Bebo

joined 2 years ago
[–] Bebo@sffa.community 4 points 2 years ago

Truly it was a most beautiful and inspiring story.

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'd say 5 out of 5 prefer a box.

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 2 points 2 years ago

Great. This is so useful.

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 2 points 2 years ago

Oh I love that channel. And this breed seems to be so healthy. Best part seems the life expectancy.

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 2 points 2 years ago

I will look into this. Thanks.

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 1 points 2 years ago

Yes, it's like people are interested in getting their word out rather than reading other people's stuff. Still I like that I have a chronological feed which I tweak slightly by muting users whose content I don't care for and the best thing is that I can browse by hashtags. Without this I wouldn't have got interested in Mastodon in the first place.

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

When I experience an argumentative back and forth where it gets increasingly clear that the opposite person is arguing just to have a fight or is unable to see simple logic, I just stop responding. This has always been the best option for my mental health. Oops I didn't realise this is quite an old post!

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 2 points 2 years ago

Tehanu was my favourite and it's so good and so different from the previous books.

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 4 points 2 years ago

I read the Discworld series in publication order and loved it. There was an almost continuous improvement in quality over the first few books which was also satisfying.

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 3 points 2 years ago

Second Small Gods. It's my favourite discworld book (even though I love the whole series).

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 5 points 2 years ago

I know it's very preliminary data but can't help being a little excited! It's so interesting!

[–] Bebo@sffa.community 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

What breed are these tiny cute cotton balls?

 

When you read in the news that a person whom you know as rich and wealthy is in financial trouble or has declared bankruptcy, it is easy to feel a sense of futility about managing your own money. You start to think that if such a rich person, who has access to the best financial advice, can come to this state, what chance do I have?

If you read deeper into his or her story you will find that he has come to this state because he violated some basic rule of life. The Golden Rules of Financial Safety of Harry Browne are the basic rules for financial success. They are simple and obvious and if you abide by them, there is less chance than one in a million that you could lose all that you have….

Let us learn what they are…

 

As Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was visiting China earlier this week, a sea-green Chinese smartphone was quietly launched online.

It was no normal gadget. And its launch has sparked hushed concern in Washington that U.S. sanctions have failed to prevent China from making a key technological advance. Such a development would seem to fulfill warnings from U.S. chipmakers that sanctions wouldn’t stop China, but would spur it to redouble efforts to build alternatives to U.S. technology.

 

Abstract In comparison to non-human animals, humans are highly flexible in cooperative tasks, which may be a result of their ability to understand a partner’s role in such interactions. Here, we tested if wolves and dogs could flexibly adjust their behaviour according to whether they needed a partner to solve a cooperative loose string-pulling paradigm. First, we presented animals with a delay condition where a human partner was released after the subject so that the animal had to delay pulling the string to enable coordinated pulling with the human partner. Subsequently, we investigated whether subjects would recruit a partner depending on whether they could operate the apparatus alone, or help from a partner was required. Both wolves and dogs successfully waited in the delay condition in 88% of the trials. Experimental subjects were also successful in recruiting a partner, which occurred significantly more often in the cooperation trials than in the solo pulling condition. No species differences were found in either experiment. These results suggest that both wolves and dogs have some understanding of whether a social partner is needed to accomplish a task, which enables behavioural coordination and cooperation.

 

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has begun the study of one of the most renowned supernovae, SN 1987A (Supernova 1987A). Located 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, SN 1987A has been a target of intense observations at wavelengths ranging from gamma rays to radio for nearly 40 years, since its discovery in February of 1987. New observations by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) provide a crucial clue to our understanding of how a supernova develops over time to shape its remnant.

 

The genetic adaptation of humans to the consumption of milk from dairying animals is one of the most emblematic cases of recent human evolution. While the phenotypic change under selection, lactase persistence (LP), is known, the evolutionary advantage conferred to persistent individuals remains obscure. One informative but underappreciated observation is that not all populations whose ancestors had access to milk genetically adapted to become lactase persistent. Indeed, Central Asian herders are mostly lactase nonpersistent, despite their significant dietary reliance on dairy products

 

IT DIDN'T TAKE long. Just months after OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot upended the startup economy, cybercriminals and hackers are claiming to have created their own versions of the text-generating technology. The systems could, theoretically at least, supercharge criminals’ ability to write malware or phishing emails that trick people into handing over their login information.

 

A team of physicists from Hamburg University has made a breakthrough in the field of quantum physics by observing a rare state of matter that was predicted by Japanese theorists more than half a century ago.

Machida-Shibata state The state, known as the Machida-Shibata state, involves the pairing of electrons in an artificial atom on the surface of a superconductor. The discovery, published in the journal Nature, could have implications for the development of nanostructured electronic devices and quantum computers.

 

This is the first non-Revelation Space book by Alastair Reynolds that I have read, and I loved it! It started out very simple. As the story progressed, it increasingly became evident that something very weird was going on. There were subtle clues to pick up on and I found myself tearing through the book trying to put together all the pieces of the puzzle. Towards the end, when everything started getting clear, the final solution to the puzzle was doubly satisfying since I had already managed to decipher a part of the mystery till that point. I found the end of the book to be unexpectedly emotional. I will definitely count this book amongst my favourite scify books! Thoughts?

 

In this book Genly Ai is sent to the planet Gethen on behalf of the Ekumen, an alliance of human societies residing on far flung planets, to acquaint the inhabitants with the existence of the Ekumen and convince them to join the alliance. The Gethenians are unique: every individual has the potential to be a man or a woman during regular periods of time, referred to as "kemmer". The period of kemmer is the only time when a Gethenian has a defined sexuality. Throughout the course of the book any individual Gethenian is referred to as a "man". The narrative is told through two POVs, both in the first person: Genly Ai, the Envoy; and Estraven, who is the prime minister of Karhide, Mr Ai's liaison with the nation's king. Over the course of the narrative, Le Guin explores a society totally uninfluenced by sexuality which interestingly holds up a mirror to how sexuality /gender permeates every nook and cranny of our social existence. It was however the beautiful depiction of the progression of the relationship between Mr Ai and Estraven that made me fall in love with this book. The complete disconnect between the cultures of the two main characters initially made them misjudge each other leading to dangerous consequences. Later, unexpectedly thrown in together while traveling for days in the icy wilderness, they begin to understand and accept each other for who they are; the story ultimately culminating into it's heartbreaking conclusion. I will end with these beautiful lines: "Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way." (I had posted this earlier elsewhere, and thought I would post it here for any interesting discussion).

view more: ‹ prev next ›