Perenti

I knew a few people when I was young (20s) that "pot does nothing" to them. Then one day they took a toke from a joint going round and were totally munged.

I've seen it a few times, and I have no idea why it's like that for some people.

History has shown that _bad_ education about substances doesn't work, as most kids know that pot rarely turns you into an axe wielding homicidal maniac. Educate using the truth - pot probably won't turn you crazy, but it might cost a lot of money and waste a lot of time.

As a population based study, how did they control for other substances? Acid in particular is notorious for flashbacks years later that can be psychotic. I also note that the period in question is also associated with massive increase in methamphetamine abuse. Greater access to THC being associated with an increase in crazy people using it makes complete sense, but is a causal link between legislation and schizophrenia really demonstrated amongst chronic potheads (the study is about psychosis in people with CAD), that being the subject of the paper?

I have a "smart guitar" that needs the app to change settings. It's the only thing keeping me on a "smart" phone.

From a phylogenetic perspective, whales are fish.

So are we.

Can I hallucinate answers in an interview, and have them rated as acceptable?

Freedom of Speech.

Democracy.

Equality.

Equity.

I used to know what these words meant, but it seems the old definitions are no longer fit for purpose.

I've consumed far more than my fair share of cannabis, starting at age 19. I'm also almost certainly ADHD (according to friend who's a psychiatrist, but says I'm untestable), and have a meaninglessly high IQ.

I've noticed that amongst very slow people, more _seem_ to have started smoking dope at a very young age (9 to 12). The idea that pot could be very bad for adolescents in particular is not a new one. I certainly feel slowed down by it, although as the study says, it's working memory that's affected.

I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I'd met weed at say 30yo. Would the final stages of "maturing" have played out very differently?

I'm reminded of how in GEB by Hoffstaeder (sp?) the tortoise creates a recording that destroys any device you play it on.

Vaping is safer, but calling it a "life-saving habit" is a stretch.

Your logic is the same as "picking up a rattlesnake is OK because it's not as deadly as a taipan".

Here in Oz the banning of disposable nicotine vapes has led to an increase in organised crime activity.

Schoolkids are getting the vapes without any problems.

Great idea, but poorly implemented. I'll be interested to see Belgium avoids the issues we're having here in Australia.

Firefox 133 no play now button at all. only "sign up" and "log in".

No. There is no such button on my Firefox. Nor anything about who wrote this, what it is, or what it does. Lots of social media "invite" type things though.

No "Play now" button on Firefox for me, only "Sign up" and "Log in".

No corporate webpages, only anti-social media links to invite people.

No "FAQ", "About" etc links.

Not human friendly.

Sorry, but if I can't see what it's about without an account I don't want to know.

I feel doubtful about this article. They claim that the man-o-war is the largest colonial organisms, but there are HUGE siphonophores that are 100m long.

I find it interesting that the vast majority of comments seem to focus on race and politics, and only one that I noticed that mentions social media and phones as possible factors.

I'm quite ignorant about my phone. I struggle to send someone a photo with it. Every time I have to interact with android for anything trickier than making a phone call or sending a text I just end up angry and frustrated.

I don't use apps on my phone except for phone calls and texts, mostly because I have no clues whatsoever.

I'm probably in your target audience, but:

1) Too expensive for something I'm not convinced will improve my life (it seems to me that people who know how to use smartphones spend 90%+ of their free time looking at it, rather than interacting with real live people), which leads to

2) How will learning this make my life better?

The way to give this teeth is for any proposed law to charge the parent or guardian of social networking children, as well as the social networking site. Once it hits the parents' pockets they'll start to get involved in their kids lives and see what they're looking at on the web.

13-15 is when the brain is driven mostly by hormones, not thought. It's worst at 14. 14 is NOT the age to let teens off their leash.

I'm one of those people who find maths really easy. I've also had extensive experience working in mathematics education, from primary to tertiary levels. I've even written policy for our state education department.

You are spot on the money. I've seen "progressive" educators who believe that technology, including CAS is the answer to teaching calculus to high school and tertiary students. I think the tech is mostly useful _pedagogically_ after the student has a very firm grip on the content. Using it as a shortcut to "real world problems" leaves the student with no real understanding of the dynamics/functions involved, leading in turn to believing the machines are magic and always right, regardless of whether you've hit all the right buttons in the right order.

The most extreme example of this I've seen was in a classroom I was auditing. The students were learning about harmonic motion and trig functions by using a mass on a spring and an ultrasonic transducer. The students were told to "keep all the digits, because the machine gave them". Students were doing sums with 14 significant digits. When I pointed out that most of them were meaningless, being measures in the Angstrom range, the "teacher" said "the machine gives those figures".

Even when I pointed out that measuring 10^-14 m required a very high frequency, which meant high energy, all supposedly from AA batteries that last for months, he agreed that it did seem strange, but after all, the "machine gave the figures".

The man teaching (he was head of department AND author of the state mathematics syllabus) was unaware that only fractions with denominators with only 2 and 5 as factors can be expressed exactly in binary without using custom datatypes and arithmetic logic.

Now as I said, for me maths is easy. It's not for most people. Most people won't grasp it all as "but that's obvious", so for these people having the skills to check the result the machine gives is vital if they are not to cause all sorts of fun as bridges collapse, cars explode and mortgages go into default. Those skills are developed by doing it by hand, and learning what numbers change in what ways.

TL;DR Modern trend to use CAS in mathematics education is well intentioned but misled, in this retired maths educators very informed opinion.

Two of my housemates have just bought new iPhone 16 Pro and ProMax. Between them, and associated accessories, it's cost them over AUD$5k. My phone is a cheap android, and cost AUD$290.

I can't see where they get 10 times the value. Yes, it's got a better camera.

Where is the value with iPhone?

The original Conan story is set in the 4th century, but the earliest stories date from the 12th century. He settled Brittany/Armorica whilst fighting for the usurper Emporer Magnus Maximus. His name seems to relate to Conan the Barbarian (cutting down the men and cutting out the tongues of women) and Meriadoc Brandybuck the hobbit who swore to the House of Rohan. The House of Rohan were the Breton rulers who claimed descent from Conan. A coincidence?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_Meriadoc

ACE of 8, IQ 170+, did absurdly well at High School. Am diagnosed ASD (at 50 years old) , have a psych friend say I'm ADHD but untestable.

I've had incredible highs (University Medal for example) in between various crises. My life is pretty shit, and I'll die alone. It took me a very very long time to learn to have nothing to do with family.

You're doing better than I am at this time.

I struggle with ripeness, I'm deuteroanomalous, and on the green/red dimension I can really stuff it up with some fruits.

I've noticed I'm far more likely to try to eat underripe fruit and veg than the non-colourblind majority. This is probably due to my lower sensitivity to green, and how brown/red gets mixed up with green.

There's only a handful of things I won't eat, that others mistake for food. They are: Lamb's Fry, Kidney, Pumpkin, Beetroot, Parsnip, Natto.

Colour plays no part in this choice - they simply taste bad.

It would be a nice change to see people walking around with their organs out, rather than laying in the gutter or the bottle shop car-park.

I did, as a kid. Blew up the kitchen. Got good at home chemistry.

Still do at times, but it's much harder to get the good stuff, like KNO3.

The quoted size is when contracted. They often exceed 2m or more.

Variance in Science is the square of the standard deviation. Since you are talking about a scientific issue, and discussing measurements, and since you claim to have a BSc it is reasonable to expect the word to be used in a technical context.

All history is recorded history BY DEFINITION.

You shouldn't be waving your degree around, you plainly are not a scientist.

As to your understanding of this, consider tossing a coin, and getting heads. For one coin it's a 1/2 chance. For 2 in a row it's 1/4. For 100 the chance is 1/(2^100) which is about 10^-30, a vanishingly small chance.

Now let's take the last 100 years of climate data from phoenix, we can estimate the chance of any day being over 100F from the data, and from that the chance of 100 days straight of over 100F.

Given that less than half of the time it's over 100F in Phoenix, the odds of having 100 days in a row over 100F is less than 10^-30.

This is 1st year science. Your very first data analysis course.