Having a hobby with community helps a lot because it gives you the option of channeling that extra ambition into the community. For example, I do historical reenactment (Society for Creative Anacronism) and one if my hobbies is making coins. I’ve taken commissions, sure, but I get a lot more enjoyment out of learning and teaching about historical coin making and giving my coins away to people who don’t make their own (which is most people).

And of course there’s a smaller community of coin makers within the SCA, and we get to share our work with each other, talk shop, collaborate from time to time, etc.

Community really makes a big difference.

Hence the article giving actual age demographics when it comes to the real details. Generational names are just a shorthand and they’re never perfectly accurate. But age demographics don’t have that problem.

NGL I’m not very familiar with the technical details, but I know quartz is pretty temperature sensitive and starts to get damaged about 400F iirc

It’s possible special conditions are needed to really succeed, like low/no oxygen or a long duration at a lower temperature.

But theoretically, the answer to your question is “yes”

Diamonds aren’t stable and will eventually, over billions of years, decompose from their cubic molecular structure to carbon’s more stable form, graphite, which has a hexagonal molecular structure.

Oh, here’s another good gemstone related one!

Amethyst and citrine are both quartz varieties, and if the color source happens to be from traces of iron in the crystal lattice, one can be turned into the other. Heating amethyst can make citrine, and irradiating citrine can turn it into amethyst. This is because the only actual difference between the two is the valiance level of a specific election in the iron atom giving the stone its color.

Bladderworts have medicinal uses.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3353273/

3.2. Potential as Medicinal Crop Utricularia is recorded to be edible and high in nutrients. Some species used as folk remedies are mildly astringent and diuretic. U. caerulea is used to dress wounds while U. bifida is used to treat urinary diseases. Although yet to be widely researched, the medicinal potential of this species-rich genus is immense. In Peninsular Malaysia, U. bifida and U. minutissima are pioneers of open disturbed wetland and are often locally abundant, although U. caerulea is increasingly rare. U. bifida is highly suited for acidic damp soils. Neither chemical nor organic fertilisation is necessary. It can be cultivated without having to modify bad drainage or liming the soil to increase pH, therefore, it is a suitable alternative for small-scale herb cultivation on nutrient-poor, waterlogged soils.

No, AI did exactly what it does: predict which words were most likely to appear next to each other given a specific context/prompt.

The humans involved aren’t “fucking up” either because this is all intentional. They know the evidence is fabricated, they just don’t care because it provides them an excuse to indulge their biases.

Yeah, this is a very real phenomenon and it’s difficult to do anything about it sometimes. People develope an internal profile of you based on their perceptions, and anything they say about you is based on THAT, not reality. It’s even more difficult when it’s somebody close to you who’s internalized that profile so much it’s become part of who they identify as. You’ll see this with the parents of trans kids where the parent has internalized some aspect of their child and it’s become part of their identity. “I’m the father of three sons” kind of thing. Then one of the kids comes out as female and the parent has a really difficult time with it because they identified themselves as the parent of three male children and that’s turned out to be incorrect, they’re the parent of two boys and one girl and they need to change how they identify themselves in addition to how they identify their daughter. Some parents have a really REALLY hard time of it (they still gotta do it though if they don’t want to be a shitty person)

Related to this, there’s a Google translate button at the top that reads, in Turkish, “translate to Turkish”

Which could be evidence that the screenshot comes from somebody who speaks Turkish, which increases the chances that the person receiving the email is in Turkey.

That doesn’t answer your question, but it suggests that Bluesky may only be honoring requests regarding accounts they believe are subject to the local laws.

Two very important points:

• This is proof of nothing
• I personally will continue to use Mastodon instead of Bluesky

There are a lot of good answers already but I want to add that this changes the situation for any Hispanic people swept up by ICE. If officials feel like they can connect a person to the cartels in any way whatsoever, that individual can now be accused of being a terrorist. This changes the legal process they face, and that’s not good news for them. It’ll be easier to send the person to Gitmo. It’ll be harder to fight for that person’s freedom. They’ll likely be tortured, and anything they say can be used as pretense for further aggression by the Trump administration, both domestically and foreign.

People say that about the rich in America too. “Don’t tax them, they’ll leave and take all their money with them!”

But I dunno, maybe we shouldn’t let people get so rich we’re terrified of them leaving with their money? Just a passing thought…

But also I call bullshit. Doing business in America is, for the foreseeable future, profitable. The rich aren’t going to leave because they’re making less profit as long as “less profit” is more than “how much profit will I have if I leave”

Of course, now that they’ve completely captured the US government, the conversation is kind of moot.

A strike that has a scheduled end date is a strike that’s has scheduled its own failure. A ten day strike would achieve nothing except the suffering of it’s participants.

Yes, the economy would grind to a halt, yes people would likely die, yes it would financially hurt the powerful people in charge.

But do you really think those powerful people will give a shit? They know after ten days the gravy train will resume, but only for them and not the people who lost their jobs, got arrested, were injured, etc. The rich and powerful can afford to be patient, meanwhile everyone who sacrificed for ten days is going to have to question whether they can survive doing it again.

No, we’re way past the point where our society can afford another failed effort to affect change. We need a general strike that doesn’t end until the government capitulates to the needs of the people. It’s all or nothing, now. ☹️

My interpretation of 1984 was that a thought crime had no regard for the truth.

Only because The Party has no regard for the truth. If, in 1984, The Party were concerned with truth at all then thought crime would also be concerned with the truth. This is because the real definition of thought crime in the context of that story is any thought that isn’t approved by The Party.

But you’ve brought the phrase “thought crime” out if that context and into the real world. Here, truth matters.

Words that are not calling for actionable violence can offend nothibg more nothibg less

Completely untrue, and very disturbing that you’d think otherwise.

anyone who disliked your ideas was stupid

That’s not why you’re stupid, it has nothing to do with me.

Indeed, the whole point of my comment is that your definition is bad because it doesn’t take into account if something is true or not. Edit: Or, and this is much MUCH more important, whether the statements in question cause real harm to other people.

I’m not accusing you of thought crime, I’m accusing you of stupidity and you disliking it is proving me right.

In the context of trans people, anti trans rhetoric goes away beyond “unapproved” or “unpopular” though. It’s straight up non-factual pseudoscience at best. A lot of it is straight up lies and libel/slander. It does real, lasting harm. That’s not “thought crime” as you describe.

If they can’t remember it, they could always make a tribute…

Some virus

Iirc the increase in pandemics has been an expected result of global warming.

For my money, there are three existential threats to the human species. You’ve already listed two: global warming and nuclear war. IMO the third is microplastics (although PFAS could be combined with microplastics to make a category I think we could reasonably call “forever chemicals”)

Indeed. Think about it.

As if fascists care about a little thing like that.

I’m really fascinated with the way they redrew West Virginia to annex parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky but cede territory to Ohio and Maryland.

Weird.

They realize it. And in their opinion, all those people are wrong.