Did the mushroom learn to control a robot, or did the scientists figure out how to connect a robot to a mushroom in such a way as to make the regular processes happening inside the mushroom trigger a set of robot legs? Because the article makes it seem like the mushroom is intelligent and has agency, and was thus far only lacking the proper robot body in order to express that; but the video makes it look like the legs were all pumping in unison, and the resulting movement was more or less coincidental.

Creating a need is not the same as creating a job.

Yeah, the saltpeter (potassium nitrate) is really the key ingredient here. It’s the rapid oxidizer compound that gives your anti-Gorn cannon its boom boom. Without that, mixing all the other stuff together is just going to be smelly and disappointing.

I mean specifically a cloud storage account. Setting up the computer required me to supply an email address and set a password for microsoft.com. There was nothing in that process that I recall mentioning OneDrive, or that would have suggested every file on my C drive was about to be indiscriminately uploaded to a Microsoft server somewhere. I didn’t even know OneDrive was a thing until I had to google how to stop it.

Thankfully I noticed what was going on before it got to that point, but when they start vacuuming up all your files and data like that without telling you and without giving you control over it, you kind of have to assume that whatever is going on is not being done for your benefit.

This bullshit was basically my first experience with Windows 11 when I got a new PC last year. Literally, “Why is my internet so slow? What’s this OneDrive thing? Oh, holy shit fucking stop Jesus Christ!”

Just automatically started uploading everything on my hard drive to an account I didn’t set up, without even a prompt telling me it was happening, and no obvious way to make it stop. I didn’t even know Windows had added a cloud storage option. I actually had to completely uninstall OneDrive to finally make it stop.

I might have liked having a native backup service in Windows if it was like, “Hey look at this handy cloud storage tool we’ve added to Windows! Would you like to pick some files to save?” But as it is, it might as well just be another piece of spyware.

There’s a big long list of reasons why I hate Windows 11, but this OneDrive shit is the thing that’s making me think maybe it’s time to ditch Windows for good.

Same for me too. Reddit, for all its other faults, is still just about the only place you can still get candid opinions on products in a place where it’s discussed by a large group with a deep knowledge base. Especially with niche things like fountain pens, goodyear-welted boots, and stuff like that.

Not sure how long that’s going to last though. The search engines are already hip to that trick, and even in just the last few months I’ve noticed a change in how many Reddit links I get vs product links when I add Reddit to my search query. Reddit is hip to it too, and with recently becoming a publicly traded corporation they’re probably going to wring every last cent out of that until every post mentioning a product is a bot-infested sewage fire like everything else.

The privilege is being able to choose to eat that way out of a sense of morality or fashion rather for the reason that it’s literally all there is to eat. The privilege is being able to turn your nose up at perfectly edible food for no other reason than that it’s got a bit of egg, honey, or butter in it without having to worry about starving to death. The privilege is also having access to such an abundance and variety of food that you can maintain a vegan diet year round and not have to fear that you won’t meet all the calorie, protein, and vitamin requirements you need to stay alive and healthy while much of the world is in a constant struggle to scrape together enough calories of any kind to stay alive.

I don’t think he’s an out-and-out white supremacist, but one of the weirdest heel-turns ever was seeing actual Latino immigrant Tom Araya go from being the face of the evilest thrash metal band in the world to an outspoken evangelical Catholic MAGA-pilled Trump supporter.

I used to have that when I was a teenager. About one out every ten times I was falling asleep just at the moment I drifted off I’d feel this crazy big pop that went from deep behind my right eye to the top right part of my skull. Sometimes it was more like a noise, sometimes it was more like a physical impact, like somebody bounced a golf ball off of my skull. It was really annoying. It started to happen less and less as I got older though. It pretty much went away completely by the time I was in my late 20s.

The headline is slightly misleading. 2.8 million searches were halted, but according to the article they didn’t attempt to figure out how many of those searches came from the same users. So thankfully the number of secret pedophiles in the UK is probably much lower than the headline might suggest.

You’re probably not missing out keeping your 3. I traded my 4a for a 7 a while ago, and while the 7 has better specs and whatever, it’s not so much that you can really feel a difference. It actually kind of feels like a downgrade because I lost my headphone jack and the fingerprint sensor absolutely sucks now. I would have been perfectly happy to keep my 4a for a good while longer if it weren’t for the battery.

Oh, well, if the film studios say so then by all means…

The state of science reporting has been absolute dog shit for decades. The vast majority of the time when you track down the study an article is based on, the claims of the article are either massively exaggerated, or sometimes even completely different than what the article claims. It seems like a whole industry of taking fairly mundane studies and punching them up into some exciting pieces of short fiction. So many years of garbage reporting has me immediately skeptical of any article with a bold claim, or which mentions any kind of significant breakthrough.

So the guy who notoriously despises public transit failed to come through on his promise to revolutionize public transit?

Wow.

I mean, who could have seen that coming?

So… 16%?

Netflix put out a couple of Stranger Things games that are surprisingly good.

It’s not surprising, that’s how their search engine has worked forever. But yeah, icky is a good word for it.

But… Indiana Jones famously doesn’t speak Hovitos.

As someone who lives in an area with no earthquakes, my first thought was, “Man, those shelves really need a lip around the edges or something.”