Fun with strings! Ukulele, knitting, physics!

  • 2 Posts
  • 87 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 3rd, 2023

help-circle











  • I did a deep-dive reading and watching videos learning about sturdy and long-lasting fabrics and materials. Learned a bit about tailoring for durability, too. (For example, Duluth Trading shifted the inseams on their Firehose pants forward. The forward seams don’t rub on each other when you walk, and so the inner thighs don’t self-destruct as quickly.)

    There are also a ton of excellent resources on how to mend clothing and properly care for it. And it doesn’t take much effort, really.

    So now I have a bunch of older clothes, with subtle repairs, still in good shape. Sure, I’d like some sexy new trendy disposable stuff so I can be one of the cool kids - but that’s how fast fashion gets its claws into you. Preying on our magpie-like desires for shiny new things makes somebody big bucks. (And creates huge waste and exploits desperate workers.)

    Buy sturdy “classic” clothes. Keep them in good repair. Fight the system.






  • “The JCU trial provides sufficient proof of concept that infection with live hookworms is safe and appears to have some sort of beneficial effects on people’s metabolic health, which will hopefully be confirmed by future clinical trials designed to confirm efficacy and explore how hookworms influence metabolism,” said Dr Paul Giacomin, AITHM Senior Research Fellow and immunologist.

    Eat less vs feed a crop of worms in my guts…. Hmmmmm. I mean, it’s an efficient way of making sure you don’t absorb all the calories you consume. It would be a bummer if my worms’ eggs were infecting people who didn’t over-eat and would be harmed.

    The anti-inflammatory aspect is intriguing, but there has to be better options for creating that response.

    This “give you worms so you can continue to overeat without consequences” approach is far too reminiscent of the ancient Roman vomitoria. There has to be a less wasteful way to deal with obesity and its metabolic consequences.




  • “Hallucinate” seems like an odd vocabulary choice when talking about an AI. It implies much more sentience than an AI can possibly have, plus the ability to spontaneously create from whole-cloth. (Which AI can’t do, at all.)

    I feel like our brave new culture needs a different word for the non-sensical/inaccurate products of AI; something with the flavors of “assemble” “fabricate” “construct” “collate” “collage” “grab-bag”.

    Our vocabulary isn’t keeping up with technology. Is there a linguist in the house? We need more words!