TheVat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_swimming International winter and ice swimming competitions take place around the world with two of the larger organizing bodies being the International Ice Swimming Association and the International Winter Swimming Association. Both organizations have similar competition guidelines including water temperatures typically below 5 °C (41 °F), a 25 metres (82 ft) pool often cut out of frozen bodies of water, and swimmers limited to goggles, one standard bathing suit, and one latex or silicone cap - neoprene is not allowed.

I'll pass thought that along to Dr Moreau.

Good for them. My reply was addressing a different point in another thread, and the cockroach reference was a use of synecdoche. Faster than typing "and several other hardy insect species." Cheers.

A bit confusing since cold immersion also can cause bradycardia, which lowers BP, as in the MDR which @Moontanman mentioned. From the sources cited by @toucana it sounds like the main effect with cold water, however, is raised BP and accelerated heart rate. So I guess the cold shock "wins out" over the MDR. Better be careful, Genady, hehe. Paul Newman used to immerse his face in icy water, which he said kept him handsome.

You kind of lost me with "in case of a very massive nuclear strike from Russia...." In case of a massive nuclear strike, we are all dead, and probably a lot of the planet's ecosystem. And the notion of annihilating a billion people in China who DIDN'T attack us is vicious and insane and would pretty much ensure a clean wipe of all animal species (cockroaches excepted) from the planet. Nations, specifically their governments, making these kinds of threats is one of the worst things about the human race in its tech phase. We might survive, some of us, runaway global warming or other ecodisasters, but a full-scale thermonuclear exchange would end us. As iNow says, absurd.

Looks like cold water on the face effect has been studied. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/circj/70/6/70_6_773/_article Background Cold-water face immersion (FI) is known to produce physiological changes, including bradycardia, by stimulating the parasympathetic system. However, other factors such as sympathetic activity, intrapleural pressures, and changes in chemical mediators may also contribute to these changes. Methods and Results Eight healthy volunteers underwent a series of experiments designed to observe the effects of FI on heart rate and its variability, as detected using wavelet transformation...

Light seems to be dawning. Here are the answers, for anyone who is curious. Hopefully everyone's base desires are satisfied.

Being son of a cynical journalist (redundant phrase, possibly), I came early to the belief that all those things are quite fragile. Then I witnessed how often religion bends easily in a totalitarian direction unless a sect takes a specific stand against it. (yay, liberation theology) Omnipotent deity and liberal democracy are not concepts that dovetail easily. Nor late stage capitalism and human-centered ideologies generally. Plus one for your whole post, which I sense is doing double duty as both germane comment on the thread topic and some self-introduction. Single issue voters are the bane of democracy, because they are so easily led off a cliff while following that one attractive carrot dangled in front of them.

IIRC, I did reference a previous post which cited gender dysphoria studies. Which post was: Those little footnote numbers take you to specific sources. I will post this and make sure they are active hyperlinks.

Holding breath is a way to focus mind, so it helps mentally to brace oneself and be stoic? People tend to tighten the diaphragm when enduring something - that's why in a crisis people are often reminded to take deep breaths, so they don't restrain their breath too much. Also having a held breath means you have plenty of air for saying AUUUGGGHHHHHH! 😁

Aren't we already arrived at a more complex view? - you are describing artificial selection with domesticated species or what is called gene-culture coevolution in humans, which is not a new concept. Cultural preferences can select for certain traits, from dominant hand preference to food tolerances to mating preferences. The lactase persistence gene was selectively neutral until people shifted from H-G life to pastoralism (herding grazing animals). Genes for reduced melanin were not adaptive until bands of humans decided to migrate to higher latitudes and needed more cutaneous vitamin D absorption. Sexual selection has also been important in humans, and linked to breast shape, penile girth, voice pitch, facial hair, etc. Such preferences can be culturally mediated. (And some cultures sadly have tried to impose more control, with differential treatment and marital opportunities based on superficial physical traits.)

I can post an answer, and how it was arrived at, if anyone wants.

This sounds not quite correct. Heat pumps extract heat from the outside air and then transfer heat inside, where it adds heat to the room. If it were to exhaust "excess heat" outside that would seem to defeat the whole purpose of the system. The heat that comes from use of compression (gases get hotter when you compress them) is supposed to go INSIDE. Say it's 40 F outside. Outside air blows across coolant tubes bringing the (colder) coolant to 40 F. The air passing over the tube loses heat, passing out of the unit at, say, 30 F. Then you send the coolant through the compressor and it rises to 65 F and goes inside. The energy that forced the coolant into a smaller volume goes into the coolant, which then is sent inside to radiate its heat into an airflow that blows into the room. With the HP you are describing, it relies entirely on the compression of drawn-in interior air, so it would seem rather ineffective, drawing heat from the air it is supposed to warm up and then returning it, with little net gain. I feel your website writer was a bit confused.

Sigh. Sigh, pt. 2.

I wonder if it will stay sketchy, due to the skewing factor of self-report. There is so much social weight on how people fit in to a group, and what they tell themselves, that it is very hard to arrive at objective metrics of gender. (unlike metrics of biological sex, like ring finger/index finger ratio, hip/shoulder width, facial proportion, etc) Seems like even subjecting large study populations to PET scans would have skewing problems. The only reliable metric I've found is propensity to put absurdly small amounts of a food in storage dish. JK.

Ev bio has moved past Darwin over a century ago. Epigenetics, selective pressure on improvised behaviors, etc are not new concepts. A desert woodrat isn't "controlling" its evolution when some individual species members try eating poop and it happens to confer resistance to creosote toxins, and therefore an adaptive advantage. That may be NS acting on individuals who incline to less discriminating palates. And epigenetics can play a role. Momma rat lives through food shortages, which stress triggers epigenetic change in the next generation towards coprophagy. We may project direction onto all this, but the woodrats may be following a very simple "times were hard, so when hungry, I'll try anything" algorithm. Remember that NS can affect greater epigenetic plasticity, meaning that environment can induce epigenetic changes in a population, and if those changes provide a phenotypic advantage, NS can favor individuals with those beneficial epigenetic modifications, leading to a more adapted population over time - and one that flips epigenetic switches more easily in future.

Hehe. Well the net we are presently using seems to catch only rumors, hearsay and other unreliable narratives. Not being of the Arcadian persuasion, I can't imagine the skill level needed to deploy physical nets for something high flying but you never know.

He being a politician, I would expect them to be below the belt. I am sorry @TheVat, I missed your remark. I didn't mind. Always nice to find a fellow mind making the same connection. I miss plenty of posts meself.

And it was said!

Yesterday was that day that keeps triskaidekaphobes at home, but perhaps a thirteen lurks in every Friday. How? (it also lurks in Bill Oldfield, for a bonus point)

The NJ congressman blathering about an Iranian mothership in the Atlantic and the "high sources" he got it from (possibly high in a different sense of the word) was pretty funny. In the UK, there was similar speculation about state actors, re drones seen around Lakenheath and other AFBs. While I can see how drones might offer several advantages over spysats (cheaper, closer, meander anywhere), I would think they probably would not have navigation lights on as the Jersey devils seem to. Visually shouting "yoohoo! I'm over here!" is not SOP in tradecraft. (unless it's a decoy) And then there are all the vigilantes posting on SM about bringing one down with a shotgun. What could possibly go wrong with that, right?

😂 Voting so far for the toy horses joke: 2 - aye 0 - neigh

Yup, airborne objects at night are notoriously difficult to size, even by trained observers. I have to wonder if an initial small number of misjudged sightings of hobby drones and aircraft got publicized and then more people started looking up at night and noticing things. Hobby drones especially can be seen as larger than actual dimensions.

I had earlier today seen an AP News report and posted it over at sci forums dot com. Will post here, too. https://apnews.com/article/fbi-drones-new-jersey-0f4aba00748ac464d42270fbe7457733 I love that the official talking about mysterious sightings is named Fantasia! If this was 1938 and the sightings were over Grovers Mills, NJ, I would assume it's Martians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)