Posts by Muscleguy

Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Boffins discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater

Re: I'm betting its all those socks we lose in the dryer

Not necessarily, I am a lifelong distance runner, started seriously in my teens. My wife never believed that my feet and shoes, even running shoes do not smell, until I shoved a running shoe under her nose and she had to, not, smell it. Then she believed it. Something about my personal skin bacteria/chemistry since it is bacterial action on sweat which makes it smell. Fresh sweat has no smell.

Mind you unlike many teens I wore socks in shoes and changed both them and my underwear daily. But then I lived in Auckland, NZ at the time which is offiically sub tropical so such were necessary lest I deter all humanity and I had a mother and three sisters (women's smell is more sensitive than ours, proven) to tell me if I whiffed as well.

Not to mention that running in the late afternoon meant I showered twice a day so I was VERY clean.

Re: Could it be

There's also adamantite in wider Tolkein but that is lighter than steel as well but not as light as mithril In Angband Isildur's plate armour is adamantite. But I play randarts so whose armour that is and what properties it has are a lottery.

Re: Could it be

My wife made soups so dense me and the spawn deemed them to be stoups, a halfway between the two. The spawn even though now grown and flown still talk shudderingly about the time she unknowingly made dumplings with rancid fat . . .

Not very bright: Apple geniuses spend two weeks, $10,000 of repairs on a MacBook Pro fault caused by one dumb bug

Re: Not just the 'puter screen ...

Couple of weeks ago the kitchen light wouldn't work, I swapped the starter (fluorescent), took the tube out and reset it, no luck. Eventually figured out the upstairs lighting had fused and the kitchen, in the extension is on the upstairs fuse. The tube had started to take a bit longer to start up so I jumped to the obvious diagnosis and kept digging without considering the wider picture.

Re: I've done this

I am typing this on a mid 2010 15" Macbook Pro, the one with the kernel panic issue if the graphics card is used over the internal graphics chip. I have to select 'internal only' on gfxcardstatus then start Thunderbird which locks whatever it's set at. The seconds during restart before I can set it right are dodgy as a result. It's a handmedown machine from the youngest who had motherboard swaps done under warranty as did lots of folk. To this day Apple still don't understand what the problem is.

Re: Been there...

I had a similar issue but I found my twilight app (makes the screen redder in the evening etc was set to alway on instead of by daylight. Though since I live in Dundee that means I dare not look at the phone screen in the night as after about 2:40am it goes bright blue again . . .

Oblivious 'influencers' work on 3.6-roentgen tans in Chernobyl after realising TV show based on real nuclear TITSUP

Re: Can someone explain...

As a Bioscientist I know that the bacon thing (all fried/roasted cured meats) has not been shown to be causative and it still remains true that the biggest consumers of them almost all have lots of other unhealthy habits and bodies the proposed mechanism is scientifically plausible. So caution in terms of limiting your exposure is warranted. The substance in question is nitrosamines if you want to look it up.

I make my own gluten free sausages and do sometimes put a cure on the meat. But the meat in a sausage should not be browned in the pan, the skin will be. So I struggle to see the link, unless you cook skinless snags in the frypan.

Note this is a separate issue to the general one of browning carbs in fat which purportedly produces acrylamides. Though with all these things the operative thing is dose and not al acrylamides are created equal in terms of toxicity. I have used them in the lab to cast gels but not for all that long or very recently (the technology has moved on, nobody casts dna sequencing gels any more).

Re: slighly off-topic rant time.

That is true, we used to take the spawn to re-enactments when they were young and I remember a WWII one with Allies and Wermacht though they were definitely Wermacht, I did not see any death's heads or SS uniforms. We saw everything from ancient Britons vs Romans to WWII via medieval, ECW and Napoleonic. We got charged by a small squadron of dragoons, the earth shook and it was very instructive of what it would have taken to stand against them, even in square.

Re: On the bright side

The link with leukaemia has been debunked, specifically in the case of Sellafield workers. My wife helped administer the big epidemiology study on it and I have partaken of fermented barley with some of those eminent epidemiologists.

The big problem is that the leukaemia risk was invariant to radiation exposure or type or lack thereof in workers (office types). The conclusion was that the gathering together of people from lots of different places in a new place mixed a lot of viruses together, some of which raised the risk.

A biologist writes

While it has been shown that limited areas of the brain do spawn new neurons in adult life they in no way 'grow a brain', they more patch it. Superhero fiction apart mutations affect your offspring. In you they either kill cells or spawn cancers or make cancers more nasty and invasive and drug resistant.

Whether you think getting cancer might benefit the influencers, the type has been known to fake cancer for the extra clicks so perhaps not.

Bear insistent on playing tonsil tennis with you? Just bite its tongue off

Re: Punch in the eyes also works

It was more the eyes in that case which were the operative bear deterrent target site.

Smart guy, he did what his woman told him to do.

Mystery GPS glitch grounds flights, leaves passengers in the bar

Re: Time

I know what you mean. Back when the Forth Road Bridge was out of action for repairs, the QC was barely started and it was Clacks or Stirling I drove a friend from Edinburgh to Anstruther in Fife so her pooch could see a specialist Vet for treatment and back again.

Google took us two different routes around the M90 motorway going from coming back but it following it was flawless. No satnav but the friend's phone. I knew roughly where we were at all times but as you say knowing traffic flow issues was what mattered.

That it worked during a major traffic snafu like that and updated in a relatively short time shows it is worth paying attention to.

Idle Computer Science skills are the Devil's playthings

Also back in the '80s Mrs Muscleguy was a CompSci student and a program she was running on the mainframe entered a loop and could not be shut down and for a time we were threatened with a large bill for the extra time used. But then her lecturers intervened and admitted students had not been taught how to properly kill routines and our family finances were not threatened.

We had two kids and I was on a PhD stipend somewhat less than the married dole (our income went up when we had to claim it), so the proposed amount would have been significant for us.

Ah, those were the days, when all the servers were named after LotR characters and places. I even knew some Vax commands back then, all forgotten now.

There's a reason why my cat doesn't need two-factor authentication

Re: figuring out

As a former academic I can confirm JANET was wonderful. Back when dialup was the only option at home a JANET link at work meant you could just download stuff to disk instead of waiting hours for it to timeout on you at home.

Also sending what was, then, large email attachments was a synch on JANET. You got asked if you really intended to send a large file, clicked 'yes' and it went. Try that at home and you got a 'file too big' error there was no getting around.

Now with cable broadband the differences are slight. But still, a JANET and an ATHENS account would be nice again.

Could you just pop into the network room and check- hello? The Away Team. They're... gone

Re: Ever teleported a team into peril or heard something go boom on a conference call?

Living as a Yes campaigner here in Scotland I have always been highly jealous of Norway's vote level on your independence referendum beginning of the last century. Ah, if only here.

Praise the lard! Police hook up with Microsoft to school us on National Phish and Chip Day

A Kiwi writes

In Kiwiland it's the same except the crinkle cut in a foil packet variety are usually called chippies (not to be confused with the purveyors of fried goods). Either that or context renders which variety you mean. For example you would not, ordinarily, put a hot chip in a home made dip whereas home made dips for chippies are legion in NZ. The classic one takes a packet of brand onion soup, mixes it with a can of reduced cream, adds a modicum of vineger, mixes and refrigerates for a period and you have an onion dip ideal for the crinkle cut variety or some crudities.

Sadly since I became gluten intolerant in about 1990 this delight has been denied me except in very small amounts. Flour in the onion soup. The reduced cream should be okay with my lactose intolerance.

Worried ransomware will screw your network? You could consider swallowing your pride, opening your wallet

Re: Just no

You assume the crims will plough all their ill-gotten gains back into their business. At what point do they take a profit then? It would seem to me that operating costs are fairly minimal. An anonymous digital funny money account, a hired botnet and some coders. A pretty lean operation.

The real problem with all crime though is laundering the proceeds. I think of that every time I pass a tanning salon which is fairly often as our local shopping centre has one between the Iceland and the Coop. The cops will have you believe it has been sorted out but I suspect the crims have just gotten smarter about it.

Barbie Girl was wrong? Life is plastic, it's not fantastic: We each ingest '121,000 pieces' of microplastics a year

Re: What fraction of a gram ?

A physiologist writes. I would love to know the route by which lung mucus ends up in the digestive system. There are other routes for lung mucus than down the oesophagus. I'm asthmatic but live above the beach here in Dundee and it manifests, unlike when I lived in London, just as a gradual build up of fluid in my lungs, I can feel it.

But when I got for a run after a period of abstinence from exercise then I will cough for about two hours afterwards. Much of this comes up and is expectorated rather than swallowed. But that's just me. Coughing it up is always an option.

BTW the stomach acids will make short work of any lung mucus. Mucopollysaccharides (sounds like a plastic, doesn't it?) will break down at those pH's. I doubt much of it makes it out intact.

Bad news. Asteroid 1999 KW4 flew by, did not hit Earth killing us all. Good news: Another one, Didymos, is on the way

Re: Land Dart on it then electric propulsion

Sounds like a variant of an ion drive, unless the electric propulsion is like a rail gun and accelerates propellant out the back at high speed. The essence of Rocket Science is 'throw stuff out the back, the faster and hotter the better'.

I'm a Biologist so this level of understanding suits me. Except it means your arse after a vindaloo will need permission to fart.

Re: A pair of asteroids just whizzed past Earth

That would create a three body problem in terms of predicting it's course as it gets tugged by the Earth and Moon to different degrees. Not something to be hoped for.

Planes, fails and automobiles: Overseas callout saved by gentle thrust of server CD tray

Re: airport security

Aussie airport security was streets ahead of the US long before 9/11. I flew Sydney to Auckland in early 1988 and entry to the gate was via a metal detecting gate and once in you were not getting out again (that way).

I also flew in the US in August of 9/11 and remember standing in the check in line in Seattle. They were hauling people out of the line to check in for the flight leaving in 5minutes. I just had time to grab a 'coffee' (Starbucks) before going to catch mine.

I had 5 hours in Newark on that trip and saw a lot of stuff, the woman who got to the gate with a cat in a carrier. The guy arriving at the gate (airside) and buying a ticket with a credit card. I remember wandering down one limb of the building and looking across water at a cityscape and recognising the Twin Towers and that I was looking at the end of Manhattan Island.

After 9/11 America caught up to the rest of the world.

Re: Terrorists with spanners

Are there an Boeings flying still?

I bet Airbus use metric. Though I expect you would need quite a set with a big size range to dismantle an aircraft. Perhaps a few different sized adjustables?

How many convictions for GBH do you have for interest's sake?

I live in Scotland and in 20 years I have only been threatened with a glassing once, by a drunk little old man. I just drew myself up, squared my shoulders and loomed at him. He blinked, tried calling me 'big man' and being my friend. I summoned hauteur and ignored him.

Re: airport security

Was that before or after they made us take our belts off?

I have well muscled athletic legs and have to wear trousers at least 2 inches wider than my waist to get them over my thighs. Consequently the walk through the scanner to retrieve my belt etc is a trifle fraught. I breathe out.

I have one pair, bought in extremis, which are a full 4 inches wider at the waist. They are much more leg hugging. The merely 2 inch extra pair were so tight the pockets stood out in outline. Not for flying in those.

Cooksie is *bam-bam* iGlad all over: Folk are actually buying Apple's fondleslabs again

Be careful out there

The Indy is reporting that a man in the US had to receive anti rabies vaccine after a rabid bat who had been hiding between the case and device of his fondleslab emerged and bit him. Beware rodents, flying or otherwise attracted by the warmth of our iDevices.

We ain't afraid of no 'ghost user': Infosec world tells GCHQ to GTFO over privacy-busting proposals

An 'enemy of the state' writes

I am a certified enemy of the state (according to the spooks and security 'services'). I'm a paid up member of Scottish CND which wishes the Trident missiles and subs to be gone. Preferably completely but from next door to Scotland's biggest city. They also support Scottish Independence as the best route to achieving this end.

I also campaigned for independence during our first indyref with the Left/Green alliance RIC (Radical Independence Campaign) and kept going to meetings after the vote itself. I'm also raring to go again, soonest by preference. I'm keeping myself fit for the purpose too.

So that is a threat to the military's majory weapons system and a seditious* wish to sunder the country in twain.

*good job Holyrood quashed the Scottish sedition laws in advance of the campaign, handy that.

Separating us from GCSB etc is part of the point too. We can do better, much better.

Ex-student, 52, suing university for AU$3m after PhD rejection destroyed 'sex drive'

An oldster writes

Ahem, I am 53 and a half and thanks in no small part to a life spent exercising often, drinking very moderately and eating properly I can announce to the world and womenfolk in particular that I am in FULL working order. No rhomboid blue pills needed for me

Uh-oh .io: Question mark hangs over trendy tech startup domains as UN condemns British empire hangover

Re: The American elephant in the room, er, ocean.

Dinnae fash yersel but, the blue and some of the white sloping lines will be going soon when we extract Scotland from this septic Union run by incompetent narcissists.

We can then a build a proper, normal northern European social democracy. Maybe we can persuade the Royals to bicycle about when they're up here or we could just become a republic (my preference but I'm a democrat). Brenda is known to dislike staying in Holyrood House across from Holyrood parliament when she has official duties. She opens our parliament every year you know. Constitutionally required to do so. She only does it for places like Canada, Aussie or NZ if she is touring at the time. But she goes up to Edinburgh every year to open it.

BTW please try and replace her with a Governor General like those places once we're independent. It will hasten the republic.

Oh yes and we get rid of the geriatric home known as the House of Lords as well. The SNP does not nominate peers and will expel any member who accepts a peerage. We saw what it did to the Labour party and before that our Clan Chiefs post the '45 and enabling the Clearances. Lessons have been learned, by half of us at any rate.

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

Re: What is it

While ignoring that it was easier to count flies and multiply by 6. Since they can regenerate limbs that assumption is a very safe one. I expect you could do it by weighing the flies as well or getting them to fly past a counting beam, drawn by some nice smelly stuff on the other side.

But then I'm thinking like a biologist, not an auditor. I was friendly with a girl at university whose father was Auditor General of NZ, very nice guy. But then NZ is that kind of place.

That magical super material Apple hopes will hit backspace on its keyboard woes? Nylon

I'm typing this on the keyboard of a mid 2010 15" MacBook Pro and all the keys are intact and work just fine.

Note the previous owner, my youngest, is in bioinformatics and operated it through the console and terminal instead of the GUI so the has a lot of use in its time and the trackpad is almost mint. Had a new HD and more RAM when I got it.

The main glitch? like most machines from the era you have to run gfxCardStatus and set it to Internal Only or have kernel panics. Since Thunderbird locks it into that setting I'm sitting pretty, unless I need to restart it, in which I have to be quick.

I'm not sure what problem Apple was trying solve either. But mind you the other daughter's laptop had a number of loose keys on it and I was tasked to refix those which were fixable. I suppose it depends on how well you treat your devices.

Maker of US border's license-plate scanning tech ransacked by hacker, blueprints and files dumped online

Re: Music Taste

There are people who are not really music fans or who simply have no taste. Note I have nothing from either of them. Never liked AC/DC, never been into falsetto screeching. Maybe the file owners thought it was a girl band as well.

Let's make laptops from radium. How's that for planned obsolescence?

Details please

BTW what does this biodegradable plastic degrade into? small bits of plastic would be my guess so I'm not going to put one into my compost bin.

Lactose Aaaaaahhh!!!

School milk? the horror of it, luke warm milk. I have NEVER liked drinking unadulterated milk, probably because since being weaned I have been a normal mammal and lactose intolerant. I was living in NZ when Thatcher stole the kiddies' milk and I cheered. One of the good things about emigrating to the South Seas aged 6: no school milk.

Mind you I thought it the only good thing Thatcher ever did. I would probably have gotten into fights over it had I still been a wean here in Scotland. Mind you I would probably have been involved in a running battle with the teachers over not drinking my sodding milk. It makes me feel bad miss.

When I was 17 and running 100miles a week some post dinner ice cream once went through me in 40minutes. I timed it as I could feel it. NZ ice cream is lovely stuff too. I make my own LF ice cream since the supermarkets replaced the unlovely plain stuff with coconut and almond/soya milk ersatz things.

Whisky business: Microsoft's spirited attempt to develop hooch with AI

Re: Swedish?!.... Whiskey?!....American...aftershave?

Bourbon is far, far too sweet. Fits American palates raised on maple syrup smothered bacon and hyper sweet bread but this whisky (no e) devotee cannae abide the stuff. Except in making glazes for baked hams, then it has a role.

UK's planned Espionage Act will crack down on Snowden-style Brit whistleblowers, suspected backdoored gear (cough, Huawei)

I wonder what the position of things like being an activist for Scottish Independence will be like under it. Be interesting to see its provisions under Scots law since Sedition was repealed in Scotland by the Scottish parliament in advance of IndyRef1, just in case. In times past we would have been prosecuted for it.

I'm also a member of Scottish CND which wants the Trident missile system stopped, or at least removed from Scotland and the Navy doesn't think it has anywhere else to put it (it conducted a scoping study in case we voted Yes in 2014 which concluded that). Again, sedition in former times.

Hi, boys and girls at GCSB, having a good evening are you? Greetings from deep in the Yes City. Saor Alba.

When two become one: 200 boffins contribute to first Ultima Thule paper

Re: Doo Beidou Beidou

Finding needles in haystacks is actually quite easy, if you have the right search and selection method. An automated conveyer belt and an electromagnet would suffice if the haystack can be dismantled.

If not a stronger magnet placed at various points around or above the stack and pulsed should also suffice. Or if the stack is entirely disposable set it on fire as you activate your magnet, helping the needle find its way out and onto the magnet.

Molecular biology has multiple means of finding needles in giant haystacks. I once did a dna ligation in building a transgenic construct which I worked out could come together again in at least 7 different configurations only one of which was desired. I put the result of the ligation in with a few million transformed bacteria and plated them on a growth plate with ampicilin in it. The dna plasmid had an amp resistant gene in it. You get little dots of bugs growing on your plate each the result of ONE bacterium with a plasmid in it.

You usually get from dozens to hundreds of spots. I got ONE and it was the right configuration. If your search committee has millions of members they get the job done. Needles in haystacks? all in a routine day's work in the biology lab.

In the molecular genetics lab we once formally worked out mathematically how many repeated patterns from individually Transgene injected eggs allowed to become embryos allowed you to conclude the patter was due to the sequences in the transgene and not because it inserted next to a genome control region. The assumption was that insertion in the genome was in essence random which is not absolutely true but true enough. The answer is 2. Because the genome is very, very, very large. We usually settled on 4.

These days knockout and transgene constructs usually have insulation sequences at either end so one would do.

It's a bit like dropping a needle into a haystack followed by another one. You drop them from high up so wind can affect the fall, you also swing the release mechanism in an arc. The bigger the haystack and the higher the mechanism and the more erratic the arc the chances of the needles coming to rest together are minuscule.

Polygraph knows all: You've been using our user feedback form

Re: I assume...

I have never succumbed. A couple of years after coming back to Blighty from the Land of the Long White Cloud I was working during the day so daytime TV did not impinge upon my consciousness. Then my hands started to go wrong and I got signed off for two weeks sitting in a chair, not using my hands. So no computer, a paperback on the arm of the chair (because I couldn't hold it) or radio/tv.

I developed a horror of daytime TV and never have it on during the day apart from sporting events. Then it goes off again. This was the mid '90s so before Kyle's time. Before satellite/cable tv as well: Reruns of Murder She Wrote and the shopping channel.

I now have one less joint in each hand than you do, a notch in each hip (illiac crest) and reasonably usable hands again. At least I'm not on really strong NSAIDS 24/7 any more.

Mine's the workstation with the bluetooth trackpad instead of a mouse, for my hands. Computer mice are very bad for them.

Oracle AI's Eurovision horror show: How bad can it be? Yep. Badder

I object

That bot is a crime against baboons. Which don't have horns.

It's 50 years to the day since Apollo 10 blasted off: America's lunar landing 'dress rehearsal'

Re: beancounters at the top

Musk seems to be letting the engineers go for it. For eg letting them try the recovery landing of the rockets and boosters/tanks. The coordinated triple landing when they launched starman in the Tesla was deeply impressive tech and reduces the cost of launches to boot.

I long assumed tail down rocket landings were the stuff of old SciFi films (Forbidden Planet) but Musk and his engineers and data geeks have made it look routine. Provided the robots work properly.

Landing a rocket fins first with live people on board will be the next feat when they launch a supersonic rocket passenger service instead of long-haul.

Giga-hurts radio: Terrorists build Wi-Fi bombs to dodge cops' cellphone jammers

Re: WiFi Routers can be anywhere; cell towers are generally in fixed locations

Erdinger's alkahol Frie wiessbier is pretty good. I like it for post run refreshment after summer runs when alcohol would go straight to my head. The proper stuff can, perhaps, come later when I'm properly rehydrated and have some food in me.

Tesla big cheese Elon Musk warns staffers to tighten their belts in bid to cut expenses (again)

Re: Servicing

I bought an extra big screwdriver so I could fix the tailgate myself. I only took it in for things I couldn't do myself. I would do the brakes if I had a proper jack and axle stands or a pit. But then my father was a mechanical Engineer so I got taught to maintain a car from a young age.

I'm not a petrol head, just mechanically competent and frustrated by modern engines. I don't even have a plug spanner which can fit and remove the plugs for gapping/cleaning now. Time was I could diagnose and fix things myself. Now you need to plug a tablet/laptop in and interrogate the car that way.

Russian bots are just for rigging US elections? They hit home, too: Kid stripped of crown in TV contest vote-fix scandal

Russia had a corruption problem under the tsars as well, which was the original point. Russia existed for much longer prior to communism than it did under it. If all you know about Russia is 'communism' can I suggest you read some history, or some Russian literature. I'm rather fond of Dostoevsky myself but your mileage may vary. If you have the eyes to see you will find in Chekov as well.

Ivan the Terrible's moves against the Boyars was for similar reasons.

Note it wasn't much worse than this country where the well off routinely bought military and naval commissions for their younger spawn. Hence the phrase Lions Led By Donkeys.

For corruption under communism try Bulgakov's masterpiece The Master And Margarita (it is highly satirical) and Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn. My personal copy of the latter is falling apart through repeated rereadings. I think I bought it back in the early '80s. I have a hardback version of the Bulgakov to try and fend off that fate for a bit longer. I reread my Dostoevsky's regularly as well.

It's 2019 and a WhatsApp call can hack a phone: Zero-day exploit infects mobes with spyware

Re: How would I know if I've been compromised?

Some of us would be considered 'enemies of the state' by the security services. I'm a paid up member of Scottish CND which wishes for the Trident nuclear deterrent to end and regularly stages demos at the Faslane base which close access to it.

I'm also a left wing Scottish Independence campaigner who wishes to break up the Union Polity of the United Kingdom. Considering they have files on utterly peaceful, non threatening environmental campaigners assuming my devices are NOT at risk considering what Snowden taught us would be naive in the extreme.

During the Scottish IndyRef there was a large discrepancy in the free space on my phone whether it was what the phone reported or the computer reported when it was connected. Nothing helped and I would often mysteriously run out of space I should have had.

Then the Android OS had a security update and I suddenly got all that space back, overnight. None of the cleaners or anti virus apps found anything wrong. Am I paranoid or justifiably cautious?

The Google app does not have permission to access the microphone and when meeting my fellow left wing Yes activists to discuss strategy my phone is switched off or left at home.

You may not have to think of such things but some of us, it seems, do.

AI has automated everything including this headline curly bracket semicolon

Re: JavaScript

My honours supervisor had a 516k Mac which had been upgraded to 1M. It had a 1M external which it sat on. The Department had a LISA as well. We were the first honours class to do our theses entirely in silico (before being printed out).

My PhD thesis broke new ground: double sided printing.

Cocaine, psychedelics, DMT? They sure knew how to party 1,000 years ago: Archaeologists make startling discovery

Re: Number?

Millennia is plural. That was the problem. If it was one millennium it would be wrong by more grammatically correct.

Much better would have been 'for several millennia'. Bonobos and Chimps use lots of plants for medicinal reasons but some may also have psychoactive properties. In experiments chimps will prefer water laced with psychoactives. But then so will rats and mice.

Humans seem to have found pretty much every last psychoactive natural substance (nutmeg!). Mongolians bereft of fermentable grains fermented milk instead so ingrained is the human desire to get buzzed. There is some evidence that the drive to domesticate grains was at least initially driven by the desire to make a sour mash beer for celebrations/rites rather than feeding the multitudes.

The English have long looked down on us Scots for eating oats, but that is because we use the barley for making whisky and beer. Demand for high protein barley to ferment is so high in Scotland that in recent years English farmers have been growing the right barley varieties to sell here, under urging by the Scotch Whisky Industry.

Gin production (all those botanicals!) has transformed the economics of starting a whisky distillery. No longer do you have to wait three years for your spirit to be deemed to be whisky before you can cash in. Now you can make the whisky, put in casks to mature, then make some gin full of local botanicals (they must be local) and sell that while you wait. Even the gin is usually made from unpeated malted barley.

Oats are still a wonder food though. I partake regularly and ate nothing else until dinner time yesterday. Oats rule.

Re: Indeed

All the fungal psychedelics are the products of some creative chemical evolution. I was highlighting that fungi are the source of a number of psychedelics rather than trying to draw a chemical similarity linkage. You wouldn't expect one as none of them are related.

A lot of the psychoactive substances in nature are in effect natural pesticides. If the creature chomping on you or sucking your sap gets too buzzed to continue you win. Think nicotine, caffeine, opiods, the base of ayahuasca, nutmeg and lots of others. That they have effects in both humans and insects shows neural systems evolved long before the split in our lineages.

Holy high street, Sainsbury's! Have you forgotten Bezos' bunch are the competition?

Every time i go there they print out vouchers for their online site. Asda are much cheaper online though you have to be careful. I still haven't found tins/cartons of chopped tomatoes cheaper than Sainsbury's own brand.

Most places have stuff that it is relatively expensive. You have to be careful that way in Iceland for eg. Cheap for some things but not others.

Re: They deserve each other

And just to inject some balance the chicken from the Coop can be cooked without weeping lots of watery brine which has to be boiled off before it will fry and brown. That includes Sainsbury's chook.

I completely stopped buying chicken from Sainsbury's (closest large supermarket, I can walk there) when I discovered that. I object to paying through the nose for salt water for goods sold by weight. Think about it.

I have a Coop whole chook in the fridge right now, short date so got for a shade over £3. Several day's nosh there. I think I'll insert some curry paste under the skin of the breasts and legs and stuff it with a spiced stuffing made from buckwheat and millet (I'm gluten free since 1990 long before the modern fadism).

Blockchain is a lot like teen sex: Everybody talks about it, no one has a clue how to do it

Re: the "Trough of Disillusionment"

And just like in the gold rushes small scale one/two man panning operations soon got shoved out of the best prospects by big operations using water sluices, moving screens and cyanide heap leaching etc. Which any view of things in the Otago rush in NZ leading to Yukon etc.

Though mechanisation means there are still some Mom and Pop operations with a dredger sitting in a pond surrounded by gravel which can be seen in parts of the SI of NZ, particularly on the West Coast.

Airbnb host thrown in the clink after guest finds hidden camera inside Wi-Fi router

Re: Big disconnect

Agreed, for eg to qualify for letting a multi-occupancy property (think student group flat) there must for eg be hard wired smoke AND incident heat detectors (can't trust students to change batteries or not nick them for other purposes). Ditto such alarms in hotels and small B&B's. So why not Air BnB lets?

That is just one issue.