish I'd been able to take a topology class at some point.)

    5
    Actual Progress

    Alternate title: how my PhD project is currently going

    0
    Science Q&A

    Hey folks! Here's a pinned post where you can ask science questions!

    Here's a quick rundown of what this post is and isn't:

    • This is a place where you can ask science-related questions!
    • This is a place to provide science-based answers to others' questions!
    • This isn't reddit's askscience community. By this I mean we don't have the resources (or, really, desire) to vet users' credentials, and you shouldn't expect that whoever is answering your question is necessarily an expert. That said, this community does have a large share of professional scientists and engineers, and I'm hoping that those folks will be interested in sharing their expertise when they can.
    • This isn't a place to ask for medical advice – since we can't vet qualifications these kinds of questions won't be allowed here in the interest of preventing harm, and I'll remove any comments that ask personal medical questions. If you have a question about medicine that's not asking for advice, that is fine and allowed.
    • This isn't the only place on this community where you're allowed to ask questions! If you have a question related to another post, ask in the comments there. If you have a question not related to another post, I'd like it if you tried asking here first (to help this thread gain some traction), but you're also free to ask in a separate post if you'd prefer (or both).

    I'm going to post this inaugural thread with no set expiration date. I'm currently thinking a new thread maybe every 2–4 weeks, but I'd like to see what the volume of comments here ends up being like before deciding for sure.

    2
    I am once again asking for your feedback: Weekly /c/science Q&A post?

    So it turns out if you set a language on your post, anyone who hasn't explicitly picked any languages in their profile can't see it. So I'm gonna repost this with no language selected and see if we get a little more feedback this time.

    There were a couple of Q&A posts here yesterday the other day that got some pretty good engagement, and I was wondering if folks would be interested in a weekly/biweekly pinned Q&A post?

    I don't think it makes sense at this point to do anything like reddit's /r/AskScience does in terms of organizing themed panels or vetting people's credentials, nor is that something that's really supported by lemmy as a platform at the moment. It seems, though, that we do have a fair number of users around who are working scientists and engineers in a pretty wide variety of fields.

    So: if a pinned Q&A post existed, would you ask questions? Likewise, would you contribute answers? If you wouldn't use it, I'd love to know that too! Do you think it would be better to leave things as they are and just ask questions in post form? Let me know here in the comments, and also of course feel free to raise any additional thoughts or concerns you might have. If it seems like enough folks are interested I can set up a thread to try the idea out.

    2
    What are your favorite science publications (that aren't primary literature)?

    A lot of science communication in the media can be, to say it gently, not the best. Important things get left out, conclusions are often misrepresented or extrapolated to things that they really don't say, and methods are often left out completely.

    I want to find some more sources for good science communication that people have generally found to be both accurate and well written for folks outside the field (since if all we wanted was accuracy, we'd just read the primary literature).

    I've always personally been a fan of Quanta. They occasionally write about topics I'm well versed in (materials / crystallography) and I find that on those topics they're very accurate, so I assume that's also true about the articles they write in other fields. I also think that the folks writing for them do a good job at the communication aspect, e.g. being willing to cover the basics a bit before jumping into the new science.

    What about you all? Do you have a favorite or a go-to for high quality science writing?

    0
    I've done it - open water certified!

    It's not sports news or anything, but I'm pretty excited! Finished my open water yesterday, got my card today! Really looking forward to getting some more dives in (I can tell I'll need a bunch more practice).

    Anyone else here scuba dive?

    0
    Simple Strawberry Mochi Cake

    EDIT: Now with image!

    The mochi cake I used is from a mix (I like the one that Trader Joe's sells), but it you wanted to make your own I don't think it's too complicated. I like a thinner cake, so I usually only use half a box of the mix. Doing that also means it cooks very quickly!

    What takes it to the next level, in my opinion, is to get some freeze-dried strawberries or other freeze-dried fruit (Trader Joe's also sells this, and freeze dried fruits of all kinds are common in most supermarkets, usually in a snack aisle), grind them up, and dust them over top like you would with powdered sugar, but in a thicker layer. I like to grind mine with a mortar and pestle, but a (blade-style) coffer grinder or anything like that works too.

    It's honestly the simplest desert recipe I know, and one of my favorites!

    0
    What makes a concert great for you?

    Back in 2014 I got to see Rise Against play at the House of Blues in Boston, which was amazing, and just recently I went to see grandson and K. Flay perform together.

    I think these are my two favorite concerts I've been to, and the key factor seems to be the energy between the crowd and the band. It's a thing that's kinda hard to express in words, but for me that's definitely what makes a concert go from good to great. It doesn't need to be a high-energy thing necessarily, either: one of the best moments from grandson's set was actually a really somber, lower energy song that he came down onto the floor to perform, and you could just tell that everyone was really invested in that moment.

    What about you all? What takes a concert to the next level for you?

    0
    realChem realChem @beehaw.org

    he/him

    Materials Science PhD candidate in Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    My profile picture is the cover art from Not A Lot of Reasons to Sing, But Enough, and was drawn by Casper Pham (recolor by me).

    Posts 9
    Comments 79