searabbit

The team tethered the crustaceans to posts at varying times of the year and at varying depths of Maryland’s Rhode River, a tidal estuary in Chesapeake Bay. After about 24 hours, the researchers would look for signs of predation—basically, if the crabs were dead or injured.

Sometimes I can’t tell if these animal studies are conceived based on actual scientific necessity or someone’s torture fantasy that happens to provide some useful info.

This feels like the poison scene from the princess bride, so I’ll approach it with that level of intellectual derangement.

Which means the obvious first step is to recognize that the house is a cheater who wants you to stay poor so your choice doesn’t matter. There is poison in both cups and I will lose either way. Money no longer influences my decision.

Next, I flip a coin ten times and note my reaction to the choices. That’s my gut instinct and obviously what the model predicted unless it’s either not smart enough to know my gut or smart enough to predict my double bluff, therefore useless.

Next, I decide which variables are most likely to influence the prediction (gender, age, education level, big 5 personality score) and realize this is the adult marshmallow test. I obviously think I’m smart and want the model to know that, so it obviously predicted that I would take one box because I’m a good little goodie two shoes who delays instant gratification for the potential bigger payoff. Therefore I choose two boxes because the model would never expect someone as smart as I to make such a dumb greedy move. Surely, I have outsmarted the supercomputer with my quadruple bluff and have won.

And then I remember I am dumb and the model knows that, because in my excitement, I forgot that the house is a cheater who always wins (and there was likely never any money in the mystery box because researchers never get that kind of funding). I am forced to believe that the model accurately perceived me to be a greedy idiot who took two boxes against my better judgement, shattering my ego.

But hey, I at least got $1k out of it.

I did it slowly over time. Every time reddit made a site wide change that worsened the user experience (which has been a lot since I joined a decade ago), I’d take one step to distance myself. First it was unsubscribing from major subreddits and engaging less, then staying logged out, then deleting the app but browsing on the web, and finally reddit pissed me off enough to try an alternative. So far I’ve already spent much less time doomscrolling online since this place isn’t filled with rage-baiting bot content.

I’ve never met someone who decided to write a history book as a hobby. Just wanted to say that’s awesome, hopefully you can make it accessible online to other history buffs who may enjoy it!

It’s weird because terminally online people forget that profound autism exists but most irl people I talk to have no concept of autism besides profound autism.

Otoh, I think most people irl and online think of ADHD as quirky distracted ball of energy meanwhile severe ADHD is not actually seen as a disability but a personal failing or mistaken for the classic depression+anxiety combo.

A few years ago, I lived in an apartment that cost about $600 usd (~$800 aud?) a month. I had 3 roommates, my room was a loft that I couldn’t stand up straight in, had no AC unit or window screen in hot humid weather, the common areas were dilapidated, and the bathroom was covered in black mold. I was a student at the time so I didn’t mind knowing it was temporary but one of my roommates wasn’t so lucky. She tried to get the landlord to do something about the mold because it was impacting her health, but this slumlord decided to go malicious compliance on her/us for daring to expect livable conditions, so he made our bathroom unusable while his handyman “took care of” the mold and “allowed” us to use another unit’s bathroom that I heard was even more neglected somehow (I used the university bathroom instead).

My point is, she’s likely doing repairs herself not because she knows what she’s doing but because she’s scared of a slumlord retaliating if she asks anything of them. It’s a horribly stressful way to live as I’ve seen first hand.

A 2023 state law prohibited drivers from parking within the 20 feet of curb space approaching an intersection, a practice known in traffic safety circles as “daylighting” the corners.

But the law didn’t come with any funding to mark those spaces off-limits, leaving it up to cities and other local governments to pay for the work out of their own budgets. As a result, many haven’t — Oakland officials said last fall that they don’t have the staff or funding to implement the law, with just two employees responsible for street-painting work throughout the city.

Berkeley has become one of the first cities in California to finish painting its curbs to comply with the law, City Manager Paul Buddenhagen wrote in a memo this week, after public works staff and a contractor applied the treatment at nearly 1,700 intersections.

So California passed this law and Berkeley is patting themselves on the back for actually following through 3 years later when the law actually became enforceable. A lot of CA cities (definitely parts of LA) already had this law in place like decades ago, so Berkeley is just trying to take credit for the party they showed up late to.

Unseen, which helps victims of modern slavery, called for more training for professionals. Lauren Saunders, the charity’s deputy director of frontline services, said: “The awareness of domestic servitude is really really low because it happens in private homes. I think there is a real lack of training for professionals on how to identify the signs of exploitation.”

The charity provided the Guardian with new figures suggesting a steep increase in the number of victims of modern slavery. Its helpline received reports of more than 6,600 victims in 2025, a 37% rise on 2024.

I remember when I was in school a lady representing the same or similar organization came to raise awareness about this kind of domestic modern slavery she herself had been a victim of. It’s so heartbreaking that this kind of slavery often falls through the cracks because it’s not what you think of when you imagine slavery. If you saw your average affluent American/European family (I’m not talking anywhere close to the Epstein class) with their live in maid/nanny, your first thought wouldn’t be that the “help” is literally a slave.

That was the worst (probably AI) article I’ve ever had the displeasure of trying to follow. They asked every question that’s been asked already on an event that happened last Christmas and followed up with the same speculation that has been rehashed a thousand times and added no new answers.

As expected, poorer people with no insurance and chronic illnesses are most affected, but even in their highest earning group of $240k+, 25% of people said they delayed a major life event to pay for healthcare. It underscores this as an issue that affects the bottom 99% of Americans as we all pretty much could guess.

I do think further studies should expand the survey questions because I go to the doctor way too much for chronic illness and I’ve never considered cutting back on utilities or literally skipping meals to pay for healthcare since where I live those savings are not enough to cover the costs on their own. In my experience, it’s more common to travel for medical procedures/diagnoses, get medications shipped from other countries, and to literally just stop paying any medical bills that they don’t make you pay upfront because fuck them.

What a great incentive to move off oil and towards literally any other energy source that doesn’t rely on the US/Israel not starting dumb wars in the middle east, too bad no one had any other reason at all to stop relying so much on oil half a century ago. It would’ve been completely doable with decades of runway, but oh well, shutting down entire industries in a last minute panic it is.

Maybe the interests we serve are the friends we made serving another’s interests along the way…to serve interests? Or something like that

“Just try to advocate for yourself,” she said. “Stand up for yourself the best that you can … I guess it didn’t go great for me, so — have better luck.”

That made me chuckle. Yeah pretty much. I’ve seen a lot of doctors for chronic issues over the years and it’s just really hard to know when to be pushy and when to shut up and trust them or give up and just get a second opinion. Although this was pretty blatant negligence. The guy didn’t even look at her head ffs.

Lyft already has this feature, it’s called women+

I don’t think this issue is reflective of American gender wars in particular. I can think of dozens of countries I’d be way more terrified of being in a car alone with an unknown man as a woman. I’ve never had a bad encounter with any uber drivers in the US, but I have heard directly from drivers that drunk riders can be a fucking menace, so I don’t mind if female drivers would rather take their chances with drunk women vs drunk men.

There is no point in being scared and stressed for the sake of it. If you’re not channeling those emotions into real action, you’re really just better off chilling tf out until there is some real and immediate threat to stress about.

If you have ever tasted the defensive secretions ladybugs make when they feel threatened, you know what these worms taste like.

You say that like it’s a normal thing to have tasted. Please don’t tell me I’ve also been unknowingly eating ladybug secretions this whole time😭

Obviously they are ADHD with a train hyperfixation /s

The religious equivalent of a little kid acting out in school hoping their cop dad gets called and he actually shows up this time.