Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

It looks like we are on track for a second year in a row of no snow in my area - an area that used to have half a meter or more on the ground for weeks every winter. I don't want to get super political but I don't get how people can just dismiss back to back "warmest winter on record in the region" and say "nothing is happening, it's your imagination or made up lies".

While yes, I have only lived here for going on 5 years, I work with people who have lived here for their entire lives 50+ years and they've all said how weird the last few years have been.

Although I hate winter overall, the lack of snow just leaves everything ugly. But on top of that - the lack of snow in Japan is an actual problem because a lot of rivers, that supply needed water for farming, are fed by snow in the mountains melting. Less snow each year on top of faster melting is a serious problem.

@Tyranexx Well new, they are still in print. Used it's anyone's guess of course.

Nice! I do not use steam but people must play this game. I will soon start it but the PS2 version on PS3

Half-Life is still great fun. I remember purchasing Thief 2, Half-Life, and Deus Ex a couple of years ago on GoG and thought all of them held up really well.

@StephanDLW That is a pretty old fact. Even one major traumatic event could turn patch of hair grey not just long exposure.

But some people are just born with low pigmented hair spots.

If i remembered, if you knew about Taj Mahal, there was a story behind that.
When Mumtaz Mahal (Shah Jahan's wife) has passed away due to her illness after gave birth so many times, he felt so depressed and his hair turn into grey on one night due to his grief.

I didn’t have a single grey in my beard until I had two kids, now they’re everywhere. They’re not in patches though, just randomly sewn in here and there. Not sure about my hair because I don’t let it grow long enough to find out.

@Tyranexx - Haha, I’ll take it! Infiltration sounds like a cool ability in Pokémon. Are infiltrators able to learn and then use opponents attacks against them? I didn’t know there were fairy or ghost types until recently, but I think I would like playing with one of them. I might suffer from the same types as you. If I’m in infiltrator, I’m actually just a confused type in disguise.

@StephanDLW I just want to clarify that the scientists in question discovered this in mice and no actual trials in humans have yet occurred. As it's not yet been validated in a human model, it's more accurate to say that scientists 'suggest' that they have found the mechanism involved .

@bimmy-lee I had a few grey stragglers on the side of my head when i was about 20 or so. Then I get married and had kids 5 years later and poof, I have quite a bit along the side of my head. As of late I've noticed a few little guys on my chin too. Although i don't let my goatee grow out that long or often. My buddies always razz me for the hair, But they dont have kids yet, So they'll see one day 😜

Plenty of longitudinal studies worldwide currently monitor things like levels of blood cortisol and other stress hormones in the body as well as taking hair samples and full inventories of what medications somebody is taking. While an experimental design would never pass ethics for this, an observational study of already accumulated data is feasible to test this.
I currently work as part of a longitudinal study and honestly, we probably would have enough data to write a paper to test the hypothesis 😂

@alpacatears Scientific method? Ew. (as a science liker, I'm definitely kidding.)

So @Ryu_Niiyama , can you say what your research project will be? What will you study, and what will you measure? Lay some astrophysicals on me.

I felt sleepy quickly during playing Final Fantasy XIII PS3 at Palamecia just now.
I ended my gaming time immediately before i suddenly fallen asleep during playing.
Is it me or Final Fantasy XIII PS3 Battle System was really boring and at some point you put you into sleepiness ?

Leland Palmer could give you all the evidence you need, just ask Bob.
Fire walk with us.

@NintendoByNature - My brother in law started getting some greys in his early 20s as well. I think the awkward stage is when it’s just a small amount. Now that he’s sort of evenly S&P, he looks good, distinguished even. Yeah, kids will definitely do the trick. I saw most of my friends who had kids at a more average age than me start to turn in their mid to late 20s. I used to give them a hard time until it happened to me as well after having kids in my mid 30s. Now I get it. When you spend every second panicking about everything that could possibly happen for the next 25 years, you eventually start to wear it.

@HobbitGamer - I could go for a slice of pie.

@bimmy-lee lol. The only thing I have going for me is I still have my hair and alot of it. My brother got the balding genetics so theres always that. Some people look good with a bald head or shaved head, I'm not one of those people so I'll take what i have I guess.

Hes in his mid 30s to and they haven't had kids yet. I keep telling he should start on that now before he gets loses all of his energy. Like you said, it's not easy as you get older panicking every second of the day about little ones.

Science is interesting in general. We're always discovering new things about more established fields to add to the theories and hypotheses. And then there are the less established things (like food science) where conflicting info from both new and dated studies is hard to wade through. A classic example would be eggs.

It's highly unlikely that I'll ever be bald. Both of my parents have thick hair, and mine is no exception. I need to get it thinned whenever I get it cut. Otherwise it becomes an untameable, poofy bush.

@Heavyarms55 I don't traditionally grab used books too often unless they're in great shape; I take good care of my things, but in my experience not everyone is that way. There's a reason I quit loaning out some of my own books in high school.

@bimmy-lee Actually, that ability allows Pokemon to get past shields that other Pokemon throw up to protect their HP, like Barrier and Substitute.

If we're talking types, I'd prefer to be a Fire, Dark, or Dragon Type. 😁

@NintendoByNature - Yep, I’d rather have hair to turn grey than no hair at all. I fall into your brother’s genetic makeup. Carrying on a fine tradition of guy’s with pattern baldness in my family. It’s only for people with domes so glorious, the world just needs to see to believe it. I just do clippers with no guard bi weekly to keep it short. You speak the truth to your brother. I’ve aged at least 20 years in the last five putting my actual age around 55-60. I think I almost died from sleep deprivation a few years ago.

@bimmy-lee im.sure you pull it off just fine. If not, thats why hats where invented lol. Yea I think that's what he does to, clippers, No guard. Ive often wondered how hard it would be to bic the head and not miss any spots. That's gotta be tough.

As for the gray hair....I occasionally find a silvery strand on the right side near my temple but nowhere past that area yet. Mom says she also started finding gray hair in her 20s. At least I know I've inherited that beautiful silvery gray....

@bimmy-lee Was one of the young bimmy-lees a colicky baby? I've heard that's tough. One of my cousins went through that with her youngest a couple years ago.

Not sure how some parents pull off sleep deprivation past the short-term. A couple of nights straight of little sleep, and I become WAY less of a people person than I already am. XD

@Heavyarms55 I've actually already added that book trilogy to my backlog a long time ago, but I still haven't found time to get around to buying them, let alone to read it. But I still won't see them as some kind of replacement for how the movies "should" have been, like so many of the more, shall we say, avid fans always claim.

Luckily, you're still pretty mild in your mentions of the movies, but I've seen what borders on raving lunatics, pretty much damning the movies to the seven circles of hell, along with its creators, and scolding/berating anyone that actually likes or even just enjoyed the movies.

The thing is, that the books are ALWAYS companions, unless they were there first, like for example with the Lord of the Rings. So, speaking of avid fans (except in a nice, more down to Earth way): hi, there. Nice to meet you. I just LOVE the Lord of the Rings, and I've read the book many times, as well as the other books such as the Hobbit, the Silmarillion and other stories. I was quite apprehensive about the movies, because the books were infamously known for being near impossible to put into a movie, but Peter Jackson delivered, and then some.

And just like the books, I simply LOVE the movies. I've seen the original trilogy probably 10 times by now, and I still enjoy them every time, so if any channel that broadcasts over here decides to show them again, I'll probably watch them for an 11th time as well...

And yet, there as well, certain individuals feel the need to cry out and complain, while Peter Jackson has been SO careful and diligent with the source material (not so much with the Hobbit, but that's a story for another time), that there should hardly be anything left to complain about, but yet for them there is, because people like that will always find something, and so they simply focused on all the small bits left out, which didn't really impact the story in general and which would cost either too much time or money to put in, and the movies were already pretty lengthy as it is, so it's all understandable, but no: let's b****, whine and moan about what we didn't get, instead of focusing on and enjoying the great movies that we DID get.

Back to Star Wars: besides the books being written much later, and regardless of any official approval or not, they weren't written by George Lucas, so it's not the official Star Wars story that came from his mind, like the movies, regardless of what a mess he's made of some parts of them, over the years. It's his property, so if he wants to change it, or feels that he needs to, then that's his full right to do so. Even if he did officially approve of them, it was probably just because of the royalties anyway...

I do think these books are a nice addition to flesh some things out, and describe them in more detail than would be possible in a movie, LOTR once again being a pretty good example of that (heck, I once even read the book from Rocky IV, and that too was WAY more extensive in it's descriptions than the movie), but they'll never actually replace the movies. People may think or feel they do, and they're welcome to it, because it's their own opinion, but it is far from a fact, obviously, and that was basically my whole point, because some of these fans are almost like religious zealots in their beliefs, which to me, is completely ridiculous, if you're talking about something that's purely meant as a bit of entertainment, to have a nice pass time with, not a belief system...

@Tyranexx I'm a Taurus, but according to Asian astrology, I was also born in the year of the dog, so basically, I'm a pit bull, which suits my personality and tenacious nature just fine, because I'm quite social and amicable, but don't get on my wrong side. And I'm pretty persistent if I need to get something or somewhere, so there's definitely something to Asian astrology, I'd say.

Well, it's either that, or over the years, people just subconsciously start to behave according to the guidelines of their star signs, because they've read too many horoscopes...

@StephanDLW Grey hair because of stress? That's just the minimal effect. Prolonged periods of stress and/or depression can even cause baldness. Both have already been extensively proved.