fullsquare

@fullsquare@awful.systems

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New image-generating AIs are being used for fake expense reports⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  in my country it used to be like this for 50 years, you get flat rate per day, counted up to fractions of day, separately for accomodation and food + everything else. you only have to keep transportation tickets

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New image-generating AIs are being used for fake expense reports⁩ ⁨⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  behold, disruption

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Utter nonsense⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  i don’t mean beta-oxidation, it’s just a series of separated normal reactions. i mean something like this: when first learning about ketones, you might learn about aldol condensation, which has enol as a nucleophile and another carbonyl as electrophile. at some other point you might learn about strecker reaction, which has iminium ion as electrophile and cyanide as nucleophile. but really, what you can do is mix and match, and you can pair enolizable ketone and iminium (mannich reaction) or carbonyl and cyanide (cyanohydrin formation) and then generalize, for example you don’t need strictly ketone for mannich, you can use any electron rich conjugated system like malonate or nitroalkane anion (henry reaction) or phenol or indole. to figure this out you need to study mechanisms. these last two are usually treated as variants of friedel-crafts reaction, but really categories like this are fake

  and to get that right, you need to know how these reactive intermediates look like, how reactive they are, what influences their stability which means that ochem starts with discussion of carbocations, carboanions, radicals, their shapes and orbitals involved, hyperconjugation, solvent effects and the like. and then first reactions taught are sn1/sn2, because these showcase these fundamentals nicely, and from there, it’s about introduction of more compound classes

  we only had synthons introduced during lecture at around 4th year, and only for ochem path, it’s not doing a lot at that point and imo would have much more impact right after ochem intro course

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Utter nonsense⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  i always thought that the idea of synthons should be taught early on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthon

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Utter nonsense⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  i’d say it’s more important to learn mechanisms because this way you can notice these patterns of reactivity easier. at some point you’d only get new reactions that are really just pieces of other reactions you know put in a new way

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Utter nonsense⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  there’s zero reason to make chart like this, it’s both barely comprehensible and touching surface level stuff only (where are palladium couplings for one)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mom they're fighting again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

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• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Physics!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  These things are under high voltage, so no. And then there’s several kg of mercury inside

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Physics!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  no, but they will also kill you (but not by magic)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI might be creating a ‘permanent underclass’ but it’s the makers of the tech bubble who are replaceable⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  it’s straight up still not good enough

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI might be creating a ‘permanent underclass’ but it’s the makers of the tech bubble who are replaceable⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  right after fusion power goes commercial, which also will power it all

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Have you ever been shown the "clarity"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  if your brain does that without drugs i’d suggest you check it with a neurologist because it’s not usual. maybe there will be some new kind of epilepsy named after you

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Have you ever been shown the "clarity"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I have excellent vision normally and don’t need glasses, I can see things from extremely fair away and my eyes have a wide FOV (my peripheral is great)

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  it sounds a lot like psychedelics and not any usual human experience

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cause and Effect⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  i think that conspiracy theories are more about feeling special about knowing some secret knowledge, lots of people fall for this and even create conspiracy theories without realizing, no matter how smart they are

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Before modern-day authoritarian regimes, did people living under abosolute monarchies talk criticize the monarchs? Or did they just stay silent in fear of persecution?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Radio transmission doesn’t require state-level capacity (yes there are other barriers like cost or skill) and waves don’t care about borders. Receiving foreign radio was a big thing and it doesn’t require special equipment

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨yeah everything is probably made of like, idk, earth water, fire and air or something idrk⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Aristotle said so much dumb shit, like he said that womrn have less teeth and never bothered to check

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shape up.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  maybe his neck just did that

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They thought they were making technological breakthroughs. It was an AI-sparked delusion.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  lol nope they can’t do that because “guardrails” aren’t anywhere near reliable, and they won’t because it would cut into their profits userbase numbers, based on which they raise vc money. delusional chatbot user is just a recurrent subscriber

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a word for the happiness in finding the exact right word?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  i think there is, but i don’t want to spread associated cognitohazard

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Help.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  it also requires zero effort on their part

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What if a billionaire wants to help you?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

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• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would we be able to use the measles virus to reset the immune systems of people with autoimmune disorders like MS or rheumatoid arthritis?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  not an immunologist; i don’t want to undersell this to you: immunology is fantastically complex subject with many redundancies, feedback loops, and frustrating number of moving parts, many of which are still unknown in sufficient detail. that said, if you want any chance for it to go: first you’d have to figure out what exactly mealses virus does, then you’d have to find a disease that can be cured or treated by obliterating whatever mealses virus is obliterating, and then if there’s any match (big if) it’ll probably still won’t work just with wild type virus and require significant modifications. and even then, that effect as is known in mealses today is not very reliable and lasts only months to years

  maybe in the course of figuring the first one there will show up an option to modify mealses virus in some significant way that might allow it to target something else, and maybe target other kind of disease, because in no way it’d be a blanket cure for all immune diseases ever. maybe someone made an observational study already that tracked how prevalence of some immune diseases changes after mealses infection, but many of these are rare diseases and it’d be massively hard endeavor

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Alexa, how do I remove cooties?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it would be comparable to situation where all mRNA is suddenly unusable, ie protein synthesis can’t run at all. This would be something like ricin or diphteria toxin poisoning, but instead of being limited to gastrointestinal lining it’s spread all over. I’d guess hours to days before anything visible starts happening (symptoms only start to appear when deficit in new protein synthesis becomes noticeable; all protein already made continues to work for sone time)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do AI data centers manage to *consume* water, but when I cool my house, my A/C *makes* water?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  it wasn’t a problem before they started doing this

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do AI data centers manage to *consume* water, but when I cool my house, my A/C *makes* water?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  because it’s cheap, easy, compact, well understood, and makes numbers look good. number in question is ratio of energy used by entire facility to energy used by silicon only (i forgor how it’s called). alternative is dissipating heat from radiators, but this makes this number like 3. evaporative cooling makes this number closer to 1.2

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Antidepressant of the masses⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  is TRPV3 even involved in any way because last time i’ve checked some of best evidence points in direction of TrkB

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Worldbuilding⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  with wood, the problem was with lignin which is tightly crosslinked, meaning that it’s insoluble and organism willing to eat it has to secrete some enzymes to break it down in smaller bits that can be absorbed

  depending on plastic, this first step might be easier or even happening on its own. there are already bacteria that feed on nylon but nylon starting materials are easier to digest for them

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It’s the little things⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  you can have liquids with low surface tension that don’t evaporate immediately (water + soap)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microwave Intensifies⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  helical antennas work fine too and look goofy as hell

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microwave Intensifies⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  i’ve used the same (800ml can) and this one works well