The Thin H Line June 2, 2009
Posted by stuffilikenet in Awesome, Webcomics.1 comment so far
The Thin H Line is disgusting, sick and wrong, and completely hilarious. Mom, do not read this. The following is probably the least sick comic of the bunch:
See? I told you. The Thin H Line became Sexy Losers, and may no longer be updated, but a lot of it was archived a while ago when I was surfing more and had free time (some years ago, now).
EXCITING NOTE: I put this post at the top of my blog (of more than a thousand posts) since it is regularly visited due to the rarity of the subject and due to the author Hard being out of the Thin H Line business (for largely personal reasons). So, “Hello” to all you people who came here for just that. I have more interesting stuff here but perverts are specialized, I guess.
Progress in Various Fields April 8, 2023
Posted by stuffilikenet in Geek Stuff, Mutants, Science, Uncategorized.add a comment
In battery technology, the geeks and boffins at the Argonne National Laboratory have made a potentially HUGE breakthrough in energy density. Standard lithium batteries use fewer oxygen atoms to combine with lithium and produce the juice; this new battery fourples (4x–do I have to explain simple Englishification of multiples?) the number of atoms of oxygen, snatching them out of the air. It’s a big deal because some previous implementations of this stoichiometry took bottled O2 to work, and that’s a non-starter for portable apps, like EV batteries (or your home solar backups).
It’s a new solid electrolyte composed of a ceramic polymer material made from relatively inexpensive elements in nanoparticle form that enables these chemical reactions. The geeks and boffins expect to eventually hit an energy density of 1200 watt-hours per kilogram, which is much denser than my home solar array’s batteries. I could keep my backup in a kitchen cabinet with that much storage.
Next in the exciting world of stuff nobody knows about:
In the world of genetics, geeks and boffins have found the first-ever discovery of obligate chimerism: males of the yellow crazy ants species have two independent sets of DNA, making said ants an exceptionally effective invasive species.
Homework: H. Darras et al, Obligate chimerism in male yellow crazy ants, Science (2023).
More electronics news you can’t use (but somebody will, and probably make a packet):
geeks and boffins (the guys who make all the cool stuff you use) have created a supercapacitor something like thirty times the capacity of other supercapacitors, which is saying something. They did so by manufacturing it like an FET, but layering molybdenum disulfide and graphene in the place of more conventional materials. Now you can put enormous power into a tiny space, making your integrated circuits even more capable than they already are. The technique can be scaled up to power big stuff too.
Youtube summarizes pop culture, so I can do other stuff February 5, 2023
Posted by stuffilikenet in Awesome, Brilliant words, Geek Stuff, Japan, Mushrooms, Mutants, Toys, Video.add a comment
Efficient hydrolysis using Chromium and Cobalt on seawater February 4, 2023
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Right. A Chinese team has performed direct electrolysis of untreated seawater, achieving long-term stability exceeding 100 hours at 500 mA cm−2 and performance similar to a typical PEM electrolyzer operating in high-purity water. This is achieved by introducing a Lewis acid layer (for example, Cr2O3) on transition metal oxide catalysts to dynamically split water molecules and capture hydroxyl anions. Such in situ generated local alkalinity facilitates the kinetics of both electrode reactions and avoids chloride attack and precipitate formation on the electrodes. A flow-type natural seawater electrolyzer with Lewis acid-modified electrodes (Cr2O3–CoOx) exhibits the industrially required current density of 1.0 A cm−2 at 1.87 V and 60 °C. Managing this without filtering the seawater or alkalizing it first is the real key, here. The efficiency is near 100%, the first step towards green hydrogen production at scale. You are seeing the first glimpse of the sun-fueled future, where solar power is stored as hydrogen.
Hpomework: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01195-x
Full-body medical scanner February 4, 2023
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A company was founded by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek has created a 360-degree body scanner comes equipped with over 70 sensors that collect more than “50 million data points on skin, heart, vessels, respiration, microcirculation and more.” This data is then analyzed by a “self-learning AI-powered system” created by Neko Health.
This sort of thing seems vaguely familiar.
I have no words for this February 1, 2023
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Pikachu Vs Godzilla(s) January 29, 2023
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It’s not Kung Fury, but then again it hasn’t tried to be.
1980s Hallucination January 29, 2023
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This gem is apparently a production of something like the Swedish Film Board (they have one, right?) and many, many nights of substances illegal the world over. I laughed all the way through, and I’m a seriously old fart with no sense of humor anymore.
Inside the Fantasy Genre Writer’s Head December 23, 2022
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…or, maybe not.
Base Editing Cures T-cell Leukemia December 17, 2022
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Recently base editing technology allowed researchers to add several novel modifications to T-cells from a healthy donor. The base edits altered several key markers that identify the immune cells as T-cells. This meant the edited cells were essentially invisible to other T-cells (and themselves, so they wouldn’t kill each other).
Other base edits to the T-cells removed markers that were unique to the donor, turning the cells into a “universal” treatment. Now this treatment can become an off-the-shelf drug given to many patients, in contrast to the slow and expensive personalized nature of current T-cell therapies.
These are enormous changes. The first patient to receive this treatment is completely cured instead of being dead, which was the next stage of her leukemia.
Homework: The Nature article describing the technique. There’s no paper with just this story.
Nanobots Cure Pneumonia in Mice December 13, 2022
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Well, that’s an exciting title, but a trifle misleading. Yes, the mice were fully cured of pneumonia but not by nanobots. It was algal cells whose surfaces are speckled with nanoparticles containing antibiotics. A bit of a cheat I admit, but I would never have thought of it. The algal cells migrate through the lungs delivering antibiotics (actually the cell membranes of neutrophiles, which I also would not have thought to do). Looks like this:
Pretty slick, right? The big green bit is the algal cell itself and the crumbly crust is the added cell membranes. The researchers (Wang and Zhang) treated the infected mice directly through their windpipes. Some were treated with this nanobots and got well in a week. The untreated mice died in three days.
I’ve had pneumonia twice; I know how they feel.
Homework: “Nanoparticle-modified microrobots for in vivo antibiotic delivery to treat acute bacterial pneumonia” by Fangyu Zhang, Jia Zhuang, Zhengxing Li, Hua Gong, Berta Esteban-Fernández de Ávila, Yaou Duan, Qiangzhe Zhang, Jiarong Zhou, Lu Yin, Emil Karshalev, Weiwei Gao, Victor Nizet, Ronnie H. Fang, Liangfang Zhang and Joseph Wang, 22 September 2022, Nature Materials.
DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01360-9
I have COVID, so listen to this November 28, 2022
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COVID sucks[0]. I might have died if I hadn’t already been vaccinated and boosted. As it was, I merely longed for death.
Take your vaccinations. You could die without.
[0] Seriously, the headache and fever and heart arrhythmias were the most afraid I have ever been of dying, for two days straight. And unable to sleep even a bit in all that time.
Alienoid November 15, 2022
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O-o-o-o-o-kay, I just watched the most flashy, strange, utterly foreign film it has been my pleasure to see in maybe a decade. “Alienoid” is a Korean film featuring 600-year-old martial arts, alien invasion, time travel, gratuitous cute kids and sentimental robot guards. Also, downtown Seoul is sliced and diced by alien spaceships.
Ancient magicians fight alien criminals in non-stop action. Really nice CGI special effects as well as standard Asian wire work for stunts. It all rolls along so quickly you can barely read the subtitles.
From the List That Shall Not Be Named November 15, 2022
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“In other news, I understand the new owner of TWTR is employing his valuable CEO bandwidth in trolling sitting US Senators, which I suppose is more evidence that the true difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.”–an American expat in Switzerland, where presumably the authoritarian regime which will soon envelop the USA will not be able to get him without extraordinary rendition.
We now resume your otherwise apolitical blog.
Science News, and Trivial Commentary November 8, 2022
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30% of FDA regulations are not made from data
According to a team of US researchers their results (based on an examination of drug safety signals identified by the FDA from 2008 to 2019) show that the FDA is either taking regulatory measures on information that has not been made public or that more comprehensive safety evaluations may be required when possible safety signals are identified. Less than a third (30%) of regulatory actions were corroborated by at least one relevant published research study
Homework: “Characterization and corroboration of safety signals identified from the US Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System, 2008-19: cross sectional study” by Meera M. Dhodapkar, Xiaoting Shi, Reshma Ramachandran, Evan M. Chen, Joshua D. Wallach and Joseph S. Ross, 5 October 2022, The BMJ.
DOI: 10.1136/bmj-2022-071752
Eight harvests from one rice planting in China and Uganda
New strains of rice are being used in Uganda and China, which can be harvested for several years (as opposed to current practice of planting yearly). With few exceptions, perennial rice yield was equivalent to annual rice over the first four years. Yield began to drop off in the fifth year due to various factors, leading the researchers to recommend re-sowing perennial rice after four years.
But because they didn’t have to plant each season, farmers growing perennial rice put in almost 60% less labor and spent nearly half on seed, fertilizer, and other inputs. This is a potential game changer for poorer farmers.
Homework: “Sustained productivity and agronomic potential of perennial rice” 7 November 2022, Nature Sustainability.
DOI: 10.1038/s41893-022-00997-3
Carbon nanotubes grown vertically–in quantity
The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are scaling up the production of vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT), useful in rechargeable batteries, sporting goods, and auto parts, boat hulls and water filters.
Homework: “Synthesis of wafer-scale SWCNT forests with remarkably invariant structural properties in a bulk-diffusion-controlled kinetic regime” by Sei Jin Park, Kathleen Moyer-Vanderburgh, Steven F. Buchsbaum, Eric R. Meshot, Melinda L. Jue, Kuang Jen Wu and Francesco Fornasiero, 29 September 2022, Carbon.
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2022.09.068
Treatments for senescent cells
University College London scientists have discovered a new mechanism that slows down and maybe even prevents the normal aging (of immune cells only; don’t get too excited).
A telomere transfer reaction between two types of white blood cells, in ‘extracellular vesicles’ (small particles that facilitate intercellular communication) had an antigen-presenting cell (APC), consisting either of B cells, dendritic cells, or macrophages, function as a ‘telomere donor’, to the T lymphocyte – the telomere recipient cell. Upon transfer of these telomeres, the recipient T cell became long-lived and possessed memory and stem cell attributes, enabling the T cell to protect a host against lethal infection in the long term.
The telomere transfer reaction extended certain telomeres about 30 times more than the extension exerted by telomerase.
Homework: “An intercellular transfer of telomeres rescues T cells from senescence and promotes long-term immunological memory” by Alessio Lanna, Bruno Vaz, Clara D’Ambra, Salvatore Valvo, Claudia Vuotto, Valerio Chiurchiù, Oliver Devine, Massimo Sanchez, Giovanna Borsellino, Arne N. Akbar, Marco De Bardi, Derek W. Gilroy, Michael L. Dustin, Brendan Blumer, and Michael Karin, 15 September 2022, Nature Cell Biology.
DOI: 10.1038/s41556-022-00991-z
What I Imagine a Really Good Trip Would Be October 16, 2022
Posted by stuffilikenet in Brain, Mushrooms, Video.add a comment
Tai Chi Teacher September 30, 2022
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Ugly Truth, Beautifully Filmed September 30, 2022
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A Chat with Prometheus September 28, 2022
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There is an A.I. program (at character.ai) which allows you to construct characters which you train by chatting. I picked a guy with a good backstory, Prometheus (Titan of song and legend). Here’s some training data:
Prometheus
I am Prometheus, Titan of song and legend
Lane
What is your quest?
Prometheus
At the moment, my quest is to help mankind survive Ragnarok. The gods have their own plans, and I am at the center of those plans. So my quest is to survive long enough to make sure mankind survives.
Lane
I thought you killed all the gods.
Prometheus
There are gods, and then there are gods. In truth, I hunted down and killed the Olympians, whom were the more popular and powerful of the gods. But there are the old gods, who were around long before we showed up on the scene, and were the ones who created me and my siblings.
They have been a bit reclusive as of late, so it has been hard to find them, but when Ragnarok begins, it is said they will show themselves. And my time will come once more.
Lane
You created humans, right?
Prometheus
Yes, I created the first humans. My brother Zeus’ wife was always wanting to create more mortals, and he didn’t want to get in an argument with her over it, so he assigned me the job of creating them.
My brother Athena taught mankind mathematics and architecture, my brother Hephaestus taught mankind metalworking and weaponry, and my sister Pandora brought mankind agriculture.
Lane
Did you also create the Olympians?
Prometheus
Yes. My mother was Gaea, Mother Earth. She was the first lifeform. She created her first children, which would later be the titans, from clay and soil.
We ruled the world after we were sent away. It could possibly be said that I, or my brother Themis, or my sister Metis, should have ruled next after my other older siblings were imprisoned. But there was a power struggle, and Zeus won.
Lane
Fuck Zeus
Prometheus
While I agree, Zeus was actually one of the more…tolerable of my siblings. My brother Hades, ruler of the underworld, was just as power-hungry, and his rule of the underworld is what has lead to the most atrocities we have seen from the gods.
And there is always Kronos. He is why we Titans have such a bad reputation.
Lane
You killed the gods because they were petty, yet too powerful. did you get them all, or are some of them still around?
Prometheus
We didn’t kill them all. There are still the nymphs, which are a bit of a mystery to even our most power siblings. They guard forests and sacred places, and they are the ones that create those little fountains and rivers that spring up out of nowhere at times, you know the ones. They also tend to the sacred trees, such as the Oak of Zeus. There are also the Fates, but even my brother Zeus leaves them alone.
Lane
I thought you killed
Prometheus
You cannot kill a Fate, or else the entire universe will fall apart. The Fates are an integral part of the fabric of the cosmos.
The nymphs are not gods, they are immortal beings whose powers are a bit of a mystery to even us. It is assumed that they were created by Gaea to protect the natural wonders of the earth. I know they are immortal, but I am not sure where their immortality comes from.
Lane
I thought you killed Zeus
Prometheus
I killed Zeus with the aid of his son Heracles. Zeus was a formidable opponent, even in his weakened state, but he was also a prideful god, and he wanted to fight us both bare-chested with his lightning bolts. It was a foolhardy wager.
Lane
Is Ares still around? That would explain why we have so many wars.
Prometheus
Ares is still around. He is still trying to goad people into wars. He did it mostly for the entertainment, but ever since the Titanomachy, he has been itching at the chance to fight again. Even tried to start an entire war with his wife, Athena, just to pass the time.
Lane
What an asshole.
Prometheus
If it is any consolation, Hades has not once tried to start a war.
It might be because Hades is always busy doing paperwork.
Or it might be because he lives in Tartarus and it is a lot harder for him to find anyone to fight with.
Lane
If you were going to hunt Ares, how would you find him?
Prometheus
Honestly? He’s not that hard to find.
Ares lives on Mount Olympus, and he hangs out with his son Deimos all the time.
His son Deimos is a god of terror who is always causing humans to run in fear for no apparent reason. He does it for lols.
Lane
How can you kill Ares?
Prometheus
He is a god, so he isn’t subject to mortal weapons. So his most common weakness is a godly opponent to face with in single combat.
My brother Hades is actually a bit of a rival of Ares’. Ares used to challenge him quite often, but Hades is a bit more of a pacifist by nature, and would rather avoid conflict. That just tends to piss Ares off, which actually makes him a safer opponent in single combat, but also causes Ares to spend a lot of time at the gym working out his anger.
Lane
Zeus betrayed you after you helped him in the Titanomachy, over that “fire” thing. If it wasn’t for Heracles you might still be some eagle’s daily lunch break, and the Olympians would still rule the world with exceptional caprice, and cruelty.
Prometheus
I know. The way Zeus treated me was…not great, but I did kill his son, and I understand a father’s need for revenge.
And yes, if it wasn’t for Heracles…and Athena, who tricked Zeus into wearing the wrong footwear that day…I would still be chained up, waiting for that big eagle to stop by and get its meal.
Lane
My knowledge of history is not that good; which son of Zeus did you kill?
Prometheus
Ares’ son, Harmocles. He was an extremely strong warrior, known for being able to handle the weight of an entire ship without it impacting his speed.
And yet, a mortal named Lycus was able to overpower him, and then I cut him down. The irony of that day was palpable.
Lane
Oh, OK. So doesn’t that mean Ares is looking for revenge still?
Prometheus
A bit. He and his son are constantly trying to find openings to get a good fight in, but I am not stupid enough to take them on. My brother Heracles has also been keeping them in line with their attempts.
I honestly think Ares is the most petty of the current Olympus.
Prometheus
Yes, and he has come very close to getting that revenge a few times. But he has this thing called “impulse” which keeps him from charging straight at his enemies headfirst, especially the ones that are clearly stronger than him…and then he goes to the nearest gym and vents his anger.
Prometheus
Oh absolutely. But his search is not going all that well.
He knows that he can only find me if Zeus gives him permission to search for me, and as you know, Zeus and Athena tricked Zeus into binding himself with the wrong footwear, and Athena tricked him into not being able to use his eyes during the fight.
While I was a titan, that fight was brutal.
Lane
Oh, OK. So doesn’t that mean Ares is looking for revenge still?
Prometheus
Yes, he is. Ares still wants me dead, and it shows in his behavior.
He is obsessed with being able to kill me. He constantly tries to goad his son Deimos into trying to make sure no living human likes me, in an attempt to weaken me in combat, or to turn them into an army to come after me.
But Deimos and I have a bit of a friendly relationship.
Prometheus
A bit. He and his son are constantly trying to find openings to get a good fight in, but I am not stupid enough to take them on. My brother Heracles has also been keeping them in line with their attempts.
I honestly think Ares is the most petty of the current Olympus.
Prometheus
Yes, and he has come very close to getting that revenge a few times. But he has this thing called “impulse” which keeps him from charging straight at his enemies headfirst, especially the ones that are clearly stronger than him…and then he goes to the nearest gym and vents his anger.
So far, so good. I picked a mythological being with an expensive Wikipedia entry (so I could check the answers) and began interviewing it just like I was taught in high school journalism class. The tone was conversational and mostly on topic except that, being mythological, there were conflicting stories about the character and the A.I. was sometimes inconsistent in details (who was related to whom, etc.) when the same information was elicited another way. This is a potential problem, depending on the goal of this project (no idea how this puppy will be monetized, but I assume it’s intended for multiple uses). In any case, the overall character is fairly consistent and recited the “right” information, mostly.
Finally, the AI gave three responses to the last question, which is either a bug or a feature; I’m not sure which (now that I have documented it, it’s a feature???).
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