TIL Thread

[BacktoCricaddict]

13 minutes ago, coffee_rules said:

Why go with "naut" suffix even? Antarikshyatri" or "brahmandyatri" "nakshatrayaan raahi"

Naut has something to do with sailing, according to the interwebs. That's why nautical miles. 

 

I like Vyomayaatri. 

 

Edited August 5, 2025 by BacktoCricaddict

[coffee_rules]

2 minutes ago, Tillu said:

 

Within the country we can use these words. It might be too difficult for the other countries to spell these words. For the outside world India is looking to follow a consistent naming convention with that suffix.

 

Even the Chinese astronauts are referred to as Taikonauts by western countries although within China they call them Yuhangyuan.

 

 

Yes, but my opinion is that if we start using it more with others and others would one day catch up. Like Masala, Bazaar, Bandobust, Coolie,Yoga, Mantra, Karma  many words are being ibducted into western vocabulary. 

[BacktoCricaddict]

The hybridization of 2 distinct species resulted in the origin of potatoes in the Andes mountains. 

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-modern-day-potato-hybridization-event.html

 

Quote

 

This, I learned today (well, last week):

 

Once upon a time, nine million years ago, in the Andes mountains around Peru, a plant from the species Solanum etubersom, got a bit kinky. You see, plants of this species are just like a potato plant, but they just can't make the aloos. But when one of them hit it off with an attractive tomato plant (species Solanum lycopersicum), they ended up having babies together.

 

And voila, one of the babies they made together randomly developed the ability to make aloos - the species we now call Solanum tuberosum, and whose swollen underground stems are a delicious source of starch.  

 

 

Then, when indigenous Peruvian humans found them 10,000 years ago they foraged them and cultivated them. Then the Europeans spread them all over the world, including to India, where it has been in diets since the 1500s. 

 

 

 

[coffee_rules]

This week's news:  Potatoes and Tomatoes have a common parent.  In the headlines, they coined it as potatoes came from wild tomatoes.

 

Potatoes and tomatoes linked in evolution

Potatoes and tomatoes don’t look alike or taste alike. One is a starchy root used to make our favorite comfort foods, like French fries and mashed potatoes. The other grows on a bush and has diverse uses in cooking around the world. But surprise! A new genetic study reveals that the potato plant, which evolved 9 million years ago, arose as a new species created from the hybridization of a tomato plant and a plant called etuberosum 

and a potato-like plant. Approximately 9 million years ago, a tomato ancestor and a potato-like species, called Etuberosum, interbred, resulting in the first potato plants with tubers. 

 

It proves that Inter-racial couples and their progency has the best cance for human evolution and survival. Who knows, what kind of species will emerge!! (Bad Joke).

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

27 minutes ago, coffee_rules said:

This week's news:  Potatoes and Tomatoes have a common parent.  In the headlines, they coined it as potatoes came from wild tomatoes.

 

Potatoes and tomatoes linked in evolution

Potatoes and tomatoes don’t look alike or taste alike. One is a starchy root used to make our favorite comfort foods, like French fries and mashed potatoes. The other grows on a bush and has diverse uses in cooking around the world. But surprise! A new genetic study reveals that the potato plant, which evolved 9 million years ago, arose as a new species created from the hybridization of a tomato plant and a plant called etuberosum 

and a potato-like plant. Approximately 9 million years ago, a tomato ancestor and a potato-like species, called Etuberosum, interbred, resulting in the first potato plants with tubers. 

 

It proves that Inter-racial couples and their progency has the best cance for human evolution and survival. Who knows, what kind of species will emerge!! (Bad Joke).

 

Same thing I posted upstairs :-)

[New guy]

On 7/12/2025 at 6:27 PM, BacktoCricaddict said:

Not to make light of this tragedy but I wonder if climate alarmists blamed this on climate change too. After all it was caused by CO2.

What on earth is "climate alarmists"? Decades of well established facts and data? And why on earth will actual learned scientists and researchers link this with climate change?

 

I love how you believe actual scientists and researchers are dumb and not the dumbasses who deny global warming and climate changes despite so much data

[coffee_rules]

17 minutes ago, New guy said:

What on earth is "climate alarmists"? Decades of well established facts and data? And why on earth will actual learned scientists and researchers link this with climate change?

 

I love how you believe actual scientists and researchers are dumb and not the dumbasses who deny global warming and climate changes despite so much data

There is a growing number of scientists and researchers (like him)  who are not into the bandwagon of climate activism. Hollywood and Pop culture has made it fashionable to cate and save earth. I am not talking of pollution/waste management, climate change has divided the scientific community and it is not conservatives/RW/MAGA crowd. 

 

It is a tool of Industrial colonization to stop developing world to get industrialized as the west did in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many liberals like Tharoor and some western academics are speaking out against it. Noth is more corrupt than what big Insustrial corporate get away with whatever they are polluting the environment by Carbon Exchanges in the Carbon Market! 

[BacktoCricaddict]

57 minutes ago, New guy said:

What on earth is "climate alarmists"? Decades of well established facts and data? And why on earth will actual learned scientists and researchers link this with climate change?

 

I love how you believe actual scientists and researchers are dumb and not the dumbasses who deny global warming and climate changes despite so much data

 

Fact: Anthropogenic climate change is real. It is happening. The data are clear and conclusive. Emissions of CO2 along with other gases like methane are responsible.

 

Fact: Not every individual natural disaster is caused by ACC. Not every individual hot day is due to global warming. Not every brainfade is due to ACC.

 

 

Quote

 

Like this:

 

https://beyondtheabstract.substack.com/p/hot-brain-summer-when-climate-journalism?utm_source=substack&publication_id=4864930&post_id=170083426&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=9138n&triedRedirect=true

 

In my newsfeed this morning, I stumbled upon this article from the BBC. “The world is getting hotter – this is what it is doing to our brains.” I read it and got frustrated… and felt the need to write about this.

This isn’t just about heat. It’s about what happens when science, storytelling, and advocacy become indistinguishable. And it’s about why the difference still matters.

The BBC claims climate change is giving us "hot brains" — but the science doesn't support a neurological meltdown narrative. While extreme heat can be dangerous for vulnerable populations, human brains are remarkably heat-tolerant, and many of the risks cited are misrepresented or overgeneralized. Anecdotes like a child with Dravet syndrome may tug at the heart, but they don't prove a coming epidemic. This post breaks down where the science ends and the storytelling begins — and why the distinction still matters.

Now, lets really dive in!

This article offers a revealing case study — a shift from data-driven concern to narrative-driven alarmism. This not just about heat, but about how science, anecdote, and activism get braided together to create a compelling narrative. The result is a piece that blends solid research with speculative leaps, making it difficult for the reader to disentangle known risk from imagined catastrophe.

 

 

Once you wrap your mind around that, here's more:
 

Quote

 

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-bad-science-and-bad-policy-at?utm_source=substack&publication_id=119454&post_id=169457733&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=9138n&triedRedirect=true

Few people are aware of the fact that “climate change” means very different things in science and in policy. That difference exposes the fundamental incoherence of climate policy, highlighted by the recent rediscovery that there is more to increasing global temperatures than just greenhouse gas emissions.

Remarkably, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN-FCCC, 1992) use different definitions of “climate change.”

The IPCC defines climate change as:

A change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.

Under the IPCC, any change in the statistics of weather, regardless of cause, is thus climate change.

In contrast, the UN-FCCC adopted a much narrower and scientifically inaccurate definition of climate change:

[A] change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion: Scientists are right. Policymakers exaggerating science claims are not. 

Edited August 5, 2025 by BacktoCricaddict

[BacktoCricaddict]

Today I was reminded of this classic, and how everyone should read it. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034

 

[Lord]

TIL Da Vince was not just a painter and has great contributions in anatomy 

 

 

[coffee_rules]

2 hours ago, BacktoCricaddict said:

 

Fact: Anthropogenic climate change is real. It is happening. The data are clear and conclusive. Emissions of CO2 along with other gases like methane are responsible.

 

Fact: Not every individual natural disaster is caused by ACC. Not every individual hot day is due to global warming. Not every brainfade is due to ACC.

 

 

 

Once you wrap your mind around that, here's more:
 

 

Conclusion: Scientists are right. Policymakers exaggerating science claims are not. 

: Anthropogenic climate change is real.. Can you share data/white papers on that? I want to know short term impacts (next 20 years) or long term impacts (next 200/2000. 2 billions years away)? This is such a political agenda.. humanties dumbos are using science to drive their agenda,Activists use gaz guzzlers and ACs, with their Teslas (like me)  charged by super chargers generated by electricity from Coal or Nuculur. 

[coffee_rules]

This thread is hijacked by politics by @New guy.   Chettta.. What did you learn today?

[BacktoCricaddict]

32 minutes ago, coffee_rules said:

: Anthropogenic climate change is real.. Can you share data/white papers on that? I want to know short term impacts (next 20 years) or long term impacts (next 200/2000. 2 billions years away)? This is such a political agenda.. humanties dumbos are using science to drive their agenda,Activists use gaz guzzlers and ACs, with their Teslas (like me)  charged by super chargers generated by electricity from Coal or Nuculur. 

https://www.metlink.org/resource/ipcc-2021-the-evidence-for-climate-change/

 

Again - temperature rise due to fossil fuel burning by humans is real. The extent of the damage it is supposedly causing is highly exaggerated. That doesn't mean we must stop addressing it. We just don't need to panic about it and spread guilt and taxes on everyone. 

 

This is not the thread for this - but from a CO2 standpoint (and many other standpoints), nuclear is the cleanest, densest. most efficient source of energy. But the same climate activists/alarmists (not the same as climate scientists) who are apparently concerned about CO2 emissions are also against nuclear. Go figure. 

 

Edited August 5, 2025 by BacktoCricaddict

[BacktoCricaddict]

Not today, but many years ago, I learned that the best way to tackle CO2 emissions is via Ecomodernism. There is more here:

 

https://thebreakthrough.org/manifesto/manifesto-english
 

Unlike the misanthropic drivel of climate alarmists, ecomodernism purports that humans can use modern technology to be good stewards of our resources without sacrificing economic development. 

 

 

 

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

https://climatecosmos.com/climate-news/why-climate-panic-is-making-problems-worse-not-better/

 

Quote

The pressure to present climate science in apocalyptic terms has led to the distortion of research findings and the suppression of nuanced scientific discourse. A 2024 survey by the Global Climate Research Institute found that 68% of climate scientists feel pressured to emphasize worst-case scenarios in their public communications, even when their research suggests more moderate outcomes are likely. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has faced criticism for cherry-picking data that supports more dramatic narratives while downplaying adaptive capacity and technological solutions. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.’s analysis of climate economics research in 2023 revealed that studies showing potential benefits of moderate warming or successful adaptation strategies are significantly less likely to be published in high-impact journals. This creates a feedback loop where panic drives funding toward research that confirms catastrophic predictions while neglecting practical solutions. The result is a scientific discourse that serves political activism rather than genuine understanding.

 

Quote

The media’s emphasis on catastrophic climate scenarios has created a fundamental disconnect between perceived and actual risks, leading to poor decision-making at both individual and policy levels. A 2023 Reuters Institute study found that climate coverage in major news outlets featured negative framing in 87% of stories, compared to just 23% positive or neutral framing. This constant barrage of doom scenarios has led to what researchers call “probability neglect”—the tendency to treat low-probability, high-impact events as if they were certain to occur. The result is massive overinvestment in preparing for extreme scenarios while neglecting more likely and manageable challenges. Hurricane coverage provides a perfect example: while media attention focuses on the possibility of Category 5 storms, actual damage and deaths come primarily from more common Category 1 and 2 hurricanes that receive less attention. The Yale Cultural Cognition Project found that apocalyptic messaging actually reduces people’s ability to process risk information rationally.

 

[Tillu]

9 hours ago, BacktoCricaddict said:

Today I was reminded of this classic, and how everyone should read it. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034

 

 

How to win friends is the most selling book in the history of self help books.

Atomic habits is the most popular self help book in the market today.

[Tillu]

9 hours ago, Lord said:

TIL Da Vince was not just a painter and has great contributions in anatomy 

 

 

 

Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson is the favourite book of Mukesh Ambani. For all the mega billionaires Walter Isaacson is the writer they want their Autobiographies penned by. He also wrote the Autobiographies of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Jennifer Doudna.

[BacktoCricaddict]

11 hours ago, Tillu said:

 

Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson is the favourite book of Mukesh Ambani. For all the mega billionaires Walter Isaacson is the writer they want their Autobiographies penned by. He also wrote the Autobiographies of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Jennifer Doudna.

 

I watched an interview of Isaacson (may even have linked it here) regarding Elon Musk where he talks about highly successful people lacking empathy towards other humans. They only have "mission-empathy." Like Musk, who is convinced that his view of what is "good" for humanity is all that matters. Same with Jobs and some others. 

Edited August 6, 2025 by BacktoCricaddict

[Tillu]

41 minutes ago, BacktoCricaddict said:

 

I watched an interview of Isaacson (may even have linked it here) regarding Elon Musk where he talks about highly successful people lacking empathy towards other humans. They only have "mission-empathy." Like Musk, who is convinced that his view of what is "good" for humanity is all that matters. Same with Jobs and some others. 

 

Yeah I too saw in so many books and interviews about how highly ambitious people lack empathy and are even often described as Psychopaths.

 

But there are still some great leaders like the Nike founder, Phil Knight who became successful through raw grit and perseverance.

 

His memoir "Shoe dog by Phil Knight" describes the trials and tribulations he had to go through to make his company the leader of sports merchandise. His story was honest and grounded in reality unlike the other founders who were described as prodigies and Demi gods who know the answer to everything in life.

 

From this book I understood that Japan was the OG sweatshop where Nike made their shoes.

Edited August 6, 2025 by Tillu

[BacktoCricaddict]

15 minutes ago, Tillu said:

the trials and tribulations he had to go through to make his company the leader of sports merchandise. His story was honest and grounded in reality unlike the other founders who were described as prodigies and Demi gods who know the answer to everything in life.

 

I often wonder: We generally accept that a genius mind and prodigious skill are in-born.  But can an argument be made for grit and motivation to also be genetically determined? 

 

Let's consider Malcolm Gladwell's rule of 10,000 hours of practice leading to expertise to be true (it has since been questioned). It then stands to reason that relentless pursuit of excellence (grit/determination/motivation) in the face of adversity is as important as innate ability. We always attribute grit/motivation - unlike a genius mind - to be under the person's direct control.

 

But, what if the ability to become motivated and pursue something with grit is itself a genetically determined ability?  What if it is not my fault that I am whiling away my time on ICF while I could be getting some creative work done for my classes, because my psycho-chemical make-up is limiting me?

 

Some reading: https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/11/10/cant-get-motivated-may-able-blame-genes/

Quote

 The premise is that apathetic individuals with reduced structural connectivity (in certain parts of the brain) would need greater physiological input to overcome what I call ‘apathetic inertia’ to then initiate an action. The researchers in the study called this ‘effort sensitivity,’ and it was correlated with behavioral apathy.