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14:00
@Mitch I might have known
Wow. That's some server lag.
@KitFox Yes, but it also has a connotation of "peace", like saying "Yes I know you feel that way, but..."
@Mitch so the taters'd probably taste of potatos.
> It is a valid simplification, says Victor Flambaum ....
I read that as "...Yeah, I guess if you didn't know anything about physics, that is a quaint explanation."
14:20
"It's a valid simplification, but I'd not use it in my own theses."
"But you can use it. If you like. I won't think less of you."
Haha.
> "The analysis is fine," says Thibault Damour ....
@MattЭллен "But I already didn't think much of you"
What's with this article?
It's hilarious.
Holy shit! The speed of light may have changed! This is very exciting! "It's certainly not lacking in interest," says a local physicist.
I read a New Scientist article the other day about the biting footballer. it gave me a good laugh.
@KitFox :D yeah. they're being very tentative
although that was back in 2004, I think
@MattЭллен you would have know, but with the speed of light set to 5 miles an hour, you can't have known. I'm rebooting the universe now. Hold your breath ... now.
14:26
"I suppose if you're into that sort of thing," says another physicist.
@Mitch "Because of your social standing and that of your parents."
@RegDwigнt There's a question on Meta for you.
" It comes from the world's only known natural nuclear reactor, found at Oklo in Gabon, West Africa.

The Oklo reactor started up nearly two billion years ago when groundwater filtered through crevices in the rocks and mixed with uranium ore to trigger a fission reaction that was sustained for hundreds of thousands of years"
changes vacation plans to Gabon
Pretty awesome, huh?
14:30
or to anywhere for that matter
You mean that's all it takes?
@Mitch Why hasn't this been incorporated into some super-villain's evil plot?
Remarkable.
Wow. PG Tips is really, uh, interesting.
does it taste of tea?
Sort of.
did you use whisky instead of water?
14:33
Kind of like if I brewed some Lipton tea really strong using muddy paper towels as a filter.
Maybe I did it wrong.
Hi, @Mr.Shiny! Happy Canada Day a bit early. Do you have any fun plans?
Maybe you did it right and you've been drinking badly made tea all this time. like your paper towels haven't properly been muddied.
tries it again
@KitFox We're going to Mel Lastman Square!
14:36
I do feel slightly more British.
!!wiki Mel Lastman Square
Mel Lastman Square is a public square at North York Civic Centre in the North York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is named for former North York mayor (and later Toronto mayor) Mel Lastman. The square hosts a variety of activities throughout the year, but is primarily a quiet space in which to relax or eat lunch. Surrounded by Yonge Street on the east, the Toronto District School Board headquarters on the south, North York Civic Centre on the west, and the Central Library to the north, Mel Lastman Square was intended to be the heart of North York. With its sunken configuration and tree ...
@KitFox it's working!
It's not that exciting
@KitFox Oh duh. Lots of cream and sugar. That'll cover the 'used dish towel' aftertaste.
but my son's been talking about it for weeks
14:37
North York? raises eyebrow
Yeah that's where I live
Oh!
It's part of Toronto now, thank you Mike Harris
Damn this internet connection. I used to know someone who lived in North York, but I can't remember who now. I might have been to that square before.
But my connection is cruddy, so I can't look at pictures.
@MattЭллен OK, this was in New Scientist 10 years ago.
@KitFox Oh. Now I get it. I'm the one that's slow.
14:39
@KitFox It's not the most memorable square in the world.
There is a better square downtown, called "Nathan Philips Square" that is where all the really big square things happen.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Nah, it's not the one I'm thinking of.
@Mitch still more recent than 2 billion years ago
But Mel Lastman square is right outside what used to be the NY city hall, before amalgamation, and it's where the local Canada Day fireworks will be
New Scientist should be renamed "Hello! Science!" because that's the quality of connection with reality.
I don't know if we'll keep the kids up late enough to watch them though.
14:41
@Mitch But Science! Is Exciting!
@Mitch you're not connected with reality :Þ
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Fireworks are recently legal in my state, so we've been having people setting them off for the last two weeks or so.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Have they seen them before? For the very young they can be scary (so loud).
@Mitch I don't think they've seen them in person.
My own personal daddy taught me how to shout BOOM right after the flash so it wouldn't be so scary.
14:43
@KitFox yeah they're legal here too, somewhat. I'm not sure what the laws specifically are, but one time there were kids setting fireworks off in the parking lot next to my condo and I called the cops and the cops were like "meh"
Because then I said boom during the boom, you see.
I think you have to be over 16 to buy fireworks in the UK
@MattЭллен touché
@AndrewLeach ah! also over 18 then :D
"Can I say X?"
I don't know. What happens if you try? If you feel sharp pains in your abdomen, I recommend not saying it. If you find your tongue detaches half way through the sentence, then you cannot say it.
14:50
There are so many errors in that question I don't know where to start.
This connection is slower than treacle.
0
Q: Word/phrase/idiom to describe avoiding answering a question by stating the question doesn't need to be asked

SpragueI run into this situation often in the office. I have a specific question to ask somebody and have chosen the person to ask it, but that person doesn't know the answer. Instead of answering the question, however, they choose to attack the question itself and increase the scope of the discussion ...

Should this be on Philosophy instead?
I think we have others like this.
The opposite of "ad hominem" argument. That must have a name.
@Cerberus would know best. unless one of the phil.se regular are here
"Changing the subject"?
@AndrewLeach ad uxorem? de hominem? non est meum problemum?
He's not really changing it though.
It's obviating the question and trying to make you feel dumb by doing so.
14:58
"What the fastest way to McDonalds?"
"Burger King is closer and Nicer"
seems like a different subject
Ignoratio Elenchi?
Ignoratio elenchi, also known as irrelevant conclusion, is the informal fallacy of presenting an argument that may or may not be logically valid, but fails nonetheless to address the issue in question. Ignoratio elenchi falls into the broad class of relevance fallacies. The phrase ignoratio elenchi is . Here elenchi is the genitive singular of the Latin noun ', which is . The translation in English of the Latin expression has varied somewhat. Hamblin proposed "misconception of refutation" or "ignorance of refutation" as a literal translation, An example might be a situation where A a...
oh, yes, that sounds like it
Now I want french fries.
:/
Responder: "Fast Food is bad for you. You should make it yourself." — Mitch 26 secs ago
"But if it's bad for me, why is it better if I make it myself?" — Me just now
15:00
They're answering the question you should have asked.
But if you're going to McDonalds to meet someone, then directions to BK are not what you should ask for
And if you're hungry for McD, BK is terrble in comparison (Have you had their fries? shudders)
Really? There are differences?
Detectable ones?
between the fries? yes
The Whopper and the Big Mac? World's apart.
15:05
Wow. OK. I just thought they were both crap and never went into the details.
I prefer the Whopper, but McD's fries. It's horrible, this world I live in.
@KitFox a travesty of epic proportions
Well, of course they are crap.
Then again, last time I went to a BKs must have been 10 years ago and I don't think I've eaten McD 10 times in as many years so I'm really not an expert.
Doesn't mean you don't crave them.
15:06
Yes, I can understand that. Sadly.
Oh damn. It's way later than it ought to be right now.
I'm wasting my whole holiday.
I was going to buy new shoes today.
I'm sure there's a fancy Latin term for it that fits this exactly (that somebody clever will come up with). But the person is sort of answering you just not your literal question. It's reasonable to think you want to go to McD's because you're hungry and there's a Burger King closer. — Mitch 7 mins ago
But if you're going to rob the bank next door to the McD's, those directions don't help. It's the 5th Third National Bank (next to McD's) and not the 3rd Fifth National Bank (next to BK, also on the right not the left).
Apparently knowing there is a list of fallacies on wikipedia counts as being clever. Cool! Thanks @Mitch :)
checks hands to distinguish right from left
15:07
@terdon You're obviously lacking in culture.... of E. coli
@Mitch No argument there.
@KitFox the left is the one on my right and right is the one on your right
@MattЭллен Perfect. That reads like she slapped you right at the end :)
Oh.
15:09
awww :(
@MattЭллен No, the other right.
unless I'm stood behind you
back to back or snuggly?
in which case the left is the one on your left and the right is the one on my right
@Mitch looking in the same direction
unless I turn 180degrees
15:15
oh yeah. I read that too. pretty creepy
One of the many reasons I don't FB.
Well, not much.
Yet another reason I don't regret not being on facebook.
FB is just showing us what we knew already.
Namely, that people are eager to be manipulated.
but if FB is controlling our streams, then they can't claim safe harbour.
so they can be got for copyright infringements
if those happen on FB
Good tactic.
It's possible that the research was sanctioned somewhere, and actually went through an ethics review. I didn't read thoroughly.
I know that lots of people have used FB data to do studies.
15:19
> It was claimed that Facebook may have breached ethical and legal guidelines by not informing its users they were being manipulated in the experiment, which was carried out in 2012.

The study said altering the news feeds was "consistent with Facebook's data use policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research".
Hmm. It's a bit dodgy.
Although generally I have laughed at FB user protests.
"The government is spying on me! They are tracking everything I publicly broadcast on a social network!"
So in that way, maybe people will start understanding that the government is the least of their problems when it comes to what social networks and big business can do.
maybe. if they're paying attention
Which they aren't, because they don't.
speaking of which, I've just started in on A Brave New World
Oh, that's a nice one.
15:23
I couldn't initially remember the name, so I've also got Paradise Lost
I got to the end and concluded that individuality is disruptive to a high-functioning society and that happiness is not fighting status quo. My lit teacher was a bit appalled.
She thought I had missed the point.
I rather thought she had.
@KitFox I thought that was Orwell not Huxley.
Was it?
15:25
I don’t know. It’s been so very long.
Wasn't Brave New World the one with color-coding? Oh, how I love color-coding.
I think they shared certain points
Color coding? For the castes? I think it was letters.
And 1984 was the one with the red sashes and the stand of birch trees?
@KitFox yes. "I'm glad I'm a beta. Alphas wear yellow and work too hard..."
15:26
@terdon They were designated by call letters.
Aug 1 '13 at 16:45, by tchrist
> Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
Aug 1 '13 at 16:41, by tchrist
> What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.
Yes, that.
Soma!
Aug 1 '13 at 16:41, by tchrist
> Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions".
Oh, there's more.
15:27
Aug 1 '13 at 16:42, by tchrist
> In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
@MattЭллен practically the same.
Well, we’re certainly there, adoring the technologies that undo our capacities to think.
Right. And so what does it matter if it's scripted, so long as everyone feels happy, satisfied, fulfilled?
BNW does, at least in the first 3 chapters, focus on not bucking the status quo
In fact, being different causes suffering.
Sameness feels good.
15:29
@KitFox This is more of an Eastern than a Western notion, isn’t it though?
the most number of babies from one egg was 96 (in BNW)
I'm conflicted about the Facebook thing.
We can do better than that.
@tchrist I was thinking of BNW, but yes.
Sort of.
@Mitch I thought so :D
15:30
On one hand, they set out to do a psychological experiment on their users.
I haven't read Paradise Lost, yet
On the other hand, EVERY SINGLE SOFTWARE CHANGE is a psychological experiment. Every single A/B test.
@MattЭллен Paradise Lost is by Milton and written in verse.
That's the only difference.
a few centuries earlier
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah, exactly.
@MattЭллен And BNW didn't include Dante or Virgil or Homer or whatever that guy's nam ewas.
This is way better than thinking deep thoughts.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 but usually if the type "Is this as or more easy to use" not "has this made you sadder"
@Mitch Dante. Virgil was the narrator's escort.
@MattЭллен It's fundamentally the same thing
15:32
Yeah, it's just another marketing methodology.
What if I wanted to determine if users enjoyed watching my movie.
I could make a couple versions of the movie and screen-test it.
Afterwards I could see how many people had good or bad things to say.
Is that unethical?
@KitFox That's Commedia Divina!
making people sad is not prohibited. Otherwise we'd have to ban Schindler's List.
@KitFox "People were always telling her she was beautiful, but she just didn’t see it" She should really meet that underestimated guy who finds out he has a superpower that will save everybody...what's his name, Neo?
heh
15:35
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 sugggests law
@Mitch I wonder. If there is enough uproar, I could imagine a situation where Facebook cannot change their feed algorithm without first opting in all the users into a beta.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 ethic boards at university say you cannot experiment on people without their consent. FB didn't ask, they just did. With UI changes they spend weeks testing and tell people that they're doing it. it's fundamentally different.
@MattЭллен Facebook mucks around with what feed content is shown all the time.
Every company does that.
@KitFox what about the Westerner who, a failure back home, visits the local aboriginal culture, goes native, but does better than them at their own game and becomes their leader? Dances with wolves, Avatar, The Last Samurai? Who's the girl for him? Oh yeah the girlfriend of the (now former) leader, who is totally OK with that.
Google tweaks their search algorithm.
15:38
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 that doesn't make it ethical
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 that doens't make it ethical
enjoy your mandatory single spelling mistake
@MattЭллен Just because an experiment doesn't meet the criteria of a university board doesn't make it unethical either.
@MattЭллен You can experiment on people without their consent in certain studies.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I think @KitFox said it right, informed consent, that's all that's needed...advertise if you want to be in the 'experiment' pool.
yesterday, by Robusto
Lawrence Lessig
Twelve

In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government-driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission-trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature. With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic-and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left-Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted-but redeemable-representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended gr
@KitFox but they have to know they're being experimented on, just not how.
15:40
No, not necessarily.
so you could say you're testing A and really be testing B.
I mean, seriously, if changing the newsfeed content algorithm requires explicit informed user consent on the scale of what a university demands for psychological testing, then potentially every user-facing software change does, and that seems a bit ridiculous.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 to you. It seems like a good idea to me.
At least in the US, you can get it past a review board without consent in certain very particular cases.
maybe you can here. it's been a decade since I applied to the ethics board.
15:41
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Not every user-facing change is designed to have a potential psychological effect.
@MattЭллен It doesn't seem a little extreme? I've run tests where the only thing we changed was the photo on a landing page, to see how it affects joins. Did I need consent for that? How would I even go about getting it?
So, I wonder whether this study was contributory to any deaths. Or non-deaths.
For instance, if the user data is kept anonymous and it is applied to large groups and it is deemed not harmful.
@AndrewLeach And yet it does have a psychological effect.
@KitFox True.
15:41
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't know. but if you're trying to manipulate people, you should tell them.
It could also theoretically be a by-product of passive data collection.
Although they said they intentionally manipulated it, so that's out.
But for instance, you could mine for that data without user consent.
@MattЭллен So when a company tests the colour of their logo, over 5000 variations of blue, to see how it affects usage, they should inform everyone?
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Some make me cross. But at least they are obvious. Manipulation of content is not obvious, and designed to have a psychological effect, the extent of which is unquantifiable.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 yes, but you've gone way off the point. they deliberately tried to make people sad by not showing them things that might make them happy.
On the other hand, people should assume that they are being manipulated.
15:43
this is not like schindlers list
@AndrewLeach Many UI changes are totally about psychology and not about content. Like, I'm changing part of our website to use regular text instead of a red label. That's not about usability per se.
@MattЭллен It's true, but maybe it was over a short timeframe.
A day or few or week.
Ima commute!
Gah. Now I'm defending them.
@MattЭллен CU!
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But that's style not content.
15:45
@AndrewLeach Exactly, but it's for psychological reasons.
If I A/B test both variants of my page, do I need to get informed consent like a university would?
I honestly don't understand why people are bothered by this. You people choose to post stuff on FB and then, FB chooses to share your friend's posts with you. What changed? All they did is actually use the data they already had. As far as I'm concerned, signing up with FB is giving them a license to fuck with you.
There's that.
But they fucked with you without saying they were going to.
Except they say they did, in the user agreement, which is what you are saying.
@KitFox I just fail to see how this particular change to the newsfeed content is materially different from any other change where they measure its impact.
"You people" doesn't include me. And won't, after this.
@KitFox No one reads those.
15:48
@KitFox Pretty much, yeah. I mean as soon as you sign over your right to the information you posted you deserve everything you get.
28 mins ago, by KitFox
"The government is spying on me! They are tracking everything I publicly broadcast on a social network!"
@MattЭллен I cheated to get on the ethics board.
@KitFox "publicly" is ill-defined. There is "public" and there is public.
anyway, gotta run. bbl.
Bye!
@AndrewLeach You people are all alike.
Oh. hm... you didn't hear that.
15:50
@KitFox Exactly.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I misread that as "Facebook mucks around with what food content is shown all the time." And that is a crime that I cannot let pass.
“Hi,” he said to her, flicking his blonde hair out of his face and grinning.

“Hi,” said Inarajan, flicking her red hair out of her face and sighing.

“What’s new?” said United Airlines, flicking his hair out of his face and frequently rescheduling flights to Japan during typhoon season.
You're still reading that?
Multitasking. I hadn't bothered to read through.
Also, it was written slowly for people like me.
16:09
@Kit Is there anything to be done about these, or should I just burn out the portion of my brain which it rankles? Perhaps a moderator notice or something?
0
A: Looking for a phrase for looking

Third News Trifarious facing in three different directions

Wow. Like, content.
clears throat
Tom, did you post pics?
No, I haven’t even read them in yet.
ok, ping me when you do.
also it is rude to answer before the question is asked :)
@tchrist I know they bother you, and I understand it. What would be most helpful would be if you could edit in the information he puts in his comments, as I have done. We are still in discussion about our course of action otherwise.
16:13
sign of stress if not
@KitFox Yes, thank you.
We are working on it, though, I assure you.
Thanks again.
34
Q: Why does our voice sound different on inhaling helium?

Dev KanchenThis question (and answer) is an attempt to clear the air on what appears to be a very simple issue, with conflicting or unclear explanations on the internet. Arguments, negations, etc are invited. I'm classifying this as a physics question, since it has to do with resonances, attenuation, etc. ...

Nice answer.
Where are our consuls this morning? Surely the room topic is more than 24 hours old. :)
Fox could make you owner
no no no
16:21
too much pressure huh?
room topic changed to English Language & Usage: All the freedom of speech you deserve. (no tags)
ty
Next week we get peaches the farmers market.
Cherries may run short early; some orchards were zapped.
Did you know that a cherry picked from the tree and eaten fresh without transport is like a summer tomato to a winter one?
The skins haven’t hardened.
I had no idea. I once ate myself sick on cherries.
At an orchard in Virginia.
what is the name of the ~cherries~ that can only be eaten fresh, bigarr??
My fingertips and lips were purple for days.
16:24
hot
Well, the diarrhea was not.
@KitFox This happens.
But that's what you get for eating three pounds of fresh cherries in one go.
It was worth it.
@KitFox I KNOW: I bought three pounds at the farmers market on Saturday, and they are gone now. Twice.
Up to that point, I had so very few happy days.
16:26
@JohanLarsson Unsure what you mean. Sour/tart/pie cherries? Sweet dark cherries? Bland yellow cherries? Wild choke-cherries?
@tchrist Truthfully, I don't know how many I ate. We were there for hours and I couldn't stop eating them.
@KitFox Blueberries will do that to you, too, if you buy those huge two-quart containers of them.
@tchrist Bigarrå, maybe the sweet ones.
@tchrist I don't like blueberries as much. Probably because I grew up with them.
|synonyms_ref = }} Prunus avium, commonly called wild cherry, sweet cherry, south to Morocco and Tunisia, north to the Trondheimsfjord region in Norway and east to the Caucasus and northern Iran, with a small disjunct population in the western Himalaya. This species, in the rose family (Rosaceae), has a diploid set of sixteen chromosomes (2n = 16). All parts of the plant except for the ripe fruit are slightly toxic, containing cyanogenic glycosides. Nomenclature The early history of its classification is somewhat confused. In the first edition of Species Plantarum (1753),...
Sweet cherry.
We don't have them here.
16:32
@KitFox Ah, but you see, I moved away from blueberry-producing lands, or at least, commercial ones. And so I miss them. We do have wild huckleberries (tiny low bushes) here at altitudes that make it equivalent to your latitude or higher, but you could sit and eat them all day long spending more energy gathering them than eating them. They were in bloom near timberline yesterday.
They’re super-miniature blueberries.
@KitFox The stone fruit have a mixed history of toxicity; see bitter almond.
The strawberries were also all arrayed in first bloom. Those you seem to do a bit better on. But the wild red raspberries seem the best chance for engorgement potential. I don’t really gorge on choke-cherries, although wild grapes are nice. The best of all of course are wild plums.
We are planning to plant grapevines next year.
We have some berry bushes, but I don't know if they are raspberries or blackberries yet.
I have a great number of black raspberries, and a few red ones.
But that is because I planted them myself; the black ones do not grow natively here as they do at home.
And there are no blackberries here either.
is blackberries the same as currant?
But those I don’t miss. They always scratched me up too much.
@JohanLarsson Wrong family.
Blackberries and raspberries, amongst others, are both Rubus.
Currants are Ribes.
> Ribes /ˈraɪbiːz/ is a genus of about 150 species of flowering plants native throughout the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It is usually treated as the only genus in the family Grossulariaceae. Seven subgenera are recognized.
> Sometimes Ribes is instead included in the family Saxifragaceae. A few taxonomists place the gooseberry species in a separate genus of Grossularia.
Rubus are rose family.
do you have Rubus Arcticus?
tasty but much work picking, getting one liter is a full day
16:40
@JohanLarsson Those are only in “Cascadia” here.
Read, the Pacific Northwest coast of North America: Oregon up through the Alaskan Panhandle.
Around the Great Lakes we have Rubus parviflorus, called “thimbleberries” by the natives.
There are many berries up along the border.
The only “edible” indigenous Rubus is Colorado is the familiar wild red raspberries. Stuff like Boulder raspberries/brambles are quite pretty to look at but not succulent in their fruit.
Oh, I see you don’t have black raspberries there at all. How odd!
looks like blackberries are björnbär
> The black raspberry is also closely related to the red raspberries Rubus idaeus and Rubus strigosus, sharing the distinctively white underside of the leaves and fruit that readily detaches from the carpel, but differing in the ripe fruit being black, and in the stems being more prickly. The black fruit makes them look like blackberries, though this is only superficial, with the taste being unique and not like either the red raspberry or the blackberry.
@JohanLarsson Bearberries are something else, no?
@Mitch you would, you wood.
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi is a plant species of the genus Arctostaphylos (manzanita). Its common names include kinnikinnick and pinemat manzanita, and it is one of several related species referred to as bearberry. Distribution The distribution of Arctostaphylos uva-ursi is circumpolar, and it is widespread in northern latitudes, but confined to high altitudes further south: *in Europe, from Iceland and North Cape, Norway south to southern Spain (Sierra Nevada); central Italy (Apennines) and northern Greece (Pindus mountains); *in Asia from arctic Siberia south to Turkey, the Caucasus...
@tchrist dunno
@tchrist lingon, nice in food no maybe ripbär
16:48
Those are blackberries.
I don’t think people eat bearberries, but I’m not sure.
do you have lingon?
Is it blackberry or blueberry bushes that have the huge yellow and black spiders in them?
@Mitch Blackberries.
Writing spiders?
16:58
@JohanLarsson Those are heather family. Pacific Northwest, but not here. Either not enough moisture, or else too cold, for good berry production.
@tchrist yes, wasp spiders.
@KitFox Charlotte
Scares the crap out of you.
@Mitch Why?
Spiders freak me out. I accidentally passed this phobia on to my children.
16:59
That’s just an orb spider. No biggy.
At least I haven't put them off lepidoptera yet.

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