Seconded, I use a Define 7 and it’s fantastic. Best big black box I’ve ever owned.

I just stumbled over your post at random. I use Voyager and it’s great…

And they’re all out of ideas!

And it’s SUCH a good game. I got through it with the DLC and cried at the end.

As someone with a rare disease that took seeing literally dozens of doctors over 20 years to get a diagnosis, I’d prefer an AI doctor for diagnosis and maintenance. I’d prefer a human doctor working with AI for treatment.

In my experience, critical thinking is lacking in the medical profession.

Please stop spreading misinformation. You’re on the internet. Kindly fact check yourself in the future. It’s better for everyone, including you!

We had ours during the pandemic. While my friends and coworkers griped about toilet paper shortages, it was like having a hidden superpower.

Insert Tubgirl.flv

If you don’t know, I don’t know if I’d suggest looking it up.

I looked up the page and it gets worse.

You will need to shop for a car inverter. Find one that is at least 1,500 watts, and it will help you power your refrigerator for up to five hours—usually without damaging your car battery. Considering how much food we keep in our refrigerators, a $200 car inverter is a bargain!

You can save $1000 a month? Damn!

I grew up believing the same until somewhere in high school, when I started taking science seriously.

… a jumble of local maximums and chance.

I really like how you phrased this. I’m totally stealing it.

Oh no, rate of mutation is definitely a thing and is controlled by several factors. A big one is generation time, which is what it sounds like, the time between each generation. The copying of DNA is a source of mutations. This is why many controlled experiments on evolution are done with bacteria, who have super low generation times. For example, depending on temperature, the generation of many salmonella species is around 20-30 minutes. That lets you crank out massive numbers of potential mutations, then introduce a selective pressure, like an antibiotic the species normally isn’t resistant to or an energy source it normally can’t utilize, and see what happens.

To answer your question, yes, a higher mutation rate would confer an advantage. To a point. Most mutations are deleterious and usually lead to death, a few are benign and do nothing (at that point), and a very rare few are immediately advantageous. As long as the rate of mutation isn’t so high that the deleterious mutations combined with whatever other pressures are wiping out the population, more mutation means more chances to have the right trait to deal with a novel pressure or, very rarely, do something better.

To preface, I’m a microbiologist, so I have skin in the science game. I hate how these articles often have science illiterate authors or authors who are imprecise with their wording. They repeat misinformation on basic topics that science educators have been striving to correct for decades, perpetuating the cycle.

…the study shows once again how evolution throws up multiple solutions to basic problems…

In this case, it’s the “mysterious force of evolution that whips up solutions to problems”. Evolution doesn’t create solutions. There is no guiding force behind evolution.

Evolution through natural selection selects for existing solutions that were generated randomly through mutation, increasing the frequency of that trait because those without either die or are outcompeted. What happens if a trait is required for survival but no organisms have it? They all die. That’s why over 99% of all multicellular species that have ever lived on Earth are extinct. If you include microbes, make that 99.99999%.

Seriously. If these “media pros” are actually concerned, it appears my personal server adheres to higher standards than their industry.

I’d imagine an increasingly hostile world economy coupled with a then-looming but now beginning climate crisis might have a huge impact there.

Vote inertia and dog piling. I’ve seen it happen so many times. If you are voted to the negatives, it’s less likely you’ll receive many positive votes unless you receive enough to tip you back into positive numbers or someone points out that other, similar comments aren’t being down voted. The converse is also true, although the follow up comment phenomena seems not to hold.

I’ve even experimented with it on Reddit, way back. I’d leave a comment I know would be well received, then edit it to make it poorly received, but not so awful that it’d get mobbed. It’d usually keep going up, albeit less quickly, or sit stagnant.

On the flip side, I’d leave a shitty comment, then change it to a paraphrasing of a different, very well received sentiment once it was around -3 to -5. Despite the notion being well received elsewhere, the negative votes kept rolling in unless someone pointed out the collective hypocrisy in a follow up comment.

Tl;dr: Lemmy is run by bipedal, social apes whose behavior and opinions are biased by the perceived opinions of their fellow apes. This bias can sometimes be overcome by pointing it out.

Right now, many are! Fight back and retake our rightful place as people with rights above those of corporations.

Elden Ring had a soundtrack?! Now I need to play it again. I think I had the music volume off.

I think a lot of the Internet is going to end up shitted up with this kind of nonsense. While leaving Reddit certainly tackles one issue, having a way to filter out the rest of this shit would be useful.

China Mieville novels are great but be prepared for some weird, weird content.