MoonMelon

joined 1 year ago
[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 51 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Trees are unbelievably cool. My favorite fact is that the actual living surface of a tree's roots, called the rhizosphere, consists of extremely small, ephemeral hairlike structures that supply the whole, gigantic tree. The large roots we think of are mainly structural. Where the actual "rubber meets the road" of the life form is incredibly small. Within that rhizosphere the interplay of plant, fungi, bacteria, and soil is so intricate that it's difficult to even say where the soil ends and the tree begins.

So many amazing things happen in this space. For example, the tree exudes sugars out of the roots because it creates an electrical gradient that pushes nutrients into the root cells. This way the trees, which are masters of energy efficiency, can use passive transport to uptake nutrients. Fungi have adapted to this energy and symbiotically extend the rhizosphere beyond what the tree is capable of alone. In fact an entire world of organisms has evolved inside the rhizosphere. Similar worlds exist in the bark, the cambium, the buds, the leaves, the flower, and the fruit.

It's like this enormous organism is a fractal masterpiece, and the closer you look the more clever it is. And we all depend on it, because plants are the only organisms capable of turning sunlight into usable energy. Apart from some things living off deep-sea vents, that's it. Even the energy you're using to read this right now passed through a chloroplast. It's just so cool.

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago

Yep, this. Chisel, glue up, or carve a recess into a larger piece of scrap plywood to use as a jig to hold the work piece while you plane it. Make the recess the exact depth of thickness you need and you can plane it perfectly to thickness.

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

Yeah it's technically better (crisper, higher res, etc) but the visual language is totally different and IMO worse. That fire just doesn't look as hot, for example.

Lighting as an art form is highly coupled with the given tech. Something as small as just changing the shadow method can require artists relighting a whole game. My guess is they aren't doing this or maybe are pushing the stark lighting the same way depth of field, colored lights, lens flares etc got juiced in previous generations.

That's always wrong. The tech should service the art, not the other way around.

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

Bauxite is one of the few minerals the USA didn't luck into. I'm not sure how the economics of refining are currently structured in the tariffs but the USA simply can't economically create aluminum from "scratch" the way it can produce almost everything else. The mineral ilmenite (titanium) is another example.

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I first heard about the fake mermaid "documentary" by someone who was fooled by it. Also a few years ago there were "alien bodies" in... Mexico maybe? They absolutely could not have looked more ridiculously fake, like junior high school art project fake, "found" and promoted by a known con artist, and people in UFO circles are still talking about them credulously.

I like to listen to old Art Bell episodes when I'm driving and it's pretty astounding how these people can just grift and grift and grift for decades. Thirty books, speaking engagements, radio, newsletters, training courses. The hard evidence is always just a few months away. The whole thing is about to blow wide open by Summer, by next year, in two years. Then it just melts away into the next thing. I find it entertaining for some reason.

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 month ago

Yum brands portfolio is such a rogues' gallery of poisonous garbage, god damn. What a cancer on humanity.

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Or ever say "goodbye".

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago

I bet he can't wait to Mengele this horrific techno garbage into some poor people at the concentration camp in Cuba.

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

Wonder what ol' Dooky Chute is up to these days.

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You use super long daikon radishes to break up the soil and then disc them in. Breaks up soil naturally without plowing and acts as winter cover.

https://www.restorationseeds.com/products/fracking-forage-radish

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Yeah I know this is just an AI generated meme, but people who look like this are actually pretty solar punk, in my experience. I first heard of fracking radishes from a 70 year old farmer, 15 years ago. This meme just promotes culture war bullshit.

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, that worker is one of two in the entire restaurant. She has to take your order plus the five behind you, the drive-thru orders, make fries, bag it all up, take your monkey, clean tables, make coffee, refill the ketchup/soda/milkshake/yogurt contraptions with their various bags of sugary goo, restock counters/tables with all the varied plastic and paper geegaws, take out the trash, stock the walk-in, clean the bathrooms somebody sprayed with liquid shit, then count out and get to her other job by 3pm so she can then do it all again tomorrow. She doesn't give a fuck what anyone orders, it's just a blur of colors and lower back pain.

If she makes a face it's probably the best she can do to fake a smile because you might be a secret shopper who is going to ding her points for not saying, "Welcome to McDonald's Home of the McFlurry™ now with DoubleStuff™ Oreo™, what can I get started for you today because It Just Tastes Better!!℠" with the proper amount of obsequiousness.

There's plenty of reasons to hate the hellscape, no reason for anon to invent some.

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