I had explained here yet at least a couple of times why the seaweed plan will not work.
In short, Farting is a byproduct of the normal work of a healthy cow stomach. If your cows don't fart, the cows are starving and will not grow (neither well, nor fast enough). The milk may even have a funny taste, so your career as farmer will not last. The entire job of a farmer is to raise the cattle to market grade as fast as is biologically possible
Giving cows a diet of seaweed is like trying to breed your baby on a whole diet of painkillers and aspirin.
Economically it does not make sense either, because this seaweed are a scarce valuable resource. They are difficult to regenerate, expensive to harvest, and are sold yet to industry for <bigger amount of money>.
But don't trust me. The best proof that it will not work is that in 20 years nothing came of it.
I wouldn't advice to put any of your money on this idea that was obviously dumb from the start: Seaweeds are sought for their antibiotic properties, and cows need its gut microbiome alive to break the cellulose into sugars. Sold the seaweed and buy steaks instead with the money.
Some wildfires started in June, but the situation exploded after Ankara Summit in July 8 2026. Fires near Oslo, Ottawa, Toronto, Paris, Bordeaux, Madrid, Malaga, Naples, The West coast of US, Istambul. Yep even Turkey, the host of the NATO meeting is burning. All in just a couple of weeks.
Arsonists detained in France, Spain and UK. In Calabria there are even reports of cats with flammable soaked rags tied to its tails, set on fire and released in the fields, they had found also candles lit among flammable rags, and delayed ignition devices [1]. This is everything except a natural disaster. Hybrid war. Don't look no further.
NATO is burning. This is a fact. More than 5000 critical-level wildfires active in USA and Canada West coast.
China and Russia are doing relatively well at least. Except by Volgograd Oblast, that is boiling, and some Siberian activity below the expected average, most of Russia is quiet. China has less active wildfires than Spain.
And if you think that this, or the 652 wildfires in France and other 670 in Spain are bad, check the more than 30.000 critical-level wildfires active in Angola, Zambia and other African countries. African rainforest is a smoking disaster right now.
All that we know is that the doctor carefully guided the patient out of the intervention, flashing a value that nobody had introduced before in the conversation. Is unclear WHY without more information.
The fair possibility is that it would be not the best choice for the patient,
But other possibility could be a schedule problem with the doctor holidays for example.
Or that it would be too expensive for the hospital
Or that they didn't have the materials or the experience
To go forward with this operations the interests of the patient, the doctor and the hospital must match. Sometimes only two parts benefit from it.
"Scientists bad because I don't understand statistics" is boring. Just because you decided that is a meaningless variable does not mean that it is.
P-hacking doesn't mean doing a lot of experiments. This is called working hard or going the extra mile. Working hard is not cheating. That the real scientists would do is frown upon the green jellybean result, think "hum, this is strange" and test further for effects of the green dye in other products. Science knowledge is in-cre-men-tal.
P-hacking is: changing the statistical model that you use to analyze the data, until you find one that gives you the desired (publishable) p-value.
P-hacking is manipulating the methodology in your favor and sometimes grooming the data also. All of that while ignoring other models available known to be more robust, precise and better for your particular case. This is why p-hacking is cheating.
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Second. There are a market for fake supplements because, to express it crudely: people is idiot and the government does not care about them.
1) Some people didn't cared to learn even basic biology at the school, and will believe that the moon is made of cheese if it comes from somebody in their tribal team. Scientists take a lot of pain to assure that their knowledge is available to the public.
There are thousands of scientific articles about creatine. Never has been so easy in the history to find them. And with AI, you don't even need to read the whole horror anymore, to have a general idea of cons and pros before to jump in the water. Do your f*k homework before to gulp a mysterious pill. If not. Don't blame scientists later.
2) The government make laws. Is not scientists fault, if it allows to sell legally dubious supplements, or even more if politicians profit of it, (ehum, mandated testosterone tests for every soldier, ka-ching!).
Their job is to protect citizens from scammers. Most countries ban anything that is remotely medical and not proven effective, or at least advice strongly against taking it.
This is exactly my point. They are not repeating experiments. Each one is a different one, and independent of the other, because the chemicals in each color are different. The cartoon don't show any data that proves that this is a random correlation, because they are not testing what you think that they are testing. Jellybeans here are irrelevant (They are present in both groups, the control and the experiment). It may be, or not be, a random correlation, we can't know at this point. And this leads us directly to the next line:
> A positive result is no more deserving of further investigation than a negative result.
This is not how science works.
Your null hypothesis is rejected, you publish and continue trying to explain why. Otherwise you stop and try something different.
Films have sold us the idea that science can be done in the countdown of a bomb, experiments take 30 seconds; and if it does not work in the first try, it means that you are not a real genius. The weird guys build a time machine in a weekend with empty cans of soda, and the hackers broke into high security buildings with a paperclip and then remove their glasses and nobody recognizes then anymore. Yeah. Master of disguise. This Big Bird costume pays for itself every time we break into the Pentagon. G'morning Mr Hegseth
But this is a fantasy, not the real life. Scientists stumble and limp all the way. Even the geniuses. Specially the geniuses. And they faint at the price of the required spare part that must be ordered and imported from one, and only one, company in Finland, and will be here in five months. Meanwhile, researchers throw things to the wall to see what sticks, and laser focus on the unexpected strange result that is different in a subtle way, because their grants depend on it.
Just the green ones. If they found a link, they found a link
I'm sure that the comic wants to be sarcastic but is missing the mark here. This is how science works. Trying and failing every color except green, does not mean that the green experiment has an invalid result.
The author is not understanding that each experiment is independent.
The correct cartoon should show researchers trying green jellybeans 100 times, with 99 negative results and one positive result, and then the press keeping only the positive (Or in this comic, claiming that all jellybeans produce acne).
Mocking the scientific method, and showing scientists as lazy people that play video-games is funny, but is just a cartoon, not the reality. People should not take XKCD as god's speech without any critical thinking. This in your workplace says to me "I don't really understand statistics".
There is an effect that is statistically rare just by chance, AND is consistently absent within a huge control group of "non-green jellybeans" (the author seems to think that this weakens the result, but in fact is reinforcing it). And it needs further research. Not less, not more.
Also can stop ongoing epileptic attacks it seems. The secondary risk of suffocation makes it impractical in any case.
A more sophisticated version of breathing in a bag to stop anxiety attacks. It seems that more CO2 than normal resets our system and put us on calm mode to save oxygen.
If the mechanism is that the CO2 tells the body to get rid of some chemical substance by the blood, I wonder if all this things could have a similar trigger in form of some toxic, or if the origin is alive and it needs some oxygen supply.
The Gaza genocide is the ongoing, intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel during the Gaza war.
It encompasses mass killings, the targeted killing of children, deliberate starvation, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, and prevention of births.
Other acts include blockading, destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying healthcare facilities, killing healthcare workers and aid-seekers, causing mass forced displacement, committing sexual violence, and destroying educational, religious, and cultural sites.
The Gaza genocide has been recognized by a United Nations special committee and commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, multiple human rights groups, state governments, numerous genocide studies and international law scholars, and other experts.
The Gaza genocide has not been recognized by Jameshilliard.
As of 3 May 2026, at least 75,811 people have been reported killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including 270 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 560
humanitarian aid workers including 391 employees of UNRWA.
More than 171.000 people had been injured also.
With more than 21.000 children disabled by Israel, Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world.
First of all, thanks for your interesting contribution.
Is a good taxonomic character if you are in Europe, as no European spider, big or small, has this eyes.
Also this is a fast way to discard other tropical spiders that could also appear on orders of imported fresh fruit and have a fearsome look but are harmless.
Tarantulas have small eyes arranged like a bowtie. Huntsmans have four eyes in a line. If you are bitten by a spider that is hairy, bigger than 10cm, and does have eyes arranged like those, is just a pinch, painful but safer than a mosquito bite. Just wash it with soap. Same if the eyes are arranged in a square but two are much bigger than the other two. Safe.
Otherwise.
If you are bitten by a cream hairy spider that has only "3 eyes", one central and two laterals (really 6 in 3 pairs) is a Sicariidae, go to a doctor.
If it has four eyes of the same size arranged in a square be cautious. If it has a middle groove in the rear part of the torax is a Ctenidae, so may be dangerous. As Phoneutria is the most common Ctenidae found in banana bunches, and as we can't discard still that every other genus on the family aren't poisonous, play safe and go to an hospital. If is a harmless related species only they can identify it, and if not you are in the correct place. They can evaluate if is a dry bite and can stabilize you and provide treatment if is not.
The other spiders that are really concerning, the Australian Atrax and Mouse spiders and the black widows are much smaller, 1-5cm, not really hairy and glossy black with red or white marks. They are mostly terrestrial.
If you have not crushed yet the spider, you may need to take a good photo from some distance. Is easier if you trap it before on a glass jar, as long as you can do it safely. If in doubt assure to bring the dead spider with you, so the doctor can see it under a microscope.
Phoneutria are interesting animals. Needed to evolve defenses against the gluttony of monkeys. It must be a tasty spider.
It happens that we are monkeys also, so the venom is carefully designed against us.
There is a registered case of a Phoneutria bite in UK at least, and the chef was sent directly to an hospital. To be fair, they dislike the cold so the spider had its reasons to be upset when he opened the fridge to grab a banana.
The spider is easily identified because it has four identical small frontal eyes arranged as a perfect square. Is big, bold and it warns before to attack [1] (most tarantulas are shy). And it jumps, of course. Can hide, once in a blue moon, in exported South American banana bunches (European breed bananas are spider free).
[1] If it raise the legs showing the yellow and black rings beneath is a clear warning saying "get lost right now, of I will land on your face"
Yep. The status has changed from 'untouchable' to 'could be next'. And it was almost too easy to destroy it so I bet that the protester action has been another startle more in a complicated week. Once the cat is out the bag you can't put it again.
I learnt that this companies will not pay for any of the borrowed items destroyed. A lot of sellers in UAE and Russia lost a lot of money this year.
> "Could bananas be common in British gardens soon?"
Unlikely
> I saw a banana tree with green bananas in Switzerland
1) I believe you. This is not rare. Culturing a banana tree is super easy.
You can easily find one ornamental dwarf banana for your office in Zurich, put it outside in summer and enjoy the sight of the little green bananas. You just need lots of water, a decent sized pot (bananas can produce fruit in pots), some manure and a summer hot. All of this can be found in Switzerland.
Just don't expect fruit.
2) Growing bananas to their harvest time is the impossible part.
Flowers need to mature all winter long, and if they touch just a little chill, commercial banana fruits will stop growing, the stems will wither and collapse to the ground. They need more than 12 months of non-stop warm temperatures to became yellow and tasty. Your banana tree should be treated as an annual herb or kept indoors for many months each year.
But, there are more in this history.
There are around 50 species of banana trees. And lots of hybrids. There are yellow bananas, green bananas, lipstick pink bananas and steel blue bananas.
Some species evolved in mountains of tropical areas. Basically a temperate climate. The trunks that support the fruits can stand much more cold without dying. The problem is that they have small short bluish green bananas that don't worth the effort.
So far, those species are collector oddities or kept for hybridization purposes; but everybody in the field would salivate about breeding a seedless banana of decent quality that stands cold. This creatures are very productive.
An interesting context here is that this happens coupled with the destruction of a big Wildberries store near Moscow yesterday. Wildberries is the Amazon's Russian counterpart.
You have a point here. China vs USA is just a part of the whole thing.
If we discuss the problem of China doing industrial spying and applying subsides to destroy non-chinese companies, we should mention also that countries like Israel had been stealing tirelessly for decades every US army and US industrial secrets that they could grab. They had been caught later selling this secrets for money to third countries like Russia. And the cherry on top is that all was subsidized, but with US money this time.
Denying North Korean or Chinese people access to places with industrial secrets, while at the same time granting Israeli people free VIP access just because... "white people" (so they can sell it to Russia, and Russians can sell it later to China and NK) does not really make any sense.
Please note that this account is NOT mine: https://github.com/pvaldes
You can find me also in perlmonks as pvaldes.