Habanero Brandy Liqueur from Flying Leap Vineyards & Distillery in Elgin, AZ.
It uses a derivative from the production of their Habanero chili wine, the neutral grape spirits they use to sterilize the habaneros that would normally be discarded. The result is undrinkably hot, but they found they could dilute it and combine with a grape brandy and cane simple for a nice spicy result. Not as spicy as you’d think to be honest considering it is habanero.
Goes really well in hot chocolate this time of year.
This thread has already mentioned a lot of artists I was already going to mention…and I’ll add a semi-recent one for me, Scott Adams. I started reading Dilbert while I was still learning to read and my exposure to it helped me recover from my literacy anxiety (which I sometimes still have to an extent). I’ve mentioned a bit of my associations of it in previous posts but to recap, my mom worked at another “Baby Bell” company, Nynex, later Bell Atlantic then Verizon, (like Scott who worked at Pacific Bell and Dilbert and friends who worked at an unnamed company implied to be in the telecom sector) I liked the simplistic designs a lot, as well as the introduction of new vocabulary. I soon started making my own comic strips. Scott Adams’ views on race, medicine, politics and several other subjects are perplexing. If I could logically follow them, I’d be offended. My dad’s high school experience was diminished by segregation apologists during Boston bussing mandates of the 1970s when they would protest at school campuses. The fact that Adams was on board with such a stupid practice in that infamous vlog is upsetting. Then again, Adams is a contrarian so I can’t be sure if he sincerely feels that way, especially since he tweeted something afterwards saying “I’m not actually bothered by black people. I am actually just annoyed by white people who advocate for black people” (paraphrase). Maybe it’s a true clarification or maybe he’s just trying to walk back his statements. He needs help. There’s probably something traumatic in his life that made him snap. Off hand, I know his wife filed for divorce from him and his stepson died of an overdose, and he may still be mourning in a strange way. Still, if I see Dilbert merch at a secondhand shop or in the library, I’d gladly take them out. I will not subscribe to his new pay-walled comic, but if his distributors and publishers ever decide to re-sign their contracts with him and start printing new Dilbert books again, I may buy them. Anecdotally print publishers seem to do more vetting than web publishers, so I’d hope that if they ever reunite he’d be in the right headspace. Anyway, great comic, troubled person. Hope the guy gets some help.
I got in to Dilbert Young, too. I don’t know why it appealed to me exactly, but I started reading his comic strips around 8 or so, and even got some compilation books. I also read some of his non-comic books… They were largely hippy woowoo bullshit, but still good reads. Then he came out with God’s Debris which I thought was genuinely interesting.
So I don’t think he was always this way, or maybe he hid it better. To teenage me, at least, he seemed pretty logical and fairly progressive. A bit of a hippie at times, a bit of a look at times, fairly anti-corporate and pro-little guy, overall his writing made him seem like a decent person. Maybe some vaguely problematic takes here and there, but nothing all that bad.
It was like some combination of success and wealth and Twitter access broke his mind. Or maybe it was always there and I just didn’t recognize it and I’m blinded by nostalgia. It was just a wild rollercoaster ride watching him melt down.
Behind the Bastards did an episode on him. Honestly I think from what I recall he was just drawing what got good feedback, but then he had a few issues with health, one that made him unable to speak for years and iirc ended his marriage?
So one of their takes is maybe this trauma did some damage to him mentally as well. I’m grossly oversimplfying, so I recommend checking the episode. You can also find statements and articles about his Spasmodic Aphonia and him attributing his divorce partially to it.
They do have some arguments against his anti-corporate rep though.
I have that - Nixta? My sister outlaw gave it to us for Thanksgiving. It smells like caramel corn. I tried it with bourbon, Tuaca, and lemon but the corn flavor was lost in there.
Malort starts off horrible and gets worse. I’m convinced that it’s somehow undergoing chemical processes and decaying into more awful chemicals once it interacts with the inside of your mouth.
I bought it on my honeymoon and now I’ve got the absolute worst flavor I’ve ever willingly put in my mouth sense-associated with one of the best times on my life, so that’s lots of fun.
I keep this as well, almost exclusivly to torment friends and family. I feel like it tastes like a used wodden clog that somehow got turned into a drink. I dont think its that bad, but I do enjoy playing up its legend.
The fellas and I have a gaming weekend once a year. Someone always has Jeppson’s on hand for punishment. Last year you could earn points for drawings every few hours and drinking a FULL shot of Jeppson’s would always get you a bonus entry. The bottle never emptied after 3 days of 20+ lads, it’s that bad.
It makes a fantasticly dangerous summer drink when mixed with sprite, you hardly feel the alcohol, but the taste is amazing, with a fairly standard sprite tast first, that explodes into a full raspberry taste with the aftertaste.
I seldom drink, and drink little when I do, but this is brilliant.
From what I read here, raspberries don’t have enough sugar to be distilled by themselves. I didn’t realize it but apparently the himbeergeist is an infusion.
The Big Bang being a singular event that only happened once, as if we are so special we just happen to be at the point of time, within the spectrum of infinity where matter is in a state that can support life. (I’m not aware if that’s the prevailing theory anymore)
Also the double slit experiment. We aren’t a phantom observers, we are impacting the experiment. With our equipment.
We don’t have to be special though. We can only exist at certain points in space time, under certain conditions. Those conditions are currently met, therfore we can exist, regardless of the infinite time/space conditions where we can’t.
I don’t think a unique big bang has ever been the prevailing theory in science. If you ask science what happens before the big bang, the answer is “we don’t know”, and if you ask has there been other big bangs, you might get a “not that we’ve observed”, but science has not attempted to explain what happened before the big bang because in the most literal sense, we just don’t have the data to make an attempt.
Predictions do state that the future of the universe will look different from the beginning of the universe (by which I mean the universe since our big bang) and the maths suggest that before the big bang, we think there was a singularity of incredible density, but that doesn’t really deal with how many other big bangs there can have been.
On your second point, that’s what the science actually says. “Observer” or “observation” is used in a scientific sense and was probably a poor word choice. Science journalism gets carried away with anything that has the word “quantum” in it and it drives us mad.
You’re absolutely right that the mechanism that’s causing the wave function to collapse is the presence of whatever piece of equipment the particle is hitting. Whether that collapse happens at the two slits or the back wall changes the pattern, and that change is what shows wave-particle duality.
Also: physics doesn’t claim to know that the Big Bang only happened once. That’s just as far back as we can rewind with our current models. This is again something that science journalism takes a lot of liberty with.
You’re absolutely right that the mechanism that’s causing the wave function to collapse is the presence of whatever piece of equipment the particle is hitting.
It’s by no means clear that this is true; it depends on where you fall on interpretational questions. Hell, probably the leading approaches suggest that the wave function doesn’t collapse at all, it just appears to when our brains become entangled with the experiment.
the leading approaches suggest that the wave function doesn’t collapse at all, it just appears to when our brains become entangled with the experiment.
Aren’t you just moving the point of the wave collapse from the experiment to inside the brain? I mean if the wave function never collapsed, shouldn’t we see all superpositions at once? But instead, the brain seems to collapse to one possibility, i.e. still collapsing the wave function.
Kind of, but technically no. The idea is, when doing the double slit experiment, that you start with two essentially separate wave-functions; the wave function of the particle, which is in a super position of going through slit A and slit B, and the wave function of the experimenter/surrounding world, which is in a singular defined state.
However, by doing a measurement, the experimenter entangles their wave function with the wave function of the particle, forming one wave function for the whole system, which evolves into a super position of ‘particle goes through slit A and the observer measures the particle going through slit A’ and ‘particle goes through slit B and the observer measures the particle going through slit B’.
Importantly, the super position doesn’t contain a portion for ‘the observer measures both outcomes at the same time’, so there’s no way for us to see all superposition’s at once.
The question of why we only experience measuring one outcome is exactly the same as the question of why an identical twin only experiences one life, and not both, essentially.
Importantly, the super position doesn’t contain a portion for ‘the observer measures both outcomes at the same time’, so there’s no way for us to see all superposition’s at once.
I feel like here you’re just moving the goal post again, if you’ll excuse the expression :)
Even if there is no superposition in which an observer sees both outcomes, there must be some point in space and/or time that decides which of the two superpositions we see. Whether that is in the experiment, in the brain or in consciousness or whatever. I mean we only see one superposition, so there must be something that “decides” (randomly as far as we know) which one it is. And that decision is a kind of collapse of the wave function, no?
I am not a physicist though so this is just me rambling from my limited understanding.
I’m infamous on Reddit as “that moon landing denier gal”. Sorry but I just don’t buy it. No goalpost was safe that decade and you don’t need the analytical videos to tell you that.
What do you think about the event when about Buzz Aldrin punched a moonlanding denier in the face after they called him a coward, liar, and a thief?
Genuinely curious. I know I can’t know for certain - I cant go back in time and ride on that rocket with them. But the guy that supposedly went there seems pretty convinced he did. Even if I did believe it was faked, I’d have a hard time believing he didn’t think he went.
There wouldn’t be any other way I could think of it aside from it being nothing short of escalation. Aldrin’s defenders would later claim the accuser “cornered him”, but this is certainly neither true nor would make sense in the context. Sometimes the narrative is going to do what a narrative does, though I (unlike some here) do not judge others for having different conclusions than me.
My main come back for this: It was the height of the Cold War and the Soviets didnt question it. Also, recently, the Chinese moon missions has photographs of modules left by the Apollo missions on the moon.
To be fair, the Soviets also thought the space race to be all done with once they put their astronauts in orbit, and they weren’t really paying attention when America went to the moon.
At the time anyways. Especially the population at large wasn’t interested. It strikes me as weird to say you’re not interested in proving superiority in a certain field when you are when the whole point of making a statement is to be declarative about it.
If making a statement, why be quiet about it? That ruins the whole point of making a statement like how better someone is at something, doesn’t it? The civilian population in particular didn’t really care.
I don’t understand what you are saying. They had a moon landing program.
Also, do you really think that if the Soviets had the opportunity to embarrass the Americans by proving the landing was fake, they wouldn’t take it? Of course they would. Instead they were able to track the Apollo mission all the way and knew it was real.
But they also said they weren’t interested in the space race. Note that you can be interested in an endeavor other people are interested with without wanting to engage in a “race” with them. In this case they are claimed as being interested in showing off while simultaneously being insecure about said thing. I would be puzzled if someone’s method of showing off was precisely that, to not show off.
You say the rest like they did see it that way, that we absolutely went to the moon. How do you think censorship works? There is plenty of documentation about the case against the moon landing. Despite looking like plot armor though, the power of our culture has promoted the counters to it over it though.
Even if the Soviets had given up on the space race, they still had a vested interest in embarrassing America. They had every motivation to prove that America faked it, but they didn’t do it, because they had all the evidence that it was real. They could track the space craft and listen in on the same signals everyone else did.
All documentation against the moon landing has been thoroughly debunked many times. But you don’t care about that.
You don’t have to trust the Americans, there is plenty of independent third party evidence from multiple sources
You’re welcome. Seeing the reaction, I’m wondering if people read the title of the OP and were expecting popular opinions. Lemmy is more Reddit than Lemmy probably wants to admit.
Well there is not much meaningful discussion to be had about a decades old conspiracy theory that has been memed on plenty in the past. I think that is where the downvotes are coming from.
If that’s the standard, there aren’t really a lot of meaningful discussions anywhere on this thread to be honest. Any documentaries on mothers co-sleeping with infants, humans fighting bears, or one for each of the three people denying the big bang theory?
All of those are more interesting topics than a dumb mega-debunked conspiracy theory. Seems like your standard for interesting is History channel at 2 am?
You say that like the opposing standard for interesting ever had a timeslot on any channel. I wouldn’t hold this against anyone though, I for one am not one to be as judgy or to come to a question like this expecting narrative conformity.
This is all performative. You knew you’d draw ire and that was your goal. Otherwise you probably wouldn’t have announced you’re reddit famous for believing a slew of debunked lies
Science articles that reference paywalled journals you can’t actually read. Most of them are probably making stuff up because they know no one will be able to call them out on it.
First, let me start off by saying that I agree with what I believe your actual premise is (or should be) - that articles in science journals should not be behind paywalls. I’m strictly against the practice, I think it’s a massive scam, and so does everyone I know who does research. I have paid to open source every paper I’ve published. Well, not me personally. But thank you taxpayers for funding me to not only do my work but to make sure you have access to it too. I’ll talk about this more at the end.
With that out of the way, I’d like to mention a couple of things. First, the scam is on the part of the academic journals, not the researchers or the journalists writing the articles. It’s not part of some scam to hide the fact that the journalist is making crap up. If the authors were unwilling or unable to pay the fees for open sourcing their papers ($3-5k when I was doing it several years ago), then you’re either going to be in an institution that has a subscription to the journal or you’re going to have to find some way of acquiring it.
Search for the exact title in quotes. Sometimes the Google Scholar engine will return with the default link to the pay walled page, sometimes it’ll have a link to a prepublication server. Arxiv is one of the more popular ones for physics, math, and computer science of all stripes. Step 2 is to go to the institution web page of the first author. Very often, researchers will keep an updated list of their publications with links to the PDFs. If that still doesn’t work, you can write the author and request the paper. We love those emails. We love it when people read our work, especially when they’re so excited that they wrote to request a copy. None of these involve copyright infringement. That prepub that you get is the same paper (usually but you can confirm with the author if that’s a question), but possibly without the masthead and layout from the journal. It’s still cited the same.
So, why are so many journals behind a paywall? Because the publishers want to monetize what today should be a cost free (or minimal) set of transactions. Here’s what happens:
I have an idea for some research. If it’s good and I’m lucky, I get money from the government (or whomever) to do the work, and I use it to pay my expenses (salaries, materials, equipment, whatever). I also get taxed on it by my institution so they can pay the admins and other costs. When submitting a proposal, those are all line items in your budget. If you’re doing expensive research at an expensive institution, it’s pretty trivial to set aside $10-20k for pub fees. If your entire grant was $35k, that’s a lot harder to justify.
You write the paper after doing the work. You don’t get paid to write the paper specifically - it’s part of the research that you are doing. The point here is that, unlike book authors, researchers see zero of any money you’d pay for the article. If you do locate a copyrighted copy, you’re not taking a dime out of my pocket. Again, just thrilled someone’s reading the damn thing.
You pick a journal and send it in. The journal has a contact list of researchers and their fields, and sends out requests for reviewers. They usually require 2 or 3.
The reviewers read the paper making notes on questions they have and recommend revisions before publication. Reviewing is an unpaid service researchers do because we know that’s how it works. The irony is that it challenges the academic notion of the tragedy of the commons. You could be a freeloader and never review, but enough people do it that the system keeps rolling.
You revise, reviewers approve, publisher accepts and schedules date. There can be some back and forth here (this is a legitimate publisher expense, but the level of effort and interaction isn’t like with a book editor).
Your paper comes out.
As you can see, the role of the publisher is very small in the overall amount of effort put into getting an idea from my head into yours. At one point publishers had an argument that the small circulation numbers for things like The Journal of Theoretical Biology justified their $21k/year institutional subscription price.
And I shouldn’t have saved this til the end, but for the one person who skimmed down to see where all of this was going:
Any science article / press release that cites a paper whether or not you have access to it at least is citing something that has undergone peer review. Peer review can only do so much and journal quality has a wide range, but it’s about the best we have. If it’s a big enough deal to actually matter and the media in question has wide enough reach to care, then it will get back to the author who can then clarify.
Appreciate the thoughtful and in-depth response. My worry is more that a science article’s editorialized interpretation of the paper may be wrong or misleading, than that the public isn’t very able to scrutinize the quality of science in the paper itself. Waiting for a possible email response from a researcher is pretty much always going to be a little too high effort for someone wanting to spend a few minutes comparing claims in the article and claims in the paper to potentially call bullshit on discrepancies between them in an online comment.
I absolutely agree with you there. I just commented a short time ago on an article about the effects of primate vocalizations on the human brain. The article not only got the conclusion of the paper wrong, they got the very nature of evolution wrong. I didn’t even have to read the paper - I haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s admittedly the kind of mistake non-biologists make. Journalists should probably avoid drawing conclusions that aren’t specifically in the source material. My point is that, going off of the author’s quotes the pulled and my own knowledge of evolutionary dynamics, I knew it was wrong. However, I am not at all sure that someone without a background in biology would be able to understand the paper well enough to catch the error in the article.
I am all for open access, and I share your frustration. I think you should be able to access any paper you want for free. But I’ll also say that if you don’t have the background in the subject to know what the underlying paper will have said, the chances are pretty good that you’re not going to understand the paper well enough to find the flaws.
I used to talk to a physicist named Lee Smolin who proposed a Darwinian model for universe formation. I can follow the evolutionary part, but when it gets down to the physics of it, I’m lost at sea. So when I read an article about him - I read something about him recently - I mostly have to go on my basic understanding because there’s no way I’d make it through that paper.
And literally the only reason I’m throwing this out there at all is that, unlike a physics paper that’s totally incomprehensible and obviously so, people believe in their own interpretations on social science or public health papers. I see more kinds of cherry-picking abuses and simple misunderstandings there than elsewhere.
I think most of the time it’s really not going to be as hard as all that, because the problem is something like, article makes broad claim based on a very easy to understand study where the data is results of survey questions. The paper clearly and explicitly outlined caveats and qualifications for their results, but the article chose to ignore these, so all that would be required to call them out on it is basic reading comprehension and the ability to copy paste a brief quote from the paper. Or maybe there are stark, obvious differences between the question asked in a survey and the claim of a clickbait headline.
Even for something more complex, if the paper is well written I think people without a background in the field could get stuff out of it, at least enough to spot direct contradictions between it and a summary. It’s just reading. A lot of people can read and have some higher education.
For that wikipedia article, I think it would make more sense if it expanded on “may differ slightly” and how that interacts with this criticism of black hole information transfer being impossible. Would that criticism imply the parameters for new universes must be always the same? Have infinite variance with no reference point? Not exist at all? Is “may differ slightly” a claim that each universe is a reference point around which the cosmological constants of child universes randomly vary a little bit and then there could be drift based on which constants result in a universe with more black holes? If that stuff was concisely clarified it would probably seem less arcane.
I’ve had a field day while writing my thesis recently, realising I could bypass the paywalls by accessing the papers through the university proxy. It’s still bs, though, because it leaves this stuff only accessible to researchers and not your regular people who may be interested.
Though like PrinceWith999Enemies said, many paper writers will happily send you a copy if you email them about it.
To add onto that, whenever a newspaper says “based on the findings of researchers at [Random University]” but they don’t list the citation anywhere at all. That is just evil, but somehow industry standard.
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