tristynalxander

I admit that the ionic liquids are an interesting concept for strange life. That said, most the ones they have look far too complex to have formed by any natural process in any meaningful amount, and anything that could form naturally doesn't seem likely to have good a temperature range for compatible polymers. Maybe there's something weird I'm missing (something that increases the NH3 liquid range and doesn't react with siloconates or something crazy like that), but I'd be extremely skeptical of life without water.

Americans would be very offended if we could read.

We spent decades destroying our education system and you didn't even mention it, do our efforts mean nothing to you?

I'm more in protein design than origin of life, so it may be that people in that field have more informed opinions. That said, I think most people agree that life on earth, regardless of where it started out, started with self-assembling self-replicating RNAs, so the logic is pretty simply that if we're finding nucleic acids out in space it's likely the same life. Unlike amino-acids which are the smallest polymer with a solvent byproduct, there's nothing about nucleic acids that makes that molecule (those base pairs or closely related bases) special or optimal. I'm more protein than RNA, so maybe someone else has a different opinion, but to me it seems like it'd be almost trivial to come up with alternative bases or even modified backbones that meet the broad requirements of folding (for functions) and dimerizing (for genes).

Additionally, (and I know a lot less about this) apparently Mars had a lot of water for quite some time but loss most of it due to the lack of a magnetic field. So add in some asteroids flinging stuff off the planet and the timeline may add up.

Panspermia may not be the right term. I think panspermia is generally discussed among the public as life coming from outside the solar system, and I think most scientists would be extremely skeptical of that notion. Space is a really harsh environment and the odds of randomly getting between solar systems in bad before you start talking about survival parameters. I suspect you'd find more people who think an in-solar-system panspermia event occurred than life evolving twice in one solar system and both converged on the same base genetic molecules, and it's increasingly obvious that the life on mars hypothesis is at least worth testing, so that's the narrative. Perhaps I should've said Mars-spermia.

I''m a molecular biologist, so this is tangentially related to my field. I think there's even odds life originated on mars then hopped to earth. NASA has been laying the ground work for a sample return mission for a while now to prove this one way or the other, but apparently the evidence has been mounting for decades.

It'll be pretty easy to tell once they get some uncontaminated mars rocks. While a lot of life works the way it does because it has to or because it's optimal for evolution, there's no accounting for chirality in amino acids (though amino acids in general are arguably inevitable) and nucleic acids are also probably unique to our form of life -- at least I haven't heard or thought of a reason nucleic acids specifically (not some other folding semi-dimer molecule) would be inevitable. There's also certain amino acid side chains that seem unlikely to be shared; though, unshared side chains would mean little.

It'd actually be a bit sad if life originated on mars as people would suddenly be a lot more interested in searching the stars for life, but the chances of finding it would dramatically drop as a single panspermia event would strongly suggest that complex life requires much more time to evolve than most planets have as a habitable lifespan. I suppose an optimist could argue that humanity is early and/or lucky.

I recently learned about it from Benn Jordan -- I think his anarchism video referenced both Metastatic and Reticulum. They've kinda been stuck in my head since I have a unihertz atom phone that's supposed to have built in radio (400-480mhz). Was thinking I might see if I can set something up on that. I'm sure someone has already set something up on android, but I haven't made the time yet.

Plus, unrealistic standards just shrinks their already small dating pool. With a bit of luck evolution will take care of the fascists all on its own.

Countries shouldn't respect medical intellectual properties in the first place. What the WTO has done to African nations in coercing them into these "agreements" is morally reprehensible. In fact, I'm increasingly in agreement with that British economist who's been pushing African Countries to enact currency controls, which she argues will allow them to be more independent of the US global currency system.

Honestly, what's even the point of having a country without a currency you control independent of the whims of whatever fascist my fellow Americans elect.

anybody who can’t see that is a sociopath or worse.

really, really stupid?

Love that quote.

Yeah, there are definitely a lot of times where money is important as a measure of the logistical practicality, and I actually do respect those practicalities... but some days it feel like the world has been taken over by people more fixated on getting money than making the world better. At the very least, there are other social-constructs worth balancing against the financial considerations.

My advice is to switch each of your programs to the open source version one by one before you switch to a new operating system. It lowers the barrier since there's less new stuff to learn at any given point of the process. Also, linux-for-windows subsystem if you're on windows -- then go to mint instead of Ubuntu. If your on apple, learn the terminal there, then go to Ubuntu.

It's wild that ~~people~~ politicians think they're going to legislate linux into age verification -- as if the community isn't half DIY techies who'd sooner set up shop in international waters than change their preferred settings.