Just yesterday I had a CO2 valve close on me during an experiment while I was away for a moment. It takes effort to turn the valve so it couldn't have just shaken closed or something. The valve was in the corner of the room and was blocked off by boxes, so nobody could have accidentally bumped it. And, besides, nobody was in the room anyways. Before the experiment I made damn sure that the CO2 valve was open, and even looking through the computer records (which records the CO2) says that the CO2 valve was open until I walked away.

I still have no idea how the valve could have closed on its own. Now, I'm not saying it's a ghost, but I am saying that I cannot think of a single non-paranormal explanation. I've clearly angered the science gods and I would do well to sacrifice some more cells to the science gods to appease them

Hmm... Weird. Seems like my app cut off the bottom from the video

X axis label is cut off...

Mfw some barbarian listens to the Epic of Gilgamesh on their clay tablet without earphones in public

Fun fact: someone actually did it

A question that I'm an expert in!

I study circadian rhythms (the process that is responsible for getting us to sleep in the night). Specifically, how circadian rhythms influence how easily we catch diseases, but that part is less relevant to the question.

So since Earth rotates and has day/night cycles, life on Earth evolved to try to predict when the day and night comes. That's what circadian rhythms do. This is really important, since day and night aren't just associated with lightness/darkness. Day and night are associated with a ton of different environmental differences. For instance, it's colder at night, so animals need a way of keeping warm at night. There's more UV light at day, so animals need a way of resisting DNA damage in the day. There's some evidence that the bacteria in the air are different at day vs. at night, so animals will need to have different levels of immune system alertness.

We as humans live in artificial houses with artificial lighting, so we can lose track of why this is really important. But if you've ever went camping or tried to stay out at night you'll probably understand why it's really important for animals to be able to predict the time.

Circadian rhythms end up getting reinforced on a community level, since if it's easier to see in the day, an animal is more likely to forage in the day. Then predators will notice that prey is more plentiful in the day, so it will also be more likely for predators to hunt in the day as well.

Anyways, the end result of all of this is that animals have a huge evolutionary pressure to pick either the day or night to be their active period, which is the time where they look for food and in general just be awake. And whatever they don't pick, that's their rest period, the time where they sleep and recover.

But how do animals know that their circadian rhythms are predicting the correct time? Imagine a mouse in its burrow - it wouldn't be able to tell what time it is just by looking at the sky. And even just stepping out for a second to check would be very dangerous if it ended up being the wrong time. Animals need a way of reading what time it is when their out and about and then correcting their circadian rhythms if the rhythm is inaccurate. There's a lot of different measurements that animals use to read the time, but the key here is that the measurements that they pick must change significantly between day and night. In other words, it must be a very obvious signal, like "oh, I see this signal, so there is no doubt that the time is day."

Vast majority of the time, the most obvious signal ends up behind light. And it makes sense - if you see bright light, that is the clearest indication that it is day outside. So for many animals, light is the primary measure that animals use to read the time.

So to wrap back around to your question, it's not necessarily that light ruins sleep because evolution just decided to go "nae nae," it's because predicting time is incredibly important for keeping animals and humans alive, and up until very recently, light has simply been the easiest and best proxy for the time

And to answer your bonus question, yes, other animals have their sleep messed up by light too

Searched it up cause I was curious too. It's the white tern, and according to Wikipedia, the egg does roll off frequently. The bird simply doesn't care and lays another egg

Asking ChatGPT for advice about anything is generally a bad idea, even though it might feel like a good idea at the time. ChatGPT responds with what it thinks you want to hear, just phrased in a way that sounds like actual advice. And especially since ChatGPT only knows as much information as you are willing to tell it, its input data is often biased. It's like an r/relationshipadvice or r/AITA thread, but on steroids.

You think it's good advice because it's what you wanted to do to begin with, and it's phrased in a way that makes your decision seem like the wise choice. Really, though, sometimes you just need to hear the ugly truth that you're making a bad choice, and that's not something that ChatGPT is able to do.

Anyways, I'm not saying that bosses are good at giving advice, but I think ChatGPT is definitely not better at giving advice than bosses are.

Because Threads didn't federate. It turns out when they said that they'll federate, they actually meant "some time in the undisclosed future." And then Threads lost a lot of that initial marketing hype so everyone forgot about it.

Apparently Meta is currently testing federation for Threads, though? The problem about Threads federating isn't resolved, to be entirely clear. It was merely that everyone, Meta included, just decided to kick the can down the road and think about the issue later.

Anon could have salvaged this if he didn't run away. It could have made for a killer party story

I am a researcher studying diseases. You have no idea how many mice get killed without generating any data. There's a rule in place whenever you want to work with animals that you need to plan ahead and only use as few animals as you need to get the data that you're looking for. But things in research basically never happen according to plan. It could be due to a variety of factors: unexpected failures, overlooked factors, technical errors, or just simple negligence when performing an experiment. A lot of data and samples obtained from killed mice are discarded for one or more of the above reasons.

I get that mouse experiments are important to prove that our findings can translate to actual living animals, but I personally will not touch a mouse because, frankly, the "useful data per mouse" ratio is way too low for me to justify using mice.

Portal! Chell may be silent, but it's directly stated that she got as far as she had due to sheer tenacity and resourcefulness

Also, Silksong, if you're willing to wait for its release in 2377 AD

Edit: here's some more (these are all fairly family-friendly):

*Celeste

*Crypt of the NecroDancer

*Spelunky 2

*A Hat in Time

*Slime Rancher

*Webbed