Undoubtedly, at least until Brandon Sanderson took over. I enjoyed the last few books so much more due to the significantly better writing quality, but felt bad because Sanderson only took over because Robert Jordan died.

Sword of Truth started okay, but I felt it quickly became a tract for Goodkind’s libertarianism, fascism, racism, and misogyny.

He probably developed his own internal colony of nitrogen fixing bacteria, feeding another colony of gut bacteria that churned out amino acids, providing 24/7 protein generation for maximum swole.

For anyone lucky enough to have a WinCo foods in their area, they’re the cheapest I’ve been able to find for bulk dry goods. You can order 20-50 pound sacks of grains, beans, flour, etc., with a pretty decent discount on top of already low prices.

I’m increasingly of the opinion it’s cultural narcissism. Look into DARVO - Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender - and you’ll see the majority of responses from these talking heads, including the shitty Garfield cosplayer currently in office.

Their donors/handlers would be so angry!

Here on Lemmy, I recently learned of a far-reaching conspiracy that by its nature involves bribing research scientists and their support staff across the globe to falsify their data and support the falsified data of others.

I was quite surprised, having worked as one for over a decade and never receiving a cent of my universal bribe income (UBI). I’ve filed grievances with requests for back pay from both ANSO and the ISC, but they’re denying any knowledge of it.

Age is the big factor. It does two things:

1. Eggs gradually lose water, which introduces more air into the air cell and between the membrane and the shell, making it all a bit looser as you peel.
2. The pH increases, reducing the attraction/attachment of the boiled egg white to the membrane, which is why fresh egg shells are more likely to tear strips of white off as you peel.

Eggs in the US can be up to 60 days old at the time of packaging, then are considered good for another 45 days. Large flats of eggs can contain eggs from multiple batches of varying age, so some eggs might be two weeks old and others two or more months.

Agreed, ice bath is only important for me if eggs are super fresh, which makes them harder to peel, or if I need them to stop cooking fast, like if I am making soft boiled eggs or have the sudden realization I started boiling the eggs and walked off at least five minutes ago but neglected to set a timer.

I’m not ADHD, you’re ADHD!

How about this one?!

Yep, traditional (non-phylogenetic) taxonomy creates problems like protists, the grab bag of eukaryota.

There are more species labeled protists than the sum of all their descendants.

Are they animals, plants, or fungi? Sure, why not!

Some are heterotrophs (eat things), some are autotrophs (energy from sun or chemicals), and others are mixotrophs (some of both). Some are motile, others immotile. Some are multicellular, most unicellular.

The problem is all taxonomy is arbitrary, and traditional taxonomy is pretty inconsistent. Phylogenetic taxonomy is still arbitrary, but using evolutionary relationships instead of “this monkey looks like other monkey” at least gets you more consistency in that system.

I’m a microbiologist. I can speak from experience (my grad research required attempting this a few times) that entirely sterilizing anything of microbes is incredibly difficult regardless of technology level. They are tenacious little fuckers. I’ll lay this out for anyone interested.

Gotta Kill 'Em All: Most microbes are fairly easy to kill using simple physical and/or chemical means. Some are more difficult, like spore formers, bacteria that produce little personal suspension pods when conditions are rough.

What matters is you start with huge quantities of microbes, they’re everywhere, and you can’t see them. All you need is one to survive to potentially reproduce into vast legions of descendants. Even NASA’s protocol is about lowering the total number, thereby reducing, not eliminating, the probability of causing an issue. Miss the wrong microbe in the wrong environment and you’ve inoculated a planet.

Checking Your Work: How do you verify that you successfully sterilized your tool? You might say culturing - swab it and grow that on some type(s) of media. That’s NASA’s protocol! It’s just not very effective.

Not all microbes grow on all media. There are an estimated one trillion microbial species on the planet and we only know how to culture less than about 0.5% of them. The rest are a mystery, largely uncharacterized*. Most sterility testing is for known microbes of consequence, not every microbe in existence.

Microbiology is very often a science of slapping your tool or workspace and exclaiming “good enough!”, not absolute precision and 100% efficacy, both of which are practically required if you want to be sure you don’t inadvertently pull a “smallpox blankets from space”.

*Fun fact: Sometimes people get sick with something atypical, that doesn’t get IDed through standard testing. I worked for a time identifying these pathogens via gene sequencing. There was a whole lot of “that’s a new one” out there.

I’ve been there too, so I feel your pain. Literally sometimes.

My favorite was getting sick from not eating, thinking “fuck it” and eating, then getting sick from eating. Digestive problems double bind!

I’m frequently recommending “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving” by Pete Walker for this. I always knew I had an unusual childhood but didn’t think my parents were abusive, just quirky. As an adult, I started seeing a therapist for anxiety. They strongly recommended this book after our first real session. Surprise: parental abuse so pervasive that I thought it was normal!

I’ve had a few friends and acquaintances give it a read and they knew within the first few chapters if it was right for them or not.

Fuck, that IS depressing. Every four years we just hope for someone less awful than the last guy.

Oglaf made me into the person I am today.

Agreed, the Obama administration was rotten, but boy, was he charismatic. My dislike of him has been one point of contention between my standard-issue US liberal neighbor while helping bridge the gap with my recovering MAGA other neighbor.

Fuck, same here. I was wondering where all these old, progressive people were hiding.

I like to think my friend’s Scruff handle, Dildo Faggins, is what got him mad play.

Also “Turned out my father isn’t my real dad” is BS. Genetic test results are useless for determining such.

Wait, what now? The AncestryDNA test isn’t WGS, but it analyzes 700K loci. One can infer relatedness with an insanely high degree of accuracy with that number. For reference, the standard US paternity test uses 20 loci and it’s more than 99% accurate.

Or do you mean one needn’t be a biological parent to be a real father to a child? I agree with that 100%.