Random thoughts 1: Just Sayin'

[Cheetah]

So just to be perfectly clear here, we're not actually having a real, serious discussion now, right? Multi-paragraph replies seems like overdoing it a bit...

 

[Farm Boy]

There's a tension between "everyone is unique and special" and "nobody is more special." It's the miracle of birth! For the 10 billionth time. It's first love's first precious kiss! For the billionth time this century. But that doesn't mean it isn't special and one of a kind. I only get one me. Me only gets one first kiss, one first love. It is special, and it's not. Partly it's special because it's relatable, which means it wasn't entirely unique. It's a hard word to apply the right way. Precious, invaluable, priceless - those may work better as concepts depending on context.

Yes/no/potato? Did I get enough sleep last night?

Sorry, got distracted by "Random Thoughts" Cheetah. It's kinda most of them.

 

[Takhisis]

what's identity

For you, Denmark.

Yes/no/potato? Did I get enough sleep last night?

Radioative monkeys.

 

[Lohrenswald]

You're not funny

 

[Synobun]

I think @Takhisis is hilarious.

 

[Lohrenswald]

You think wrong

 

[choxorn]

Radioative monkeys.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Why does being called a snowflake sting so badly?

Snowflake as an insult doesn't refer only to the uniqueness that you think you have but in fact share with everybody else. Snowflake as an insult adds fragility to the mix. Snowflakes think they're special, but as soon as they meet with any adversity, that specialness doesn't turn out to do any thing for them, and they just melt away under the adversity.

 

[W|M]

Moderator Action: Graphic images of dead bodies are not allowed, even in spoiler tags. FP
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Traitorfish]

Tribe.

I'm not sure that's the dynamic we're actually seeing, in campus identity politics, or at least not the way you'd think. Tribalism means picking a group and following it to the ends of the Earth; all alternative group-memberships must be suppressed to that end. In the world of campus identity politics, identities are collected, cultivated, and the greatest prestige accrues to the person with the most diverse collection. If there's a "tribe", it's the hazily-defined category of "people who participate in this dynamic", which at this point is just about everybody under thirty who's ever studied for an arts degree, to some extent or another.

 

[Lohrenswald]

What's Identity, then?

 

[Bootstoots]

You kidding? Water is obscenely wonderful! I'd put it right behind air and not by much.

Yeah, me too. It's almost like I'm a bag of mostly water, just like every other life form on Earth. Except the ones that can survive dehydrated like brine shrimp and tardigrades, but it's hard to say they're really alive when they get dried out - there's no biological activity, but they protect their cells so that it can resume when water shows back up. They die in a reversible way, then come back to life when re-hydrated.

It's fun to speculate about alternate biochemistries using methane or ammonia in place of water. Ammonia's pretty straightforward: it's just a different polar molecule. But methane is totally non-polar. On Titan, the surface temp is 95 K/-178 C/-288 F, but there are good reasons to speculate about alternate types of life that might exist on its surface. Water ice would be the main type of rock, and the vast lakes of methane/ethane would serve like the seas on Earth do. There's a methane cycle that works like the water cycle does on Earth. Most of the chemical polarities get reversed for life in a non-polar solvent, and it would need a different type of cell membrane; one possibility was discovered in 2015. Energy might be derived by reducing acetylene, ethylene, and the like to methane, using hydrogen (which Titan has plenty of) in the process.

Titanians would see oxygen as a ludicrously toxic and flammable chemical, even worse than what we think of chlorine. I like to think they launched a space telescope once, saw Earth, and dismissed life here as impossible because of all that nasty oxygen.

From this Wiki article:

Spoiler Speculations about life on Titan :

Methane and other hydrocarbons[edit]
Methane (CH4) is a simple hydrocarbon: that is, a compound of two of the most common elements in the cosmos, hydrogen and carbon. It has a cosmic abundance comparable with ammonia.[42] Hydrocarbons could act as a solvent over a wide range of temperatures, but would lack polarity. Isaac Asimov, the biochemist and science fiction writer, suggested in 1981 that poly-lipids could form a substitute for proteins in a non-polar solvent such as methane.[42] Lakes composed of a mixture of hydrocarbons, including methane and ethane, have been detected on the surface of Titan by the Cassini spacecraft.

There is debate about the effectiveness of methane and other hydrocarbons as a solvent for life compared to water or ammonia.[48][49][50] Water is a stronger solvent than the hydrocarbons, enabling easier transport of substances in a cell.[51] However, water is also more chemically reactive, and can break down large organic molecules through hydrolysis.[48] A life-form whose solvent was a hydrocarbon would not face the threat of its biomolecules being destroyed in this way.[48] Also, the water molecule's tendency to form strong hydrogen bonds can interfere with internal hydrogen bonding in complex organic molecules.[41] Life with a hydrocarbon solvent could make more use of hydrogen bonds within its biomolecules.[48] Moreover, the strength of hydrogen bonds within biomolecules would be appropriate to a low-temperature biochemistry.[48]

Astrobiologist Chris McKay has argued, on thermodynamic grounds, that if life does exist on Titan's surface, using hydrocarbons as a solvent, it is likely also to use the more complex hydrocarbons as an energy source by reacting them with hydrogen, reducing ethane and acetylene to methane.[52] Possible evidence for this form of life on Titan was identified in 2010 by Darrell Strobel of Johns Hopkins University; a greater abundance of molecular hydrogen in the upper atmospheric layers of Titan compared to the lower layers, arguing for a downward diffusion at a rate of roughly 1025 molecules per second and disappearance of hydrogen near Titan's surface. As Strobel noted, his findings were in line with the effects Chris McKay had predicted if methanogenic life-forms were present.[51][52][53] The same year, another study showed low levels of acetylene on Titan's surface, which were interpreted by Chris McKay as consistent with the hypothesis of organisms reducing acetylene to methane.[51] While restating the biological hypothesis, McKay cautioned that other explanations for the hydrogen and acetylene findings are to be considered more likely: the possibilities of yet unidentified physical or chemical processes (e.g. a non-living surface catalyst enabling acetylene to react with hydrogen), or flaws in the current models of material flow.[54] He noted that even a non-biological catalyst effective at 95 K would in itself be a startling discovery.[54]

A hypothetical cell membrane capable of functioning in liquid methane in Titan conditions was computer-modeled in February 2015. Composed of small molecules that contain carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, it would have the same stability and flexibility as cell membranes on Earth, which are composed of phospholipids, compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus. This hypothetical cell membrane was termed an "azotosome", a classical compound made of "azote", French for nitrogen, and "soma", Greek for body, by analogy with "liposome".[55][/quote]

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I would think unfortunately that life on Titan would be stuck permanently in low-gear due to a lack of energy. What I mean is that there just isn't enough free energy from the sun or geological processes (that we know of) to power life much beyond the pond-scum phase. And I suspect that if Titan had more energy then life (if it exists there) would have taken much more Earth-like characteristics as the things that make Titan unique (ice rock and free hydrocarbons) would have broken down and make the moon a lot more like Earth.

 

[azzaman333]

Have a mostly full goon sack. Options are go hard, binge the lot and really cluck myself up, or spread out the hate to my body across a few separate sessions. Other question is when to hit it. I have no obligations or commitments in my life at the moment, so I can theoretically do it whenever.

 

[Farm Boy]

Snowflake as an insult doesn't refer only to the uniqueness that you think you have but in fact share with everybody else. Snowflake as an insult adds fragility to the mix. Snowflakes think they're special, but as soon as they meet with any adversity, that specialness doesn't turn out to do any thing for them, and they just melt away under the adversity.

Snowflakes are special. Just like everyone else. The fragility is contingent upon the isolation that would allow for sparkling more by comparison. Skoosh them together and they're both firm and insulating. Blow them all the in the same direction and they scour. Melt them together and then they're water, perhaps a flood, but they aren't just a drip.

I'm not sure that's the dynamic we're actually seeing, in campus identity politics, or at least not the way you'd think. Tribalism means picking a group and following it to the ends of the Earth; all alternative group-memberships must be suppressed to that end. In the world of campus identity politics, identities are collected, cultivated, and the greatest prestige accrues to the person with the most diverse collection. If there's a "tribe", it's the hazily-defined category of "people who participate in this dynamic", which at this point is just about everybody under thirty who's ever studied for an arts degree, to some extent or another.

You're probably right, I was answering too broadly. I kept having the impulse to liken this specific aspect not merely to water but also to binge drinking, something that's heady upon discovery but also something one tires of if they want to remain healthy and kind.

Should I narrow this to pea cocking?

I would think unfortunately that life on Titan would be stuck permanently in low-gear due to a lack of energy.

Any thoughts on Europa?

 

[Arakhor]

Have a mostly full goon sack. Options are go hard, binge the lot and really cluck myself up, or spread out the hate to my body across a few separate sessions. Other question is when to hit it. I have no obligations or commitments in my life at the moment, so I can theoretically do it whenever.

Invite over a friend or two and maybe watch a bad film whilst you're at it? Drinking alone is never fun.

 

[azzaman333]

Invite over a friend or two and maybe watch a bad film whilst you're at it? Drinking alone is never fun.

I'd rather drink alone so I don't have to go outside the house to avoid my family judging me, I can just stay in my room on my laptop. Also I don't want to be a bad influence on my friends, just because I don't really care about the consequences to myself doesn't mean that their lives should be screwed up too.

 

[Farm Boy]

Daw, it's more fun watching Arnold be Arnold if you have people to experience his growth as an actor and English speaker.

Spoiler :

But I hears ya. Don't always want people in my space either.

 

[Traitorfish]

What's Identity, then?

A can of worms.

 

[Lohrenswald]

this is getting worse and worse