My understanding was that they went extinct because they needed more calories to stay alive (due to their strength) and also they stayed together in smaller groups of ~10-20 people, compared to humans' ~100 people groups.

When Neanderthals came into contact with humans, they were either absorbed into or outcompeted by human groups

I think, at the core, my argument is simply this: don't rush into sex. Take your time to figure out if this is really what you want.

I believe everyone can agree to that statement. But my perspective is that quantifiable, actionable advice is more helpful than advice in which the recipient has to apply their own judgment (what's the purpose of giving the advice then?), and so I have semi-arbitrarily chosen that 6 months to wait is a safe bet and 1 year is ideal.

And I acknowledge that waiting a year is unusually chaste - that's why I consider it to be an ideal circumstance rather than a practicable target. Is waiting a year for sex unusually risk-averse? Yes, undeniably. But you also can't deny that waiting that time would give you the best perspective on whether or not it's a good idea to have sex with someone

I think we're actually on the same page then. I don't think you're wrong in any way, I just also don't think these 2 perspectives are necessarily mutually exclusive

Humans will survive. Civilization will survive. That's almost guaranteed. That was never really up for debate. The debate is whether civilization will survive in a form that we would consider to be dignified. Will we have political rights? Will we have privacy? Will we be in a democracy? Will we live as serfs in a technofeudal society? These are the questions that we need to ask.

And they are important to ask because these are things that we can do something about. In my opinion, the elite intentionally promote doomerism, because people are more unwilling to fight back if they feel like the fight has already been lost. I believe that things can get better. I believe it despite everything going on because I have to. The worst thing you can do is to cede the future to the enemy.

Is there any evidence that Neanderthals were less intelligent than humans at their peak? I was under the impression that recent research has basically completely nullified the idea that Neanderthals were less intelligent, and the current belief is that they're just as intelligent as humans. Is there newer research that I'm not aware of that contrasts this line of thinking?

Yes, he likes you.

I would be cautious, this sort of behavior is unusual, even for someone who likes you. The reason behind it is up for interpretation. In the most generous interpretation, he doesn't know how to act either and is attempting to hint that he likes you. In the most uncharitable interpretation, he is attempting to lovebomb someone who doesn't have the experience to recognize the red flag.

Either way, I would approach with caution, because you don't need to be malicious in order to be abusive. That is to say, abuse very rarely occur because someone is actively trying to manipulate you. Typically, it occurs because someone has an unrealistic expectation of how relationships work in practice, and this expectation biases their actions and judgment (funnily enough, Obsession is about this exact theme).

What this means is that inexperienced people are typically more likely to be abusive just by sheer virtue of not understanding what a relationship is like. I don't want to be overly negative - I want to be clear that it's possible that he's just also inexperienced and that he is wise enough to learn quickly.

If you want to interpret his actions charitably and if you want to give him a chance, then I would highly recommend you have a good conversation at the very beginning about your (and his) expectations of a relationship, both in the short term (ie, what do you expect the other person to do in x/y situation? Is there anything that the other person may do or may stop doing that would cause you to feel upset?) and in the long term (ie, do you have compatible life goals? Do you expect that you will have a long distance relationship at some point in the future? Would you be OK with that?). Don't be scared to talk about uncomfortable or shameful subjects - it's better to get these questions sorted now than to sort them out later, when shit has already hit the fan.

And, also be aware that because both of you are likely to be inexperienced, both of your expectations are almost certainly going to change over time, and so it will be a good idea to build a habit of checking in once in a while to see if those expectations have changed

One final but irrelevant advice: hold off on sexual intimacy. It's important to build a relationship around life habits rather than just sex. That, and people will typically be guarded when in a new relationship. It typically takes about 1 year of close contact before someone starts to lower their guard, and 2 years before someone fully shows who they are (this also happens to be why most relationships last 2 years). I guarantee, the worst thing you can ever do in a relationship is to have sexual contact with someone who turns it to be crazy. It's going to be hard to hold off, I get it. Been there, done that. But it's vitally important for the overall health of the relationship to not have sexual intimacy for at minimum 6 months, and ideally at least longer than a year

I think sexual intimacy can be okay at an earlier stage, as long as you ensure clear and honest communication beforehand about expectations and comfort zones.

Completely fair point. It's definitely a lot more nuanced than I wrote.

In my eyes, I find that there's a lot of pressure to have sex, and very little pressure to hold off. This is especially true for inexperienced people. People will tend to rationalize themselves into having sex, even when in hindsight they really weren't ready. So to avoid having to consider edge cases and/or irrational thinking, I find that just setting a hard-and-fast rule where you just really should not have sex for x amount of time ends up being the simplest and most applicable advice

Very true, I acknowledge that safe sex can be had much earlier. But I don't think my advice is as absurd as it sounds at first glance.

6 months seems long on paper but from what I've observed, it's really not that long in context. By my estimate, that's around the time when a casual relationship transitions into a more serious relationship. So really, all I'm saying is to make sure that you're serious before you commit to taking the risk. I'm just drawing a semi-arbitrary line to delineate a casual and a serious relationship. I consider it to be more actionable to have a solid number, especially for someone who doesn't yet know what a casual or a serious relationship looks like.

In context, I know an acquaintance whom I would describe as very free-spirited. She ended up waiting something like 4 months before her first sexual contact with her significant other, and that was without any advice. So 6 months is quite doable in my opinion.

There's certainly nothing morally wrong with casual sex, I do not hold it against someone if they choose to have sex before 6 months. But practically speaking (and I would argue that an inexperienced person is in most need to hear practical advice), I still stand by my stance that it's a good idea to err on the side of caution. It's always more preferable to start having sex too late than to start having sex too early. And that's especially true when you factor in that we are starting off this potential relationship with some concerning red flags

For the most part, yes. But also, I think if you dig into the details, it's less that bacteria have the upper hand, and more that we've reached a truce with the bacteria.

A lot of bacterial species need us to provide the environment for them to live, and our immune systems are pretty paranoid with our gut bacteria, especially if they getting too close to the intestinal walls. Also, our bodies are pumping out bacterial-killing compounds constantly.

I would describe the situation as that our bodies can't kill every bacteria, and bacteria can't kill us (not easily, anyways), so we've reached an agreement that as long as the bacteria stay in their lane, they can stay, and we might consider doing some trading at a distance

I don't really have a use case, but I would have considered picking one up anyways sometime down the line if it was a good deal. It's unfortunate that it's not. I was really hoping that Valve would try to subsidize it a little to at least make the cost not as painful, but I understand that it was never an expectation for them to do so.

I think it'll sell anyways, since there are people who don't want to worry about the technical challenges of building their own computer, and also don't want to spend time looking into and vetting pre-built brands. They just want a pre-built from a brand that they already know and trust. And I think the Steam Machine would fill that niche. It's a niche of a niche of a niche, but I suspect there would be enough people like that to still sell a decent number of Steam Machines.

As for the prices of other consoles? Steam Machine is such a low volume product that other consoles would not feel a thing no matter how successful it sells

It's better to get whatever you need to be comfortable, and upgrade later when prices get more affordable. So, for instance, you can get a 64 gb now, then get a 64 gb later for a total of 128 gb. Though I think it'll really depend on exactly what you're doing - for me, I would consider even 64 gb to be insanely futureproof.

Morally: never. It's built off stolen property and destroys the world with its ecological consequences.

Practically: as a placeholder. A real human will always outperform an AI, but if the intent is not quality but to just get the gist across, then it works in a pinch.

To be clear, it's not just the quality of the final product that matters. An AI-generated product is unmaintainable and uneditable. You can't make variations of a generated product. It's technical debt at its most fundamental

I assume you mean to get a higher-clocked 64 gb? Personally, I've never really felt the difference between different memory speeds. I've seen the benchmarks, I know the numbers. But I've never had a moment where I'm using my computer and I can say that the memory speed is bottlenecking my PC.

So in my eyes, memory clocks are quite low priority for me - I put more weight in ensuring that you have the total memory capacity to do what you need to do. Which is to say, if you have the money to spare, then sure, you can get higher-clocked memory. But if not? I don't see the problem in getting lower-clocked memory.

Additionally, if you get an X3D chip (which I assume is one of your considerations), those are known to be fairly resilient against memory clock speeds, in which case it extra does not matter what your memory clock is

I'm not saying that what you've said is intrinsically problematic. I've said variations of "baby [object]" as well, there's nothing wrong with that. The issue is that context matters, and in this context it's condescending in a way that prevents open discussion.

Any reasonable person would read what you wrote and interpret it as "do you think the show is bad, or are you inexperienced and like baby things?" In this specific case, I do happen to agree with your opinion on the material. But if there exists someone who does happen to like the show, they are now discouraged from commenting and sharing their opinions, because you have pre-emptively denigrated their views.

Starting a discussion (it's a discussion community, after all) requires more care than usual to ensure that you are fostering a fair and open discussion. With the way that the post is currently structured, I don't foresee a way that a fair and open discussion can be had.

It was alright. Not bad, not great. But your post reads as unusually condescending in a way that prevents open discussion, so I'll have to downvote

His response was not condescending, it was a constructive critique and solid breakdown of why you sound condescending.

There are several things wrong with what you said:

1. You don't need to be serious to be condescending. On the contrary, your admittance that you view it as a joke is interpreted as a willingness to use "teenagers/young adults" as the butt of your jokes. Which is condescending.

2. I acknowledge that you did not intend to be consciously condescending. But even ignoring that you openly admitted to it (see point 1), that does not mean that other people won't see it that way. Just saying "I disagree with your opinion" doesn't automatically cause everyone else in the world to change their interpretation of your words. There is a reason we are telling you that this is a real interpretation of your words, and refusing to accept it also reflects negatively on you.

My advice: do what the other comment said. It's an easy edit, and we won't need to be having this conversation at all.

Anon could have salvaged this if he didn't run away. It could have made for a killer party story

Explanation:

If you want to do gene editing, you'll need to get your gene into your cell. Viruses are really good at doing exactly that, so a lot of modern gene editing technology revolves around putting genes into modified viruses, then infecting your cells with those modified viruses.

As it turns out, a lot of cells also have a lot of anti-viral mechanisms. One of them is called the RNAi system. Basically, if the cell detects foreign DNA, the cell automatically assumes that that DNA is from a virus and shuts down any and all production of whatever gene happened to be in that DNA.

This can have amusing consequences, because if you manage to trick the cell into thinking that its own genes are a virus, you can effectively block the cell from expressing its own genes. This effect was discovered when scientists tried putting a purple gene into a flower, which inadvertently caused the flower to think that its own purple gene was a virus. The end result is that the flower turned white.

This effect turns out to be incredibly useful for scientific research, because it allows scientists to suppress any gene without needing to go through the hassle of gene editing the cell

Wording is funky. To clarify:

The rain smell is due to a compound called geosmin. The bacteria that produces it is Streptomyces.

When I taught microbiology lab, I would grow a petri dish of Streptomyces during one particular class and have the students smell it

X axis: the inappropriate to corporate axis

Y axis: the funny to tragic axis

6 is the inappropriate, funny number

7 is the corporate, funny number

9 is the inappropriate, tragic number

11 is the corporate, tragic number

Is my interpretation valid?