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

So Google Search, even back in 2000, was an AI?

“Vote for the lesser of two evils? Bah! I won’t vote at all!*”

*and help the fascist who is super pro-genocide get into office. This will definitely help the Palestinians and as a Trump presidency helps the Israelis rain firey death upon them, they will die proud that I stood resolute in my convictions. Their deaths will be worth it!

Linkin Park… 2000… Middle school?!

Fuck, I got old.

Don’t forget for some of the spells and skills. How can I forget late nights full of “Indiguneishon! Indiguneishon!”?

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

This you?

I’m even designing a 3D printed jig so I can securely connect any two bottles and let gravity do the work overnight.

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.

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

“These commie Timtoks will drag the kids to hell where they’ll burn with the D&D dungeon masters and the people who hand out free hallucinogens to children!”

-Republican Suburban Hellscape

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

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

Apparently he has crippling anxiety. I get it and, out of everyone I’ve listed, I’m very okay with him and Sanderson. I’m just wary of getting invested in unfinished series. Lynch only has the Gentleman Bastards series, which I fell in love with. Sanderson has so many literary irons in the fire that he’s going to have gobs of unfinished business if something happens to him or he pulls a GRRM and just fucks off one day.

No no, you really weren’t off base. Even if they were owned by Walmart, I doubt they could do worse.

That’s great, I’m glad you got some deals!

The thing about them is their low wages and reluctance to train their employees meant high-end goods were often priced very low. Levi’s jeans were $10-15 a pair while designer jeans were priced at $5. I recall someone donating a batch of Hermés scarves. None of the pricers knew the brand, so they put them out for $1 each. I bought them all for 50% off (employee discount!) and hit eBay. This kind of thing happened weekly so the employees were always looking for things we could resell. We made less than $20k/year, that’s how we scraped by!

I’m not sure how other stores are, but mine was a great example of being a penny wise and a pound foolish.

So, I’m not trying to be the “ackshually” guy.

Value Village isn’t owned by Walmart.

Buuuut, you’re still right. They’re absolutely a shit company. I was an assistant supervisor at Value Village a couple of decades ago. First, they’re 100% for profit but advertise in such a way that consumers believe they’re a charity. What they do is buy donations from charities by the pound. Any donations accepted at the store on behalf of a charity are paid at a drastically reduced rate, so of course they push HARD for customers to bring donations directly to the store.

The shit cherry on top was the stores lying to charities about the quality of received goods to avoid paying. If clothes, for example, were soiled, they’d refuse to pay for the entire batch. Stores would find a few dirty shirts, claim the entire cart was crap, claw the money back, and sell the rest of the cart.

The company makes a HUGE profit but pays their employees peanuts. Our head cashier had worked for the company for eight years and capped out at $7.25/hour in 2003, about $14 today. One year, they announced no raises, no reason given. My then girlfriend and I discovered the owners had purchased a cabin in Northern California for use by the c-suite douches. The store manager was pulling in $60k a year, plus bonus, in a very low cost of living area. Me? $8.25 per hour.

What else? They incentivize under staffing by making a supervisor’s paltry bonuses tied to their staffing budget. Staying at budget meant no bonus. They had to come in under budget for any bonus, and the more “savings” the higher the bonus. I got chewed out when I first started scheduling because I used all the hours allotted in the budget. The store went from a shit hole to being fairly respectable but it would eat into my boss’s bonus. Her maximum annual bonus? $2.5k.

So they may not be owned by Walmart, but they’re the Walmart of thrift stores. Fuck those guys.