What’s the flashing thing at the top?
/s
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Mistletoe
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Certainly worth kissing under, yes.
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… so are they going to start making modern concrete better now
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Pretty damn cool.
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In short, if the new hypothesis is accurate, it shows that our Paleolithic ancestors “were almost certainly as cognitively advanced as we are” and “that they are fully modern humans,” Bacon told Motherboard. It also means “that their society achieved great art, use of numbers, and writing” and “that reading more of their writing system may allow us to gain an insight into their beliefs and cultural values,” he concluded.
It never ceases to amaze me how we seem to require extraordinary proof that “primitive” or “archaic” humans were as smart, observant and tuned to their environment as we are, especially since, for them, this was a matter of surviving or not. Tends to be a pretty strong motivator!
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It all springs from the idea that there is a progression of improvement, with the pinnacle of perfection being the Victorian gentleman. Any information contradicting this must be ignored.
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That works quite well if you replace improvement with assholism.
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Writing and numeracy.
And these were likely skills they brought with them when humans migrated to Europe.
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I think these are sort of just prior to written language and writing, as the neat thing about letters is that they don’t have to have any actual relation to the concept they embody. These are a picture of an animal, and the Y is possibly a symbol of birth, numeracy I don’t know enough about to say if it’s the same abstraction that makes it, as these are just repeated until you arrive at the number you want to represent.
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And they may have migrated by boat. I posted this just recently in another thread.
By “sail”, I think the writer means “travel by water” rather than travelling using wind power, but who knows? The article makes it clear that he means boats predate modern humans.
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mRNA vaccines helped us through the covid-19 pandemic
Wish this was in the present tense, because that COVID universal vaccine is still being tested.
“It’s crystal clear that if you start vaccine development in the middle of a pandemic, it’s already too late.”
Is it? Asking for folks who survived the current pandemic because of scientists who did exactly that. I agree it would be great to be proactive instead of reactive. Still, I’m glad we have relatively rapid response in the face of unforeseen outbreaks.
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The best time is 5 years ago. Second best is right now.
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So here is a fascinating, if decidedly non-mainstream, concept:
Several scientists told Vox that there are significant issues with the study design. The authors didn’t adequately control variables that can influence leaf shape, such as the age of the leaves, for example, they said. Mainstream researchers also challenge the underlying theory of plant vision. Certain plant cells may be able to act like lenses that can focus light, but they likely can’t create any sort of detailed pictures.
I think that the concept that plants have a sort of consciousness, even some alien form of neurological function, is worth exploring. The fact that this guy can imitate the leaves of plastic plants growing nearby is tough to write off.
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Who had “Controlling Lightning” on their tech BINGO card?
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Well, it wasn’t on the tech one… more like a fervent wish whenever TFG was touching a bible or standing near a church. 
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