Cursed Hobbit Hours

[Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?

A: Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.

Q: Why did you need to be the victim?

A: The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.]

Is this a horrible thing with legs or...a horrible thing with fingers? Or just a horrible thing?

Flava Flav and Paris Hilton the ones out here advocating hardest for the Olympic women's hockey team.

what's your favourite kitchen appliance?

do you have a collection of anything?

what's the best job you've ever had?

what's the worst job you've ever had?

what's your favourite piece of furniture and where did you get it?

what's your go-to recipe when you want to make something that requires minimal effort?

are you married or do you intend to get married?

do you have kids? do you want them?

are you on good terms with your parents?

do you have siblings? do you hang out with them?

do you vote?

what's the biggest purchase you've ever made?

what are your hobbies?

what's a hobby you'd like to get into?

do you collect anything?

how long have you known your oldest friend?

are you a member of any clubs or associations?

have you ever changed fields in your career or education?

how many wisdom teeth do you have and have you had any removed?

what's your favourite beverage?

do you have any living grandparents?

do you have nieces/nephews/godchildren/other kids in your life that aren't yours?

what's the coolest place you've visited?

what's your most recent degree and has it been useful to you?

would you rather own a dishwasher or a laundry machine if you could only have one or the other?

do you make a list before going to the grocery store or just wing it?

what's your favourite household chore?

what chore do you hate the most?

do you have houseplants and how are you at keeping them alive?

"Ohh it's a different sugar than refined sugar" it's the same molecule.

"Ohhh my water filtering apparatus making beauty water and cleaning water and alkaline water" Water is H20. What you're doing is reverse osmosis, and if it's alkaline then there is a substance that's not water in there to make it alkaline. You can't purify water to a pH of 12, because pure water molecules have, by definition of how the pH system works and several phyics rules, a pH of exactly 7.

"Ooohh it has ~different~ sodium atoms." That's called an isotope and sodium isotopes aren't created by magic woowoo, and the magical ability of most isotopes is radioactivity.

"Low toxin" what toxin. Tell me their names. What are they doing. "They are endocrine disruptors" what part of the endocrine system? How? Do you have a source that doesn't try to sell you something?

"Just mix vinegar and baking soda to cleanse all the toxins of your fruits" you just created water molecules and CO2, and some calcium and acetate which don't have much chemical property. That's a science fair vulcano. And doesn't have acidic or alkaline properties to chemically influence anything. Just use tap water at this point. "My wood cutting board soaked in an alkaline solution from baking soda to clear out the toxins leaves a nasty looking soup" yeah because you were dissolving the wood with an alkaline solution. Congratulations.

"There is effective microorganisms in this ceramic bead and it can cleanse your laundry and dishes and prevent mold in your fridge and it works for years" what microorganisms exactly? How did you discover them? What are they eating? Are they resistant to 60 degrees and steam? Do they procreate in the fridge? Are they spreading out on all surfaces to prevent the mold or is it an air filtration system that works without airflow or is it just magic? "Put them in your flowers, they can reverse cavities, put them in your walls" what are they eating in my walls? What kind of microorganisms are they? Did you test the safety of those things in human bodies? Are they native to my biotope? How do they survive in those fucking ceramic beads?

I always assumed they were a scam because ions (an atom with an electron imbalance) really really hate existing and are hard to make.

Lots of ions are ok in water because water is super polar (oxygen hogs all the electrons so every molecule is like a tiny magnet) and therefore they'll soak up all the imbalanced charges.

Go pour salt in water right now. If it dissolves you've created negative chlorine ions! (And an equal number of positive sodium ions)! Good job on being a scientist.

But in air? Nothing polar to stabilise them.

Go pour salt on your table. It stays a solid? Good job. You've proven the atoms in salt prefer being bonded to each other than being free flying ions. You're half way to a chemistry degree.

The only way to force the creation of ions in air is a fuckton of energy. This can be electricity or radiation.

Go attach leads to a 9V battery. Put both into a cup of water. If you see bubbles you've successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen will be on the positive lead because oxygen ions are negative. The hydrogen will be on the negative clip because hydrogen ions are positive. There will also be more bubbles because water has twice as many hydrogen atoms as oxygen atoms. These bubbles won't be ions though, because again, ions hate existing so they recombine into oxygen and hydrogen gas almost instantly. Still. You did technically make negative ions for a split second. Good job.

But most of those negative ion bracelets don't have batteries (which again, only make ions for a split second and require a renewable resource like water to do that with). So they must be a scam right? They're just rocks!

Nope. Remember the other way to make ions? It was radiation! Those bracelets and necklaces you're supposed to wear 24/7 to keep yourself healthy? They're made of mildly radioactive stone.

So they are splitting the air into ions (for a split second. You now know that ions hate existing so they recombine. Although sometimes they'll recombine into ozone (O3) rather than breathable oxygen (O2). Ozone isn't great to breathe in but you also presumably have been near a car so like... It's not a big deal in the scheme of things).

But more importantly!! They're also splitting your body into ions! Which are stabilised by the water in your body (remember the magnet analogy?) and therefore last a lot longer and can get up to more fuckery.

#where people simply do not understand what the creative process entails so they devalue and dismiss it

#striving to be a well rounded person educated on as many things as possible is good actually

So while I was taking this chemistry class I walked into a health food store one day and saw a bottle of "alkaline water"

Well I bought it and brought it into class the next day and asked the teacher if we could PH test it, since we were learning about acids and bases, and she loved the idea of IRL applied science so we took ten minutes to do a quick PH test on the alkaline water

pH balance in your mouth, and how it affects your teeth! Inspired by my dentist scolding me for my daily energi drink consumption, cause it’s apparently detrimental to the health of my enamel… whatever that means

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