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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • That’s fine. 4 hours isn’t enough to really get into the meat of the game yet. If you feel like you’re kinda stumbling around a bit without quite knowing what the goal of the game is, that’s normal. The game is specifically designed to not give you any objectives, and a big part of making the game enjoyable is to not try to judge the game by regular game design conventions. There are no win conditions, no lose conditions, no objectives, and the game becomes much more enjoyable if you just play the game in the way that you think makes the most sense. You’ll just need to have a bit of faith that there is actually an end, you just never get told how to get to the end.

    If you’re struggling with not crashing, then that’s a different issue altogether, and honestly my advice is to just use autopilot. Make sure to disable autopilot if you start to see that autopilot is going to crash you into the sun.








  • Contramuffin
    AP Biology
    Mrs. Setters
    1 December 2024
    
              How cells respond to different doses of drugs 
    
    Purpose: The purpose of this experiment is to see whether cells respond differently when exposed to different doses of the same drug. 
    
    Hypothesis: The drugs will work the best at the highest dosage, but it won't work at the lowest dosage. 
    
    Alternate hypothesis: All of the dosages work equally well. 
    
    Materials:
    * Cells
    * 48-well plate
    * Cell media 
    * Recording device 
    * Micropipettes
    * Micropipette tips (a lot) 
    * Serological pipers (a lot) 
    * Serological piper pump
    * Cell culture hood
    * Drug (5 mg) 
    * DMSO (5 mL) 
    * PBS (5 ml) 
    * Stimulus (500 uL) 
    * PCR strip (2)
    
    Procedure:
    1. Using the cell culture hood, put cells and cell media into a 48-well plate
    2. Put the plate into a recording device and start recording
    3. Dilute drugs to the correct concentrations with DMSO
    4. Put the drugs and the stimulant and the PBS into PCR strips for easier usage later
    5. Stop the recording and put drugs into the plate 
    6. Wait 30 minutes
    7. Put stimulant or PBS into the plate 
    8. Resume recording
    9. After several days, stop the recording
    
    Results: The cells died :'(
    
    Conclusions: Science is hard
    




  • OK, so this is an interesting question. To start, I’m a circadian researcher, specifically focusing on how bacteria can influence our circadian clocks.

    It is indeed correct that most animals utilize the sky (specifically, the ambient brightness) to determine the time. But the circadian clock is incredibly entrenched. It evolved ages ago, and so by extension, virtually every single animal inherited the same circadian clock (with some modifications). Animals as distinct as fruit flies, fish, and humans have similar circadian clocks. And the circadian clock is unbelievably important, more than people give it credit for. Night and day are incredibly different environments, and every single animal needs to be able to predict and accommodate for the cold that comes at night and the UV radiation that comes during the day. And there’s a plethora of other, subtle changes to the environment that we don’t fully understand yet. For instance (and probably a bit unsurprising in hindsight), the population of bacteria in the air changes at day versus at night. Soil bacteria, for some reason, act differently at day versus at night. Presumably plants (which are definitely circadian) are influencing the soil bacteria in some way through their roots, but it’s not entirely clear.

    An interesting consequence of the importance of the circadian clock is that animals have evolved multiple, redundant ways of telling time. If you lock a person in a dark box for weeks to months (scientists have performed this experiment in the past), the circadian clock running within the person is still able to somewhat-accurately tell the time, and we can use experiments like this to tease apart how the circadian clock utilize different cues to figure out the right time. One of the more interesting cues (and the one that I research) is how our bodies use surrounding bacteria to tell the time. And it’s known that eating food affects the circadian clock. Food availability, of course, is pretty circadian, especially if you eat food that is circadian. If a mouse comes out at night, then there’s no point hunting for mice in the day. I’m not too knowledgeable about deep sea animals (I’m really more focused on mammals), but a quick literature search suggests that deep sea animals do have circadian clocks, inherited from the same ancient ancestors that we got ours from. The conclusions appear to be similar to what I’ve said above - namely, that even if there’s no sky, having a functional circadian clock is necessary simply because other things, such as food, are themselves circadian.

    So my answer is, presumably, that deep sea animals can already accurately tell the time, presumably by keeping track of when they last ate



  • You misunderstand. I’m willing - excited, even - to have restaurants that charge more upfront. I’m not willing to pay double the expected tip just because the restaurant hoped to hide additional costs in the bill and hoped that the payer wouldn’t see it. In case my original comment was not clear enough, that was what they tried doing. 15% gratuity tacked on in small letters at the end of the bill, and this charge was never mentioned at any point, and there was additional space to add tip (of course, with the recommended option being 15% after the 15% gratuity). The sum of the pre-included tip and the tip that I gave is equivalent to tip that I would have given had restaurant not tried this kind of shady bullshit. So I fail to see how I’ve done the workers of the restaurant any wrong.

    I choose not to revisit that restaurant for their shady business practices, not because I was unwilling to pay a mandatory tip. Given the original post, I figured that that was clear that that was what I had meant. Clearly I was mistaken.



  • Dating in South Korea is rough in general, more than other Asian countries. Apparently it’s devolved into a violent culture war. On one hand, it’s no wonder women are unwilling to date. On the other hand, that’s going to further fuel desperation and therefore extremist sentiment in men and further the downward spiral of the culture war.

    I’m not saying that the male position is right here, but I genuinely do not see a possibility that the culture war stops spiraling





  • Democrats in the past 10 ish years have been absolutely horrendous at marketing, allowing Republicans to take up all of the media talking space, traditional or otherwise. TV, news, podcasts, social media influencers, YouTube, etc. are all generally Republican leaning.

    Republicans control the talking points and co-opt anything that the Democrats say. Meanwhile, Democrats are either unable or unwilling to do the same.

    Republicans’ control of the media allows them to get away with way more things than the Democrats. It allows them to essentially claim that they’re for the working class while simultaneously working against working class interests, especially when heard by people who don’t generally follow political news. Meanwhile, Democrats get called out for relatively smaller issues, and that makes them seem elitist and uncaring of working class issues.

    One major facet of the Democrats being unable to control their marketing is their unwillingness to use populist rhetoric, even though by policy stances they should be (comparatively) more closely associated with populism than the Republicans. I’ve heard several takes on why Harris lost the election and the one that I most agree with is that she failed to use populist rhetoric and was unable to differentiate herself from Biden. People wanted change, and Harris offered the status quo.

    Remember that the vast majority of Americans don’t pay attention to politics, and so voter impressions are decided by tone and messaging rather than specific policies