And then that got me to look for stuff by Julius Sumner Miller. I loved watching his Physics presentations back in the day. I still do love them.

It'll be in the 50s for the next few days before swinging back up to the 70s and getting everyone's allergies aggravated again.

There is a gene in the fruit fly that makes them susceptible to alcohol's effects. The mechanism for fruit fly inebriation is also present in mammals, including humans, making fruit flies a good subject for further studies in alcoholism.

Now, had biochemist researchers done this study, they would have provided a methodical name for the gene. But because fly researchers were doing the research, they named it "cheapdate".

"I agree, we biochemists call proteins and genes in a methodical sequential manner; fly people name stuff based on the morning cereal or cartoon. I still like them however." - from a Reddit comment about the article.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11199289/

The study also involves an "inebriometer" to test the fruit flies for resistance to alcohol:



The inebriometer is an apparatus that is used to measure the sensitivity of Drosophila to alcohol vapor. Approximately 100 flies are introduced into the top of a 4-foot glass column through which a controlled concentration of alcohol vapor circulates. As they become intoxicated, the flies progressively lose postural control and tumble downwards; their fall is impeded by their ability to cling to oblique mesh baffles distributed along the length of the column. The time required for the flies to emerge at the bottom of the column is a measure of their alcohol sensitivity.

Fly researchers seem like they'd be fun people at parties.

Whoaaaa cool

"paranoid imaginations" - I'd like to plug Phil K. Dick's novella, "Clans of the Alphane Moon" for a fun twist on paranoia and other mental disorders and how they save a colony. Except depression. That one doesn't do much saving... not much of a spoiler, that one...

The "intentional Great Silence" line of thinking comes out of a bit of game theory. Assume a civilization that can master time and space and is capable of things that stagger us as much as calculus is incomprehensible to a kindergartener. Does this advanced civilization see other intelligent life as potential competition that should be destroyed? If that's a possibility, then one would have to assume that exists as a possible strategy in a game of contact and that not revealing one's civilization to such a power would improve one's own civilization's chances of long-term survival.

One such scenario is brought forward in the Berserker series of sci-fi stories that Fred Saberhagen kicked off and gave permission for other authors to use the concept, characters, and milieu in their works. Phil Dick did his own take on killer robots in his story "Second Variety" that's a real chiller of a tale.

... it may well be, as I just dealt with a potential spam call. I need to pick up the phone when it rings because of my job. But I don't say hello if I don't recognize or expect the number. I wait for the other party to do so. Gen Z is right to answer calls with silence, cuts down on the spam/scam interactions.

SCI-FI story idea: a civilization discovers many signals of other civilizations, but makes no response because of their history... they still shudder as they remember The Great Spamming of millennia ago, when they contacted another civilization that proceeded to bombard them with advertising, scams, and crypto schemes. Never again, they vow... never again...

And what if the aliens *do* walk among us, collecting marketing info for a beverage they make that they want to compete head-to-head with Coca-Cola? Yikes!

Imagine a heat wave where the *low* is 33C in the morning, and it goes up from there, but not by as much as in Arizona, on account of the humidity.

Bad as that is, I'll take it over bitter cold. Heat is uncomfortable. Cold is painful.

NOT WANT!

And while the notion of a snowfall at Christmastime has been romanticized to the point where people actually want the white stuff to fall on their heads on or about that day, any other snowfall is met with dread, save by children who stand to miss a day of school because of the occasion.

I got a buddy in North Dakota who absolutely hates the stuff. He works at the Department of Transportation, so that hate is deeply felt and varied. Not only for his own sidewalk and drive that have to be cleared, but for all the roads in the state that need plowing and re-plowing.