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oatmeal1 commented on More honey bees dying, even as antibiotic use halves   news.uoguelph.ca/2025/07/... · Posted by u/pseudolus
kulahan · a month ago
Mason Bees are hilarious bees native to North America that don't fly very well, so they just kinda dive-bomb flowers to get pollen. This is important because that heavy slam (well, heavy for a flower) is enough to distribute pollen into the air. These bees are fat, fuzzy, and winter over by crawling into holes and sealing themselves inside with some mud-spit.

It's VERY easy to create homes for these guys - if you've ever seen someone with a large log that has lots of little holes drilled in it, they were likely prepping a Mason Bee habitat. Ideally, they burrow into hollow, dry grass stems that broke off at some point in the fall.

I try to tell people about this bee because it's so easy to make homes for them. Just make sure to move the home every year, or it becomes too easy for predators to find them.

edit: also worth mentioning this bee is so docile, it usually only stings when it's squeezed or wet, and its sting is very light, and the hook is unbarbed. Better than honey bees in so many ways.

oatmeal1 · a month ago
Here is a video tutorial on hosting Mason Bees - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQhg82f-OPI

You can start out simple, but you might need to be more involved if you want to prevent the spread of parasites since they are more easily spread when all the mason bee larvae are in one place.

oatmeal1 commented on Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”   twitter.com/_ZachGriff/st... · Posted by u/RebeccaTheDev
scoofy · a month ago
This kind of thing is so penny smart, pound foolish. If I ever see that sign, it's immediately going on my Instagram, telling everyone I know to never stay at such a place.

I'm still never staying at AirBnB's when it actually matters because they completely screwed over my gf when she booked a bachelorette party and the owner literally sold the property without cancelling the reservation and the new owner rebooked the same site, also using AirBnB. AirBnB just offered a refund, even though the monetary damages were easily 10x the cost of the reservation and obviously permanent in the fact that in ruined a major life event.

Say what you want about the amount of money your company will make. Reputations take a lifetime to build, and most people have a grim trigger when it comes to being screwed over.

oatmeal1 · a month ago
Airbnb and Hertz are two companies in an ever-lasting battle to prove who hates their customer more.
oatmeal1 commented on Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”   twitter.com/_ZachGriff/st... · Posted by u/RebeccaTheDev
jwr · a month ago
I am amazed that hotels are still stuck in this old mindset of charging exorbitant amounts to some customers (unpleasant to customers) rather than providing a good service to all customers (good for customers).

If I knew that a hotel chain will have my room fridge stocked with beer at reasonable prices (small markup or even no markup, because this does not need to be a revenue stream!), I would pick that hotel every time. Just for the convenience, and the nice feeling of not walking a minefield.

oatmeal1 · a month ago
It's funny that the disruption to hotels - Airbnb - Does what you're complaining about but 100x worse
oatmeal1 commented on Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games   pcgamer.com/software/plat... · Posted by u/freedomben
Aeolun · a month ago
I think it’s hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going crazy and murdering a whole bunch of people.

But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that’s ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!

oatmeal1 · a month ago
Gender of who is murdered has a lot to do with it too. I don't think you'll find a video game where you predominantly kill women. The most infamous scene of murder in video games is the Call of Duty mission "No Russian" where you optionally commit terrorism at an airport. If you pay attention you'll notice they kill much more men than women, and made sure that despite pleasant weather none of the women were wearing dresses or skirts. Murder of men is a lot more digestible.
oatmeal1 commented on Getting forked by Microsoft   philiplaine.com/posts/get... · Posted by u/phillebaba
kshahkshah · 4 months ago
I think people tend to forget that large companies are made up of flawed individuals and their policies mitigate but don't eliminate mistakes
oatmeal1 · 4 months ago
They are also fully funded to compensate when they do something wrong. An apology from a Fortune 500 company with a history of unethical behavior is worthless.
oatmeal1 commented on Ethically sourced "spare" human bodies could revolutionize medicine   technologyreview.com/2025... · Posted by u/iancmceachern
daedrdev · 5 months ago
You know getting working organs from pigs seems infinitely more ethical, and maybe easier since we are much better at growing pigs than "spare" bodies
oatmeal1 · 5 months ago
I eat meat, but I don't think there is an actual consistent ethical standard that doesn't rely on religion that justifies the use of animals. The average pig is a lot smarter than the dumbest human, and experiences emotions like a human child does.

I much rather use non-sentient bodies wherever possible.

Dead Comment

oatmeal1 commented on Inferring neural activity before plasticity for learning beyond backpropagation   nature.com/articles/s4159... · Posted by u/warkanlock
oatmeal1 · 9 months ago
> In prospective configuration, before synaptic weights are modified, neural activity changes across the network so that output neurons better predict the target output; only then are the synaptic weights (hereafter termed ‘weights’) modified to consolidate this change in neural activity. By contrast, in backpropagation, the order is reversed; weight modification takes the lead, and the change in neural activity is the result that follows.

What would neural activity changes look like in an ML model?

oatmeal1 commented on Costco’s butter recall, explained   forbes.com/sites/stephani... · Posted by u/michaelbarton
gkoberger · 9 months ago
I get that this seems like an overreach, but America is incredibly safe for people with allergies and it's because of enforcement like this. In my 36 years of being alive, I've never once had an allergic reaction in the US due to mislabeling (although I've had them in South America and Asia).

Under the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act, there's 8 groups that MUST be labeled: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soybeans.

Everyone with an allergy knows to check that section of the packaging (it comes after the long list of ingredients), and you can trust it to be accurate. It can't just be right most of the time... it has to always be right.

If that trust is broken, America will be a much less safe place.

oatmeal1 · 9 months ago
Why could they not apply an amended label to cover the existing "contains" section with the correction to list milk as an ingredient?

u/oatmeal1

KarmaCake day1298April 1, 2018View Original