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Strange science 😦
#11
RE: Strange science 😦
(June 17, 2025 at 4:22 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:
(June 17, 2025 at 3:45 am)Paleophyte Wrote: Ever wonder what happens to a reactor core or a spent fuel pool after the grid fails and the last of the backup generators run out of diesel? Very Bad Things. Even assuming humanity doesn't extinguish itself with a thermonuclear firestorm, we're going to leave a pretty interesting layer of chemical and nuclear residue. Advanced civilizations don't sneak worth a damn.

Right, that infrastructure is not melting away any time soon, and I'm pretty sure we'd be able to detect and analyze remnants of nuclear or solar energy plants big enough to power a large energy ecosystem. The architecture as well may be discernible, even after a few million years; I mean, we analyze natural architecture such that we know a landslide happened here or the Chixulub comet left a deadly shower of fragments in modern-day North Dakota -- the latter evidence largely microscopic.

But somehow we can't see evidence of an energy-consumptive, advanced society and still, erm, want to believe.

Finding a discrete source like a landfill or a nuclear reactor is pretty low odds. Finding a global blanket of microplastics and radioactive waste would be a lot simpler. A bit like we felt that dinosaurs had too coolĀ a signature and we needed our own K-T boundary layer. Once you recognize what that is then you have a much better chance of tracing it back to its origins, a bit like the way we traced Chicxulub based on a thin layer of clay that's found around the globe.
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#12
RE: Strange science 😦
(June 17, 2025 at 3:36 am)Paleophyte Wrote: And since I find that clickbait rubbish so offensive:

You Won't Believe This One Weird Trick That Scientists Are Using to Help Predict The Future!!!

Low Cost Smart Pads!!!

Tardigrades
Ā  Ā In
Ā  Ā  Ā  Space!


Meet Magnetic Fields In Your Neighborhood That Want To Connect

This Tiny Fish Is Louder Than An Elephant!!!

You Won't Believe What These Nematodes Do Next!

Do You Need To Check Uranus For Backward Moons???

Scientists Did What To The Axolotl?

Seriously though, we live in an age where scientific advance is finding things so strange and wondrous that it nearly defies reason. If you can't manage to sell people on these real-world miracles without further embellishing them then I have no sympathy for you whatsoever.

The most offensive one is when they try to take advantage of insecure males with headlines like 'Double Your Penis Size In 2 Weeks WithĀ This AmazingĀ Superfood.'

Doesn't even work. I mean, I heard it doesn't work. Yeah.

Boru
ā€˜I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
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#13
RE: Strange science 😦
(June 17, 2025 at 5:02 am)Paleophyte Wrote:
(June 17, 2025 at 4:22 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Right, that infrastructure is not melting away any time soon, and I'm pretty sure we'd be able to detect and analyze remnants of nuclear or solar energy plants big enough to power a large energy ecosystem. The architecture as well may be discernible, even after a few million years; I mean, we analyze natural architecture such that we know a landslide happened here or the Chixulub comet left a deadly shower of fragments in modern-day North Dakota -- the latter evidence largely microscopic.

But somehow we can't see evidence of an energy-consumptive, advanced society and still, erm, want to believe.

Finding a discrete source like a landfill or a nuclear reactor is pretty low odds. Finding a global blanket of microplastics and radioactive waste would be a lot simpler. A bit like we felt that dinosaurs had too coolĀ a signature and we needed our own K-T boundary layer. Once you recognize what that is then you have a much better chance of tracing it back to its origins, a bit like the way we traced Chicxulub based on a thin layer of clay that's found around the globe.

Fossils. We should have found fossils by now.

Boru
ā€˜I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
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#14
RE: Strange science 😦
(June 17, 2025 at 7:20 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:
(June 17, 2025 at 5:02 am)Paleophyte Wrote: Finding a discrete source like a landfill or a nuclear reactor is pretty low odds. Finding a global blanket of microplastics and radioactive waste would be a lot simpler. A bit like we felt that dinosaurs had too coolĀ a signature and we needed our own K-T boundary layer. Once you recognize what that is then you have a much better chance of tracing it back to its origins, a bit like the way we traced Chicxulub based on a thin layer of clay that's found around the globe.

Fossils. We should have found fossils by now.

Boru

Maybe, maybe not. It'd depend on the nature of the critter and any odd behaviors that they might have. That said, burial of your dead to prevent disease is a near-universal and a great way to make people into fossils.Ā What we should have found long ago is fossilized structures. Any advanced society is going to need permanent structures, and we'd expect some part of those to survive, especially along the coast and at the mouths of rivers. Any civilization coming after us is going to find some very strange hydrocarbon deposits that are 2 inches thick, 20 feet wide, and 200 miles long.
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#15
RE: Strange science 😦
There is a place in Africa called Oklo where it is considered lie the ancient remains of several nuclear fission reactors, but they are naturally formed.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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#16
RE: Strange science 😦
(June 17, 2025 at 8:07 am)FakeĀ Messiah Wrote: There is a place in Africa called Oklo where it is considered lie the ancient remains of several nuclear fission reactors, but they are naturally formed.

If they weren't formed naturally then the civilization that built them was much stranger than anything thatĀ we expected. They'd be unicellular for a start.
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#17
RE: Strange science 😦
(June 17, 2025 at 8:01 am)Paleophyte Wrote:
(June 17, 2025 at 7:20 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Fossils. We should have found fossils by now.

Boru

Maybe, maybe not. It'd depend on the nature of the critter and any odd behaviors that they might have. That said, burial of your dead to prevent disease is a near-universal and a great way to make people into fossils.Ā What we should have found long ago is fossilized structures. Any advanced society is going to need permanent structures, and we'd expect some part of those to survive, especially along the coast and at the mouths of rivers. Any civilization coming after us is going to find some very strange hydrocarbon deposits that are 2 inches thick, 20 feet wide, and 200 miles long.

Given that we’ve found individual fossils ranging in size from one ten thousandths of a metre to 2.5 meters, it hard to imagine that an ancient society didn’t leave at least some fossilized remains. Even if they were clever enough to avoid burying their dead (burning or recycling the remains, for example), it beggars belief to imagine that none of them were buried by avalanches or mudslides and not recovered.

But, since we’re in the realm of speculative fantasy, we might as well posit that they were beings of pure energy, so there were no remains to be fossilized. Smile

Boru
ā€˜I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
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#18
RE: Strange science 😦
(June 17, 2025 at 4:10 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Given that we’ve found individual fossils ranging in size from one ten thousandths of a metre to 2.5 meters, it hard to imagine that an ancient society didn’t leave at least some fossilized remains. Even if they were clever enough to avoid burying their dead (burning or recycling the remains, for example), it beggars belief to imagine that none of them were buried by avalanches or mudslides and not recovered.

That wouldn't be that far out there. Keep in mind that we have entire genera that have been without a single fossil untilĀ the last few years, and likely have a lot more that still are. All you'd need is a fairly small population that dwells somewhere with poor preservation. Perhaps they all lived in mountain retreats. You're right though, sounds very unlikely.
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#19
RE: Strange science 😦
[Image: MV5BNGQxMzhmYmMtOTVmMS00MDIzLWE3YmEtNTdk...@._V1_.jpg]
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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#20
RE: Strange science 😦
Snake Venom, Urine, and a Quest to Live Forever: Inside a Biohacking Conference Emboldened by MAHA

I have been pressurized in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and bathed in flickering gamma-wave light. I have had my electromagnetic field manipulated. I have taken an IV drip of green liquid that looked nearly radioactive. I have been frozen in a cryochamber (and felt amazing afterward) and baked in a one-man, zippable sauna (I didn’t). I have eaten more consecutive meals of beef than ever in my life, grinding unrefined Kalahari desert salt over the slabs of fat and protein. I have been told, after a scan, that I have the liver of a newborn baby (this is a good thing). I have caused a woman’s jaw to drop by telling her I once took antibiotics. I have pumped my vaccinated fist alongside RFK Jr. fans and stem cell enthusiasts and piss-injectors to the pounding beats of Steve Aoki.

Welcome to Dave Asprey’s 2025 Biohacking Conference: a symposium of tech bros, wellness influencers, psychonauts, and scientists, all hoping to thwart the ravages of time with unorthodox—and often unproven—medical treatments.

If anything unites this crowd, it is a distrust of the medical status quo—particularly the pharmaceutical industry—and an appetite for tech-heavy alternatives. Think folk medicine powered by AI.

In these circles, autonomy is gospel. But if there is a preacher to this sermon, it is Asprey. Asprey’s personal goal is to live to 180 years oldā€”ā€œ50 percent better than our current best,ā€ he clarifies, referring to the oldest person ever recorded at 122. And he is working on it, hard. He claims to have spent $2.5 million of his multimillion dollar empire—generated largely by his Bulletproof coffee brand and diet plan—on reversing his age via a specialized diet, rigorous exercise, a torrent of supplements, countless stem cell treatments, baths in frigid ice water and shimmering red light, and injections of his own filtered urine as allergy therapy.

He shares his de facto leadership of the biohacking sphere with a few other rich renegades, most notably Bryan Johnson, the venture capitalist whose Blueprint Protocol makes Asprey’s centenarian goals look quaint. Johnson aims for immortality outrightā€”ā€œDON’T DIEā€ screams his own movement’s slogan—and has even vampirically infused himself with his own son’s blood in the quest for the fountain of youth.

Attendee Joni Winston, who runs a wellness center in Costa Rica, tells me she is either 68 or 52, ā€œdepending on which calendar you use.ā€ At age 60, she started counting backward, so that when she reaches her intended 120, she can claim the nirvanic age of 0. ā€œI want to make as much progress in this life as I can,ā€ Winston says, ā€œso that when I die I can go to a different dimension and not have to deal with this 3D Matrix shit.ā€

The biohackers have seen a bright new dawn. With President Donald Trump's re-election, RFK Jr.’s subsequent appointment as secretary of Health and Human Services—people here refer to him as ā€œBobby,ā€ affectionately, like an old friend—and the initiation of MAHA, years of work have come to fruition. MAHA’s agenda legitimizes the biohacking ethos: that we must curb the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on public health policy and research, that we are all overmedicated as a result, that self-governance over health is paramount.

Despite the MAHA fandom, every biohacker I speak to, like Asprey, says they are apolitical. MAHA itself, they insist, is apolitical. What could possibly be partisan about wanting healthy kids? Having energy and vitality and a high quality of life?

A man named Sincere Seven is extolling the medicinal virtues of microdosing viper, cobra, and rattlesnake venoms directly into his patients’ bloodstream.

ā€œThe snake heals its prey before it kills its prey,ā€ he claims, before personifying the serpent. ā€œI inject venom into you that will induce a rapid healing. Flood the body with white blood cells, kill off viruses, kill off bacteria, kill off tumors, kill off cancers—cause I don’t wanna eat that.ā€

https://www.wired.com/story/biohackers-w...ning-them/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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