I mostly agree, although I think that the mentioned bidirectional relation between physical activity and depression should be researched more thoroughly. It wasn't hard to find studies supporting it (this one comes from article citations itself, 7th position) or showing no causal relation when the analysis was performed on more specific samples (citations 3, 10 and 16 from the linked JAMA article, possibly missed one or two). Also, I know that it's harder to control for certain variables in psychology, but it could have been more rigorous and attain a much higher resolution, as authors state in conclusions.

Though, I'm conflicted about their FitBit idea. While it would help to gather more information, it would likely just show that competitive/goal-oriented people are more prone to report and feel 'bad mood' or however they phrased it. Either isn't surprising, but it's good to check common sense for biases.

In the end, after dipping my toes into psychology papers for a few days, all I can do is report a good mood for not being a psychologist myself.

Here.

Then I'm recommending Group Theory in Physics by J.F. Cornwell for when you'll find that elusive 'free time' people bring up. It's three volumes, 1st one is a solid introduction to the 'slightly more formal group theory'. There's also some abridged version that picks only the meaty bits out of vol 1 and 2 which I found as a handy reference for most of the courses with 'quantum' in the name.

Sounds like you're a very expensive motion detector!

It's a living. I get money for sitting with a choice between being idle or working on my stuff. Could have turned out a lot worse.

Really, the main reason for my butthurt is the number of rejections. You'd think that after 21 technical interviews I'd get something because of human error if nothing else. Doesn't help that the main insight I got from people boils down to either having no skills to speak of or possessing the least compatible personality since the times of pharaoh Assholetep.

Interesting. The more I hear about it, the more I feel like publishing world is basically House of Cards with fewer one-liners and more cynicism.

More about the theory from the article: I'm slowly progressing through Furey's PhD thesis (here if you are interested) to get a better picture of ideas from her articles. It's not exactly my forte, but what I read and, as a subset of it, understood so far has convinced me to retract my initial snark. Dunno if I'll be able to give any cogent critique anytime soon, but who knows. Since I work night shifts as basically a motion detector, I might as well try to crunch it.

Yey for physics degree! ;/

E8-based theories are resurfacing once again! Has it already been ~3 years since the last time it got in the media? ;)

I should probably look into it – at any real length – at some point. Also, it's refreshing to see people being careful about implying/stating the connection with string theory.

But in another new paper that’s now circulating among experts and under review by Physical Letters B

Isn't making it public against the rules of peer review?

I don't know how viable it would be for you, but I rescued quite a few books from moisture by putting them speaded in a hermetic box with dry, powdered magnesium sulfate[1] or similar desiccant. It's quick to take out excess water from almost everything and can itself be dried quickly in an oven. Maybe it could be used to store/regenerate some of the blotter paper? Or at least make the mold less of an issue thanks to shorter periods of dampness.

[1] - EDIT: That's the same as Epsom salt. I didn't know it had a colloquial name. Anyway, you don't need this stuff to be high grade.

One of these days I'll buy a camera and you'll see that I don't live in a murky puddle of scum.

Work in progress. I wanted to paint something completely different, but then I discovered the excess of yellow paints and the plans got changed.

Two of my short stories are going to get printed later this year and my 'choose your own adventure' game is being considered for the special issue. I should be more excited, but dread every minute of it. kleinbl00 helped me get over the initial "how do I talk with editors?" problems and it can't be understated. Thanks once again!

Night shifts at the store are fucking up my sense of time. It's a blur of sudoku, crosswords, dicking around with my coding projects and being slightly shocked when a client enters. There's literally no reason for this place to be open at night, but I'm not going to raise this issue.

Yup, X-COM is among my favourites. I'm currently on my on-again, off-again quest of playing through all of the Ultima series.

it seems lately for science articles the secondary is both more informative and more interesting than the main headline.

Preach.

I'm experimenting on a version without tomatoes. It's a great, low-maintenance dish.

There was an iframe with KiwiIRC but something happened. You can join from the browser through this link if you'd like.

Here's an explicit address:

  https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/irc.hubski.com/#hubski

EDIT: The iframe is still there and works. It worked normally once I disabled both the Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin.