https://www.idahostatejournal.com/community/isu-researchers-use-cockroaches-to-search-for-narcotics/article_85a9e420-dece-537d-b124-9b1037296ef0.html

“It is a really simple design, but it takes a long time. We are just rewarding them sugar water when we give them drugs.”

They could probably just give them more lines of blow… just sayin’…

I wanted to help clarify that many fungi do actually produce anti-fungal compounds. It doesn’t make sense at first, but mycelium can be insanely competitive and it’s usually “at war” with other types of fungi where growing conditions are ideal.

Edible mushroom growers may have to deal with trichoderma infections from time to time. That little bastard fights mainly by mass multiplication and rapid growth. It’ll choke out and dominate other strains before they have a chance to produce any effective defense.

When starting a mushroom grow, it’s basically just tilting the initial mycelium battles in the favor of the strain you want so it has a chance to dominate and kill other strains of fungi.

It’s not a far stretch to assume that fungi developed odd chemical compounds if it even slightly increased survival odds. Any psychedelic aspects could be just an unintentional side effect that helped promote cultivation.

Just a quick note that many psychedelics were legalized in Colorado a couple years back. Anyone can grow and consume them, but we can’t legally sell them which is fine by me.

Usually, it’s spores that are 100% legal since mycelium can contain trace psilocybin, so legality is questionable.

Psilocybin is also produced by massospora cicadina, which is a fungus that infects cicadas in a manner similar to cordyceps. Not only are the cicadas turned into zombies, they are also tripping balls at the same time.

That isn’t particularly relevant to what you were saying but I was reminded of that when you suggested anti-insect.

Anti-fungal aspects of fungi are usually in metabolites excreted by mycelium.

Geez! I grow and eat some weird strains, but that is kind crazy. Did you eat them fresh? (I have never had the balls to eat any cubes that were fresh picked, but I hear it can be a potent experience.)

Cattle or other grazing animal would be a prime candidate for loitering and then for some extended loitering. (Sorry for the shorts link, but it’s for science and it’s a time lapse of cattle in a field: https://youtube.com/shorts/hXPw-mxEBIY)

A side thought is that kind of movement would be perfect for spore distribution in a smaller area with similar growing conditions. It probably would increase the chance that similar strain momma and daddy spores meet. (Large dung piles also happens to be a decent medium for some mushroom strains.)

That still doesn’t prove anything scientifically or even build a case, but at least you got a time lapse video of cattle in a field.

Mixed theories on that, and most are older.

On earlier computers, I had several ICs walk themselves out of sockets due to repeated thermal expansion cycles. Keeping the computer turned on eliminates most of that.

Mechanical wear was another problem. Booting a computer was extremely taxing on old HDDs and floppy drives.

Edit: Mechanical stuff also takes much more power to spin up and get running. The energy savings might be measurable if you just kept a computer running and didn’t power cycle it everyday.

Most power supplies are really well designed now but they had a tendency to spike power briefly in when turned on. This was especially bad for older capacitors but also not healthy for the ICs. This still happens to a degree, but it’s not an issue.

Now that boot times are reasonably fast and most everything is solid state and power managed really well, turning a computer off is fine.

However, I just assume most electronics now just go into some type of deep sleep mode unless fully disconnected from any power source. That likely isn’t true in many cases, but I consider it healthy level of paranoia.

Fixation (being locked in a trance staring at pretty colors and shapes) could also be positive. There is a theory that it might increase the chances that spores get stuck to fur (or clothes) and be transported to a wider area.

If I could positively ID all mushrooms I found in the wild, those spores would absolutely be transported somewhere else. ;)

I’m the only non-MAGA with a ham license in 4-land.

Precisely why it wasn’t worth my time any more. Trolling was fun for a bit, but that got old too. Breaking a conversation to spoil conspiracy talks with well placed facts tends to ruffle a few feathers, it seems.

Still though, the late night party conversations are fun to listen to in the Denver area. People don’t hide the fact that we have many legal drugs and a massive supply of craft beer.

Apps are somewhat buggy right now. My shokz will partially disconnect after the first song and exercise audibles are non-existent. (The audio mutes, but the watch still responds to play/pause button presses. This could be just an issue with the shokz app being confused for the time being.)

No difference in GPS connect time from the pixel watch 3, which has been historically buggy at times.

But yeah, random glitches all over the place. It’s tolerable enough and would expect app updates to fix most of them.

Diet and lifestyle tweaks are next. Aside from the immediate and massive caffeine reduction, nothing else has changed drastically. My Dr. temporarily put my request to quit nicotine on hold until we flatlined every other immediate problem, and I do agree with her approach.

There also the dangling issues of renal artery stenosis and peripheral neuropathy that stem from quite a few years of serious alcoholism. My point here is that what would usually be basic changes to lifestyle may have a higher impact on other ongoing treatments than usual.

Absolutely! Accurate numbers are impossible, because of the different medications I was on to pull me out of hypertensive crisis. My Dr and I are both data junkies, so we were able to openly discuss and hypothesize about how to tweak multiple variables in my immediate treatment. (It’s been fun, TBH. She obviously is the expert at diagnosis and treatment and I could provide her with useful feedback about what was and wasn’t working.)

However, after about a month of walking 3 times a day and about when I started to learn to jog again, we had to cut one of my meds as I was dropping into hypotension range a couple times a day.

For the last couple of months, we made a couple of adjustments to my meds while I was also increasing the intensity of my workouts (rucking and more running).

While resting heart rate is not directly correlated to blood pressure, it’s a good indication of some level of improvement. There is also a bias in this chart when we finally found the proper dosage of metropolol. Metropolol will decrease resting heart rate and put some fairly hard caps on peak heart rates:

With meds and with exercise, I also hit a new personal record the day before yesterday of 111/80 during the evening, about an hour after my workout.

Meds seem to keep my BP in-check and below the danger zone and my exercise routine does seem to correlate with BP improvements. Now that my meds are steady and its effects are hitting a healthy plateau, exercise has the greatest impact on day-to-day changes.

Sorry for the extended answer and could have just said “Yes” but there have actually been a ton of changes in-play.

Rucking is just running or walking with a weighted vest to simulate a heavy backpack. I believe the name is derived from a military style “rucksack”.

It absolutely destroys my upper body (mostly my upper back area) during my normal walk. Keeping correct posture and gait with a bit of weight takes a bit more effort and works muscles that are typically not engaged in regular walking exercises.

But thanks for the warning about pain. We evolved pain for a reason, so it’s best not to be ignored.

I understand your point. An exercise bike is probably the best option and those get super boring for me.

It’s not as flexible for me where I live, unfortunately. A bike is better used for actual transportation here and trying to figure out routes for any kind of sustained cardio would be challenging.

While I say I have a “routine”, that is not exactly true. My only routine is that I get my ass out of the house for a couple of hours and move. I am too scatterbrained to have a fixed exercise schedule and I usually have no idea what kind of exercise will be in store for me.

Maybe a bike will be a better option for me later when I roll into a more steady and planned out routine.

You are the person that suggested rucking to me when I was trying to figure out how to deal with busted knees.

Weirdly enough, it fixed my serious knee pain issues, almost overnight. I forced myself through the pain one evening and woke up the next morning and my knees were at about 90%. Any time my knees start hurting, its proving to be a decent “cure”. None of that makes any sense to me, but I am not going to question it.

It seriously hurts me though and it’s developed into a tolerable love/hate relationship now.

Edit: Forgot to say thank you. Thank you!

(I couldn’t find a good contextual Star Trek meme. A snippy gif will have to suffice.)

FL Studio on macOS.

At least it has the decency to at least attempt to show the exception. On windows, I absolutely never see errors with the core FL Studio app: It’ll just hard close in an attempt to make you believe that you weren’t actually using the program in the first place.

Considering how many legacy components of the app are still functional to maintain reverse compatibility for old projects, it’s a fucking miracle the app even launches at all, TBH.

Too many beans.

Motor brush. Its a chunk of carbon that makes contact with a bit on the motor shaft.

If the circuit is cut, you have zero load so you have zero current, but the electrical potential is still at 22kMV if the generators are still turning. (Voltage is irrelevant the way I am explaining this though.)

I know nothing about dams or those kinds of power generation systems or what kind of safety systems are in place. However, it shouldn’t matter much if we are talking about 20kMV or 20mV as the concepts are scalable.

The chaos that happens if you suddenly cut load is likely going to be mechanical, not electrical. The load of the power grid magnetically “pushes” back against the force of the generator turning. The stronger the load, the harder it is for the generator to physically turn.

Let’s imagine for a second that there are no safety systems, ways to divert water flow or any kind of brakes for the generator.

If the load is suddenly cut, the magnetic resistance pushing back on the generator is also immediately cut, effectively making the generator free spinning with no resistance. The generator would likely tear itself apart spinning out of control. (We are likely talking about thousands of pounds of steel and copper that is already spinning and has a fuck ton of kinetic energy.)

I believe large generators actually use electromagnets instead of large solid magnets like smaller generators would use. Unfortunately, I can’t speculate how the electromagnets would behave in a situation where the generator was free-spinning. (I can take a shitty guess and say the coils might fail catastrophicly.)

Edit: My point is that current drops to zero and there is no electrical energy to “burn off”. If there were solid magnets in use or the electromagnets in the generator were still functional, I would like to speculate that some bits of the generator might get super hot, similar to how an induction stove works. (Your best bet is to cut the water and apply emergency brakes to the generators ASAP, if those even exist.)

Edit2: So, turbines are a thing. The water behind a dam probably isn’t directly pushing a generator but some kind of turbine system. I would imagine there is transmission (or sorts) that can engage or disengage the generators.