C-Cab's recent activity
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Comment on Technology is over in ~tech
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Comment on Technology is over in ~tech
C-Cab LinkSome snippets from the article, but I encourage you to read the whole thing and reflect on it before commenting.Some snippets from the article, but I encourage you to read the whole thing and reflect on it before commenting.
There is some saturation happening, we must notice. We’re bored by promises of better technology and now looking elsewhere. We’ve gotten pretty much all we can consume. We’re informationally obese and looking to go on a diet. Millennial parents are more likely to restrict their kids’ access to technology. The more they understand the technology, the more likely they are to restrict it. They’re understandably horrified by the now clearly negative effects of it, how it’s making kids depressed and anxious and unable to be in the world. Kids today aren’t like we were, forced to spend time away from already limited technology, out in the woods, seeing the real thing while fantasizing about the fake thing. Now it’s all fake things, all the time. Parents can hardly help it, because they are also caught up in being entertained by all the fake things they are now too afraid of the real world to send their kids off into it. But the important change is that now at least we want to want it to stop.
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This is not to say I hate technology. In fact, I am in my backyard as we speak. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining. It’s largely thanks to technology that I can be out here comfortably while I write down these thoughts. There’s a distinction I want to make between Technology Is Over and being Against the Machine. I find myself very much feeling that Technology Is Over, but definitely not in the camp of Against the Machine.
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The reality is that at some point, we got enough hot water. However many gallons the tank was twenty years ago is the same number of gallons the tank is today. We’ve thought up all the reasons we would need hot water. It plateaued, and now hot water is “over.” We still use hot water. We still appreciate hot water, when we even think about it. But the exponential gain of more and more hot water is no longer. There’s no gold rush. It’s just a steady part of our lives.
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Technology is over
20 votes -
Comment on TownsFolk | Official launch trailer in ~games
C-Cab Link ParentThanks. It definitely looks cute! I love the graphics and the surface look at the mechanics look pretty straight forward.Thanks. It definitely looks cute! I love the graphics and the surface look at the mechanics look pretty straight forward.
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Comment on TownsFolk | Official launch trailer in ~games
C-Cab LinkWhen I click the link it says the video is private.When I click the link it says the video is private.
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Comment on An insight into looksmaxxxing/blackpill "ideology" in ~life
C-Cab (edited )Link ParentSo admittedly I didn't follow it too much after meeting my now wife, but I seem to recall that it was bought by Match.com a while ago and for a while was allowed to run independently, but it seems...So admittedly I didn't follow it too much after meeting my now wife, but I seem to recall that it was bought by Match.com a while ago and for a while was allowed to run independently, but it seems like it has gotten more aggressive with the subscription model which has some perverse incentives in terms of keeping people on the site. They had this before, but I have heard it got a lot crazier and people say the quality has dropped a lot in terms of matches.
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Comment on An insight into looksmaxxxing/blackpill "ideology" in ~life
C-Cab Link ParentThat algorithm used to be so good. I remember getting to a point where I just straight out refused reaching out to people if the score was below 90% after several instances of bad conversations or...That algorithm used to be so good. I remember getting to a point where I just straight out refused reaching out to people if the score was below 90% after several instances of bad conversations or dates.
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Comment on An insight into looksmaxxxing/blackpill "ideology" in ~life
C-Cab Link ParentMy wife and I met through OKcupid based on having a 99% match, and by golly it was right!My wife and I met through OKcupid based on having a 99% match, and by golly it was right!
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab Link ParentGoing off what Queresote said, I'd be willing to bet that someone just ate a toad they caught at some point and had a really intense trip, and through trial and error they narrowed it down to the...Going off what Queresote said, I'd be willing to bet that someone just ate a toad they caught at some point and had a really intense trip, and through trial and error they narrowed it down to the secretion coming from the eyes.
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab Link ParentIt is a little unfortunate they chose tobacco, but it looks like it's because it already has high levels of the substrate needed to synthesize the psychedelics. I'm not a chemist, so I could be...It is a little unfortunate they chose tobacco, but it looks like it's because it already has high levels of the substrate needed to synthesize the psychedelics. I'm not a chemist, so I could be talking out my butt here, but I imagine there might be some ways to isolate the different compounds?
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab Link ParentNope, there is an actual academic article, and this is a well-known process of doing transgenics on organisms to use them as a tool for synthesizing some drug or compound.Nope, there is an actual academic article, and this is a well-known process of doing transgenics on organisms to use them as a tool for synthesizing some drug or compound.
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab Link ParentAfter coming down from the most intense trip of your life, you forget where and when (and who?) you are. You find a pack of cigarettes in your pocket, and having the urge you light one up and take...After coming down from the most intense trip of your life, you forget where and when (and who?) you are. You find a pack of cigarettes in your pocket, and having the urge you light one up and take a drag...
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab LinkFood for thought: I don't really have anything insightful to add, but I'm imagining smoking a cigarette and getting your ego totally obliterated by the combination of DMT, psilocin, and bufotenine.Food for thought: I don't really have anything insightful to add, but I'm imagining smoking a cigarette and getting your ego totally obliterated by the combination of DMT, psilocin, and bufotenine.
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab Link...“Magic mushrooms” make psilocybin. Tropical plants make the ingredients of the psychoactive ayahuasca. And toads secrete the mind-altering bufotenin. Now, the tobacco plant makes them all.
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One reason for the success is that tobacco plants make abundant tryptophan, so there was no shortage of the starting material. This inspired Berman and Aharoni to try making other tryptophan-based psychoactives in tobacco, such as psilocybin and its precursor. They also tweaked the plants to produce bufotenin and 5-methoxy-DMT, hallucinogens that the Sonoran Desert toad (Incilius alvarius) secretes from glands behind its eyes.
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Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once.
22 votes -
Comment on Can plants count? Study suggests they can track the number of events they experience. in ~science
C-Cab Link ParentI've read Lev Vygotsky - I found his sociocultural and zone of proximal development theories informative to my pedagogy! I'll be sure to check out Luria and Damasio as well, thanks for the...I've read Lev Vygotsky - I found his sociocultural and zone of proximal development theories informative to my pedagogy! I'll be sure to check out Luria and Damasio as well, thanks for the recommendations.
I wholeheartedly agree about looking beyond just neurons. I've joked with other neuroscientists that we tend to look at things only from the neck up, and even then at only just neurons when we're looking at the brain. But neurons are only a small proportion of the cells in your body, and only half of the cells in your brain!
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Comment on Playboy Manbaby - Fire To My Yard (2026) in ~music
C-Cab LinkApologies for the NSFW album cover - tried finding a link that didn't have that but no such luck. I love the juxtaposition of the upbeat instrumentals against the negative nihilism of the lyrics.Apologies for the NSFW album cover - tried finding a link that didn't have that but no such luck.
I love the juxtaposition of the upbeat instrumentals against the negative nihilism of the lyrics.
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Playboy Manbaby - Fire To My Yard (2026)
4 votes -
Comment on Can plants count? Study suggests they can track the number of events they experience. in ~science
C-Cab LinkFood for thought: Intelligence is a pretty poorly defined concept when it comes to the scientific investigation of it, even when we're focusing on just human intelligence - not even getting into...Food for thought: Intelligence is a pretty poorly defined concept when it comes to the scientific investigation of it, even when we're focusing on just human intelligence - not even getting into other animals! We have a bias towards what intelligent behavior should look like due to our human-centric views. I think this also biases us towards thinking about intelligence as something arising purely from neurons. While the evidence pretty clearly supports that our cognitive capabilities are largely dependent on the complexity of our nervous system, it can raise blinders on how we think about the interaction between biology and behavior.
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Comment on Can plants count? Study suggests they can track the number of events they experience. in ~science
C-Cab Link... ...Commonly known as the shy plant or touch-me-not plant, Mimosa pudica has delicate, frond-like leaves that fold inward when touched or shaken. They also close at night and reopen with the rising of the sun—a type of movement called nyctinasty.
In a humid tent inside a windowless room in W&M's Integrated Science Center, Vishton and Bartosh exposed these plants to cycles of light and dark and observed a curious change in their movement. "In the first phase of our experiment, we used a 24-hour cycle. On days one and two, the plants were exposed to 12 hours of darkness and 12 hours of light. On day three, the lights remained off," Vishton explained.
After around five repetitions of this cycle, the plants demonstrated increased movement in the "pre-dawn" hours on days when light could be anticipated, but not on the third day of total darkness. "This seems to suggest that the plants were able to 'learn," for lack of a better word, this three-day cycle and shift their movement in response," said Vishton.
Modeling this shift yielded a logarithmic curve, meaning the plants' movement changed rapidly at first before gradually stabilizing into a consistent pattern. "This is the same pattern we see all the time in animal learning," said Vishton. "For example, if you are teaching a rat to perform a series of actions in a certain order, you would expect to see a period of time when they're figuring out the sequence and then a gradual increase in their ability to predict the pattern."
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"Every theory I've ever read on memory and decision making always involves neurons," said Vishton. "Big surprise, plants don't have those. And yet it looks like they can perform cognitive-like functions. Just not cognitively, per se."
If plants can encode complex functions like enumeration, maybe other non-neuronal tissues can too. "There are lots of cells in animals and humans that aren't neurons. And we just assume they're not involved in learning," said Vishton. "But maybe they could be. Maybe learning is present in every cell. We've just never really studied it before."
How exactly this non-neuronal intelligence is learned, stored and called upon is a question for future experiments.
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"Typically, we don't conceptualize plants as thinking, behaving creatures, right? We think of them as reflexive objects that are responding to stimuli in a simple way," said Vishton. "But, at least to me, our results suggest that there might not be this boundary between the animal and the plant kingdom—or it might be a lot more porous than we think."
Food for thought: I'm pretty sympathetic to the point of view offered in this article - that I'm feeling saturated by the amount of technology out there (similar to views expressed in this thread). This also coincides with a decrease in wanting to stay on top of media, gaming, and so on. I don't know if this is purely saturation - as I've gotten older I've seen that I want for less new, shiny things too. Having said that, I really do feel like there's just...too much out there for me to be interested in. More and more, I find myself wanting to step away from digital technology and spend more time outside.