That and post-scarcity doesn’t mean “zero scarcity”. Like if someone wanted to create a picard funkpop the size of a planet, I don’t think they’d be allowed the resource budget.

It’s like how it doesn’t matter where you live, if you want to buy on the silk road, you need bitcoin. Presumably even the federation can’t just make latinum whenever they please, or we wouldn’t see them haggle with it. Although, it would be fun to see that they could and just take the responsibility of not crashing non-federation cultures entire economies very seriously, either out of respect or treaty.

Damnit, I want a LD episode where the crew is frustrated and desperately wants to just “buy” their problem away but can’t because an economist at command says it’ll mean they have to rescue all these non-federation colonies that are currently self sufficient. Come to think of it it’s right there with the “you break it you own it” concept of the prime directive.

Yeah agree. They’re kind of sold as a cure all, which they’re not, but if you have a very specific problem they’ll help. I think the thing is a lot of times people use them without addressing the root cause. But it’s definitely saved me a deep clean before.

Yeah sorry! I had deleted it I didn’t see where you mentioned it was a pitcher and thought you meant vft!

Agreed, and I spent like a decade in protein engineering and pre-biotic chemistry.

And if someone really wants to be a pedant about it, go ahead and prove conscious “intent” is inherently different than, not just a more complex form of, what’s going on here. If someone’s managed to solve all of the philosophy around consciousness, self, and intent, they could really save us all a bunch a time! Until then, pedantically, you’re not wrong to say the plant “knows” to do this as much as I “know” to pay my rent; it’s all just chemical reactions based on environment.

… Or we could allow people to enjoy the pressures and reasons that give rise to the subtle aspects of organism in this complex ecosystem we call earth without being a dick about it, and trust that the level of language specificity will increase/decrease commiserate to the degree of precision the topic requires.

not only native, but the ONLY place. I’ve got carnivores from every continent (accept Antarctica, obviously), and thats STILL my favorite fact.

It does make sense they’re so rare though. Most carnivory you can picture the evolutionary path: Something had a mutation that kind of made a cup, something had a mutation that kind of made the leaves sticky… etc. You can see it happening one step at a time with minor advantages (and therefore survival) at each step, until they kept compounding into more and more complex and specialized structures.

For a VFT… multiple things had to happen at once. There’s no advantage to the motion until you can also digest and adsorb the material. There’s also no advantage to a partial motion that can’t trap an organism. It’s really wild they exist!

We’re used to getting our energy and building blocks from our food. Plants get their energy from the sun, and their building blocks from the air (CO2). They get water and some minerals, but a plant is made up off solidified air. It’s like if you could be solar powered living off just air, water, and an occasional multi-vitamin.

Anyway, carnivores don’t really get energy from their prey, just the nutrients. It’s like self fertilizing.

Victory bell is probably based off of highland pitchers (Nepenthes). Fun fact: In some parts of the world they’re called “monkey cups”. I don’t know if the monkeys actually drink out of them or not but that’s where the name came from lol.

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So most fungi do have a lifespan, they have teleomere decay, and when you’re cloning mushrooms (from propagating mycelia) you have to let them go to fruit (the part that looks like a mushroom) every now and then. It’s a pain in the ass.

But like the other poster said, they play it fast and loose with which part you consider the “organism”. My favorite thing is that they do cytosolic streaming. Genetics can be a pain on mushrooms because not only do they share nutrients and metabolic burden through mycelia, they can share nuclei.

One of the weird convienent realities we used extensively is that cells are big enough you can spread them over a petri dish with a little loop, and if you diluted the initial sample enough, the colonies that developed were, practically speaking, from one parent cell. So you could try to modify a bunch, and then plate them (spreading the cells around) and pick individual colonies that were all clones from a single parent. Fungi mycelia means the nucleus isn’t stuck in one cell. It also means expression levels can be variable (some cells will have multiple nuclei, and then later maybe they don’t).

Fungi are a godamn pain in the ass to study. They’re not mysterious, they’re not alien, they’re just fucking assholes.

“enclosure acting as dwelling without permit” : mouse got in and died bud.

Edit: disregard. Was raging about AVG.

It didn’t. It’s a size of shotgun pellet. There’s BBB AA, you get the picture. BBs are well, close to “BB”.

Fair enough. That’s because I’ll admit it’s not something that makes a ton of sense to me; I’ve always felt pretty comfy in my own skin. On the other hand, I certainly have felt unwelcome, and wouldn’t want someone to feel that way. So it’s nice to hear whats going on in other peoples heads.

“which name they’re going by this decade”

It’s boggles my mind some folks (not that you did) bring this up as a refutation of some sort. A habitual Thanksgiving guest has been figuring some stuff out for a while. I couldn’t care less what they go by, except in so far as I hope it makes them happy. Like I guess I’d be happy to see it consistent because that means that person found something they’re extra comfy in, but in meantime you do you… And please pass the gravy… And also what did you think about starfield… Only reason we need to talk about it is if you need someone to talk to.

I screw this up all. The. Time. I’m very good about not dead naming but really bad at pronouns. It’s never been an issue because I’m putting forward the effort, people understand it’s not intentionally disrespectful, and it helps I routinely get the names (birth names, that they’ve had for 30+ years) of decades long friends wrong.

I know that doesn’t make it OK and I still try. But people act like if you mess up you’re instantly beaten to death by a mob. Respect and welcomeness shows through even if you screw up. I know it’s important to people, and that the person probably has a bunch of stories that more than justify being prickly about it, so I try and get it right. But it is amazing how much more just, you know, being a basic, respectful, human being who wants someone to be comfortable and talk about shared interests goes.

And that’s always been a little sad to me. I can stumble through something that means a lot to that other person, something that they’ve probably lost a lot of sleep over, and yet extending just the basics of human courtesy goes so far, because it’s not something that garunteed.

AB InBev does some great stuff with their craft owners. If it made sense for them to buy it back that’s awesome, but their mantra around craft really is: “you’ve got success, we’re just going to give you more tools”. A lot of the big folks like Duvall operate that way and you wind up with regional breweries shipping kegs around the world.

I’m assuming the above person, like me, had one of those “come on, no WAY” moments. It just seems to insanely wrong.

Yeah I suppose thats true, I mean without a power curve the OCV isn’t all that interesting to me (and that power curve is going to be influenced by manufacturing which is probably not optimized and may or not be compatible etc etc). So like I said, neat bit of chemistry, but I do get why people get burned out on these articles.

I’d say worth discussing but none of these articles are ever “hype” worthy. Its really cool to know about, and should point to a brighter future, but there are always gremlins in this kind of thing. Even fuel cells, which have a deserved reputation on WAY over hyping early, helped lay the groundwork for a lot of manufacturing infrastructure and technical know how that laid the work for a lot of the battery boom we saw and continue to see.

Salt batteries are really bad, but, you know, at least they’re salt. I don’t know much about salt batteries at the expert level, but I also work on an e-chem system that is low current low density. There’s definitely applications, especially because materials and tanks are cheap, but it turns out power is stupid cheap as well.

I don’t think anyone can really predict a new “winner” right now, but it’s the biggest reason why I’m a proponent of electronification in general; we absolutely won’t be tied to Lithium forever.