Messages

I'll go unblock you.

I can't promise you can keep my interest, but I will, for as long as it takes me to not forget this is here, respond to your embarrassing obsession.

What did you want to say to me?

OMG I love these, Bobby!

Shush squirel-boy. Also, Howl, stop picking on Nigel, I'm trying to get into that honeypot.

I honestly keep trying to figure out what you could possibly mean using the word "honeypot" in reference to me here, and drawing a blank. Why would you try to get INTO one?

Respondent is also having a bit of a laugh at all the suckers lining up to welcome her toxic ass back.  Humans are stupid and never learn.

It has been my observation that when long-term members of a forum return after an extended hiatus, to be widely welcomed back by other long-termers, they almost invariably don't stay long.  Once the first flush of nostalgia wears off, they discover that the reasons they originally left that forum are still in full effect.

Yeah, pretty much. I was feeling super lonely and nostalgic, and maybe kinda wanting to recall happier days, so I came here. But of course, you can never really go back again.

Look, ok, in my view, the bible IS truth... in the way an elder educates a toddler. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation. The toddler is now grown, to believe in Santa Claus is fucking foolish, well, except there's the whole regiment of Santa's Little Inquisition, which will nail you for heresy if you believe that Santa exists more in the symbolic sense to encourage us to be more generous with eachother.

I got in this discussion in a bar last night with an atheist, and I'm like, "Look, dude, think about the target audience, how do you think society would be different if the angel of the lord just started rambling about dinosaurs and explosions to begin with?"

I am pretty sure most religion is basically a very primitive attempt at science, in which crude observations of natural laws are attributed to an invisible hand. It's a lot like Libertarian economic logic.

Well, you can say the same about alchemy, and you know Isaac Newton was totally into that shit. You can't turn lead into gold, but alchemy actually makes sense if you assume they're talking about something other than, literal lead, and literal gold. I'm a bit biased, I'm actually convinced there is a God and that Jesus Christ was the Messiah...I know, it sounds crazy, maybe it IS crazy. Last night I was talking with my neighbor, and he cackled delightedtly when I was like, "What makes all this stupidity worth it is when, ok, imagine this, these good ol' boy hateful southern racist christians are going to die, get to heaven, and realize God is a black man."...

Yeah, everybody starts somewhere. It doesn't start to get weird until the state of discovery is way beyond those early starting points, but people cling to the early works and deny the later ones have validity.

Old people vote in larger percentages. 


Yes, I am blaming the young for not caring enough.

Don't forget about good ol' voter suppression, too. I can't help noticing that the leading Presidential hopefuls aren't making that a prominent part of their platforms.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/434007-ending-voter-suppression-is-the-whole-game-in-2020?fbclid=IwAR2UQ4Pyl6HxrDQwYadpj7cImgRESQO2brYEm-cWdmb0zbe_1xMU9v_zJT4

I actually like Nigel... I guess I should beware of the honeypot.

I get the impression I'm being talked about. Funny.

Look, ok, in my view, the bible IS truth... in the way an elder educates a toddler. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation. The toddler is now grown, to believe in Santa Claus is fucking foolish, well, except there's the whole regiment of Santa's Little Inquisition, which will nail you for heresy if you believe that Santa exists more in the symbolic sense to encourage us to be more generous with eachother.

I got in this discussion in a bar last night with an atheist, and I'm like, "Look, dude, think about the target audience, how do you think society would be different if the angel of the lord just started rambling about dinosaurs and explosions to begin with?"

I am pretty sure most religion is basically a very primitive attempt at science, in which crude observations of natural laws are attributed to an invisible hand. It's a lot like Libertarian economic logic.

Well hello again Nigel! Welcome back to PD. 

Thanks!

wow. That's a lot of really interesting stuff that is weirdly relevant to me! (I could probably be a damned case study in your epigenetics thing, and maybe unrelatedly???my sleep cycle is so broken that I just last night double-dosed on sedatives and only slept two hours despite desperately aiming for 7+.)

Anywhere you're putting any of this out, or is it more of a general research (as opposed to scientific or academic) or saving for publication sorta deal right now? I'd love to read more about it all, as I said, it's almost creepily relevant to my life.

My first incredibly boring paper on circadian-relevant hormonal pathways will be published as a collaboration sometime next year, but since I just transitioned from basic research to epidemiology last Fall, it's gonna be a while before any of my current work is published. In the meantime, this paper may be of interest to you (let me know if you're unable to access it and I'll see if I can find a version that isn't behind a paywall, it's not always clear whether it's paywalled or not on my end): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31026301

Hey, Nigel, awesome! If you ever want to talk to someone with severe social deficiencies, assloads of developmental stress as well as a tendency to go nocturnal, pm me.

Sounds like a laugh riot!

Seriously though, one of the reasons I'm so interested in this topic is that these issues you are experiencing are pervasive and increasing in our society. We tend to assume that health is driven by behavior, and it's just that in my behavioral neuroendocrinology training I started to see things the other way around. 

I took last week off work to attend gardening horticulture classes at the local university, and one day I partook of a tour of the agriculture greenhouses.

At one point, the tour guide was showing off a greenhouse equipped with shades, and recounted how a researcher was having trouble getting a particular set of plants to flower, until she noted that the plants originated from Ecuador.  So, they used the shades to produce a 50% day/night cycle, and the plants began flowering.  (These greenhouses are above 52° N.  Equal length days and nights aren't something we do here).

It would be interesting if individual (human) reactions to photoperiod was partially dependent on geographic origin.  After all, lighter skin colour appears to be an adaptation to the amount of sunlight.

That is a very interesting question, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is true. After all, circadian clock programming is determined partially through DNA methylation, and differential DNA methylation may occur during pregnancy, priming the fetus' wake-sleep rhythms to match the mother's. Interestingly, the time of day you are born matters; night babies are at higher risk for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia than day babies, and there is evidence of circadian disruption in both those diseases.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is nowhere on earth a 16/8 photoperiod occurs naturally year-round.

That's awesome! I'm glad to hear it's been good for you, and it's good seeing you around here again.

Thanks! I've gotten really interested in epigenetics and the social determinants of health, and particularly on the effects of early-life stress on later-life health. I'm especially into housing insecurity stress, and also, right now, kind of obsessed with how circadian disruption affects health. My MS thesis was on a circadian-derived reproductive process, which really got me hooked on circadian research. We have created an artificial year-round 16/8 photoperiod for ourselves, which is so different from our evolutionary photoperiod that I feel, given  the strong influence of photoperiod on metabolism and reproduction, can't help but have disruptive effects, like imagine it was midsummer in Copenhagen. What is your body going to think it's time to do? It's gonna be all oh, shit, winter is coming! And this effect should be worse the more extreme our human-made photoperiod is. It's especially concerning that most Americans get only 6-7 hours sleep a night, and our indoor lighting has transitioned from mostly medium and long-wave to a lot of short-wave and full spectrum light, because that's the kind of light our brains use to determine how long the days are.

Hey spags.

I can't weigh in on Game of Thrones, because I quit watching it, but hey.

Hey! How have things been?

Pretty brilliant until last week, actually. I got a Masters degree in neurobiology and stuff. Now I'm in an epidemiology program learning to be John Snow.

Hey spags.

I can't weigh in on Game of Thrones, because I quit watching it, but hey.

Well, hey!

Just a quick recap: the Chair of Swords became sentient and ate a dragon egg which caused it to evolve like a pokemon into the Chair of Guns and it shoots laser beams out of it's eyestalks and now everybody wants to sit on Tyrion, especially the Chair of Guns, who is now married to Galadriel.

That sounds like the best ending ever.

Hey spags.

I can't weigh in on Game of Thrones, because I quit watching it, but hey.

Apparently, rather than trying to get people to be decent to each other and stop fucking their own habitat up, social justice advocates actually hate all humanity and have no hope for the future whatsoever, is what I'm getting out of this.

That, and also the big glaring question of why an abusive, manipulative pathological liar known primarily for his remarkable ability to carry a grudge over shit he imagined has mod powers on this forum, which at one point in time was great due to its focus on critical thinking.

I think I'm going to assume that the thread title chosen reflects the new tenor of the forum.

Have fun with that!