Thank you! I'll read that up.

Good morning everyone.

Hello.

By the way, @CowperKettle I dreamed that you had bought watercolour pencils but didn't realise it, so I explained to you that you could use a wet brush to make the colours flow.

@Mitch Oh, no scandals.

@Robusto Just don't write that in his obituary!

@Cerberus Oh, thank you! Next time I buy them in my dream, I'll also buy a wet brush

+8°C today

Warm for this time of year

At the next ParkRun on 30 October, it will be minus 5C

Trees engaged in inosculation are called gemels.

A new study shows that human brains decreased in size approximately 3,000 years ago. By studying ants, the researchers hypothesize that brain shrinkage parallels the expansion of collective intelligence in human societies

@CowperKettle we lost the kung fu genes?

Imagining primitive humans fighting sabercats with mantis style

I'm translating a validation protocol report concerning the AstraZeneca vaccine. Probably the process is slowly ongoing to prepare it for registration in Russia.

@CowperKettle So having heritage from the Old Norse is protective against smoking. :)

Being strongest in Iceland, etc.

And where the Danelaw prevailed.

Sweden appears to have had too many German invaders though.

Why is France to high?

*too

Is cannabis not everywhere?

In Russia, cannabis lands many people in jail all the time.

Now and then the police raids some guy who grows cannabis in his flat using hydroponics

@CowperKettle I don't think you had a physical presence in the dream, though. You were just there. Or perhaps you were an icon.

Maybe they're just too Catholic?

Italy is Catholiquer.

France is rather irreligious.

@Cerberus There is a late Soviet movie in which a man discovered that he can invoke any dream he wishes in other people. He starts earning money by making on-demand dreams according to the customers' wishes.

I believe this is people who say they do not believe in any higher power at all.

To me all of noninsular Europe has always seemed like a dreadful dream of Dante, full of smoke and brimstone.

Whether Holland or Austria or Germany or Spain or Italy or Portugal or Belgium.

Or the Switzeez.

In what way?

Smoky!

Very very smoky.

I don't think we have a lot of brimstone there.

Well, the difference between e.g. Holland and English is slight, nothing you should notice on the streets.

The brimstone from the smoking stacks of industry.

And Scandinavia has lower rates.

I would find it horrible to live in a society totally devoid of religious people.

I think also it has to do with what was socially expected or permissible. I haven't been to Europe in nearly a decade however.

Why?

I would find it horrible to live in a society of religious people.

@tchrist Like what?

Amongst educated people in the cities, one almost never meets any religious people here.

They just do not exist.

It's most immigrants, lower classes, and country who are still religious.

That's because one of you allies religion with good people and the other with wicked people. But in all things do good and evil congregate.

I just don't meet any.

They're not here.

The Prime Minister is said to be religious, though.

But he would never mention it.

If their religion means anything to them, you should see its fruits in their deeds not their words. If they proclaim it or argue about it, they are just so many pharisees crowing on the street corners.

It has no fruits.

Untrue.

It's just cultural baggage or belief in the nonexistent.

@Cerberus Because religious people strive to something moral and look for some higher purpose. Even though their religion may be cluttered with absurdities, the mere fact of thinking in this general direction might be good

@CowperKettle I don't think so.

False beliefs lead to actions based on false beliefs.

I could be wrong. Neural networks often make mistakes.

I've wondered about this for a long time.

Yes, I like her videos

Yes, you copy someone, and then the original disappears, he dies.

@Cerberus No worries. I wasn't asked to write one.

What if a person's brain cells were changing as fast as a person's cells lining the stomach? Then would he constantly die?

Yes.

He would be a copy, and the original would disappear every day.

It helps cultivate humanistic principles that strengthen the community, principles like kindness and compassion and charity and forbearance and forgiveness and mercy and altruism and selflessness. A society without those will not long survive. These can be spread by other means than by organized religion, and there can be religious organizations that fail to spread these attributes so critical to civil society.

Those are its fruits.

From the transported person's viewpoint, he would be the same, no difference. But from the pre-transported person's viewpoint, he would be dead.

@tchrist I don't see what that has to do with religion.

@Cerberus Then you have been exposed to bad religious not to good.

Socrates did not need to be a religious man to be a principled one.

shrugs

Those are the fair fruits of religion. As Cowper mentioned, few organizations think beyond the current mortal span, or recognize a higher calling beyond self-interest.

Europe has been harrowed by the foul fruits of religion. Religion should play no part in government. But these principles must.

The masses will always prefer simple pablum over complex thought.

The masses have become irreligious here as well.

Religion has not played a significant part in society for a long time, and it is rapidly dying anyway.

On verra.

@CowperKettle That is a good point. To state that another way, what if our existence is parted out like frames on a film strip? One frame has only an apparent continuity with the next because of how it is viewed.

If franks are sausages, then why aren't franklins lady sausages or little ones?

Have you turned on the heating yet?

It's 16.5 degrees here, but I want to postpone heating as far as possible.

It's 11 degrees outside, 5 at night.

@Cerberus I used to wait as long as possible to start wearing my winter coat, with Dec 1 being the absolutely earliest I allowed myself

@Mitch Hmm.

But wearing a winter coat has no disadvantages.

But for the past 5 years or so, o could wait until maybe mid January

Whereas turning on the heating does.

Where do you live?

What's the temperature now?

@Cerberus I have principles

Also suffering builds character

My winter coat is actually a leather jacket. I don't go any warmer than that.

And it's like coal offsets for future guilt

@Mitch How Calvinist of you.

@Mitch Definitely Calvinist.

Exactly

No need for guilt!

What?

I'd feel bad for it of I dropped it altogether

I'm kidding though. About the coal offsets for guilt

That would be cheating

In the game of personal goal setting

@tchrist I was thinking here maybe apricots?

Dried of course

Undried I cannot do

They taste like someone was told about how peaches are supposed to taste and they tried to replicate it but have no taste buds or sense of smell so there was no way to test.

Also they were bad at fruit taste reproduction

Wait

I mixed up apricots and nectarines

Nectarines are like tasteless and half dried peaches

Apricots are

Mostly the same? But done by another incompetent fruit constructor

@Mitch Noo.

Nectarines can be great, juicy and sweet and sour like peaches, but without the slightly annoying skin.

Apricots are far too bland to eat raw; however, halve them and heat them in the oven until they brown slightly, and you have the best food ever. Best combined with something like custard or cake or cookies.

@Cerberus you're mad -and- your taste buds are lying to you. You probably think oats have a taste

I mean that to sting

@Mitch Maybe you just have bad nectarines?

Bad ones are flavourless.

Peaches, too.

Nectarines from the supermarket are usually bad.

Oh

Don't buy them.

Maybe

Unless you plan to heat them.

Or maybe all nectarines are bad and you're just wrong

No.

@Cerberus Depends on where you shop. Out here there are plenty of produce stands and markets. Enough so that the supermarkets have to at least try to compete.

You need to buy fruit in season, though.

A perfect honeydew melon is my favorite fruit. But a bad one is an abomination.

The day is ruined when you're honeydew wrong

@Robusto We have fine markets too, and lots of Turkish and Moroccan shops that sell good produce.

But people still go to supermarkets, because they don't know / don't care / don't want to visit more than one shop.

@Robusto But, yes, sometimes the supermarket will have good nectarines, probably in season.

@Cerberus You can lead a horse to water ...

I think the Netherlands is the world's largest exporter of fruits?

Seriously?

According to the Intertubes, Spain is the largest exporter of fruit.

Your country comes in at #10. Which is pidgin Vietnamese for "very bad." ^_^

The US comes in at #4.

Hmm I see no. 2 at a site.

insidermonkey.com/blog/…

Maybe it varies by year and definition.

I'm sure that is the least of its variance.

Oh?

This other site says no 3.

Oh, well, who cares.

Seriously, who cares?

I suspect the best produce goes abroad, and we fly in cheaper fruits from Brazil or Africa...

This does happen with beef.

That may be.

All I care about is getting good fruit, wherever its origin.

I do feel perhaps all the flying is bad for the environment.

I'd prefer to eat local produce as much as possible.

Well, Mexico is local here.

Stuff doesn't need to get flown in.

Good.

How many km is it to the greenhouses?

Or farms?

I believe they are planning to tax kerosine and bunk oil at last. If the tax is high enough, that will reduce the needless shipping of food around the world.

@Cerberus ?? Then why did you mention Haitenk? We were discussing what to put in obituaries for someone who has done something egregious, like a scandal. Why Haitenk?

@Cerberus what about poor Iceland?

do they just get the best moss in May?

@Mitch Just because he died yesterday and I was sad.

@Mitch They have free geo-energy.

I'm sure they have tons of greenhice.

Besides, I said "needless".

@Cerberus They're all over the place. Nearest is a few km.

@Cerberus Probably electrified railways are best for the environment

Efforts should be made to stimulate rail transport and suppress air traffic

@CowperKettle holy crap, that's way too high

@Cerberus as someone who hails from a pretty uneducated society, especially in social issues and such, compared to the average westerner, I think religion was the perfect opium here, and it fading away has caused some crisis in the people. I'm with TChrist; in an impoverished society like mine, nobody would listen to you if you wanted to explain why compassion and empathy would go a longer way than "every man for himself".

And I think that a huge part of why we're exposed to more 'bad religious' is precisely because it's fading away. The sort of people that constantly want to demonstrate how they think homosexuals or women ruined the society probably don't donate or help their communities much. I mean, that's not to say religious people of the old couldn't be horribly racist or whatever, they just didn't believe their whole religion revolves around who to exclude and who to hate.

It just wasn't a huge part of their day to fantasize how people far away are pulling invisible strings to make their lives miserable. It was at worst chalked up to supernatural evil.

@CowperKettle Yes, and producing locally. For many kinds of food, there is no need to produce it far away.

Speaking of scandals, poor Baldwin

@M.A.R. I don't think it was his fault. Blame the prop guy(s).