this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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You mix together chemicals and compounds, delicately adding them and heating them at specific temperatures to get a desirable output. You often have to care for other factors like air flow (how much to leave the pot closed or open) and material weight (like not adding too much in a cake or it'll all sink to the bottom).

A kitchen is just a laboratory, and chefs are just scientists that focus on taste. I get it now.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

All of these are equally just abstractions meant to portray reality.

I like to call these strings of coherency. There is no beginning or end to them. They are available in our situation because of their usefulness (also counting in abundancy or ease).

So if something is "not true" or "made up", it is not debunked by undeniable facts. It is debunked by how grounded it is to innumerable amounts of information.

Thus you will never go all the way to debunk these. People who win something you know to be a "false argument" do so because nobody will stand up to him and go the x+10000 steps of reasoning he built up specifically for bulshitting he trained for.

On the other hand, all of the "false" and "true" labelled arguments most likely stretch into infinity. In the end it really comes down to your "convenience". That is the closest word I have for it.

Its a mess, the purest thing you can ever have is consciousness.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I think you're missing the point the comic is going for.

Fundamentally, mathematics is built off axioms. An axiom is an incredibly simple statement that presumably true within the system they define, such as "the quantity one exists" or "the operation addition exists", then uses these axioms to build mathematical proofs starting from them to draw further logical conclusions, such as 1 + 1 = 2.

If you continue following these axioms to their logical conclusions, and use those conclusions to follow to even further logical conclusions, you essentially end up with the entire field of mathematics.

Then if you take those mathematical conclusions and apply them to the physical world, you end up with the entire field of physics.

Then if you take the entire field of physics and apply it to molecular interactions, you end up with chemistry, and if you take all of chemistry and apply it to biological organisms, you end up with all of biology.

I'm not trying to say you're wrong about people arguing in bad faith or with not enough evidence to make their untrue claims. But this is just a web comic. It's just making a joke that if we trace everything we know back through all our fields of studies, we end up with the incredibly simple origin points of mathematics.

It's funny.

Laugh.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I was engaged in whatever came to my mind regarding this, I dont care what that comic was meant for.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Watch some Good Eats with Alton Brown, he talks a lot about the chemistry involved in cooking

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

J Kenji Lopez too.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Also a core concept in the novel/AppleTV series Lessons In Chemistry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lessons_in_Chemistry

[–] southsamurai 6 points 8 months ago

That's what I was going to say :)

Legit, I was a passable cook before good eats. After watching it for a while, not only did it give me a bit of passion for cooking, but I got good at it. Then serious eats came along and helped me refine some more. Once you start thinking of cooking and baking as controlled chemical reactions, it makes things easier to grasp.

[–] epyon22 3 points 8 months ago

Gives you not only the how but the why, which just opens up a bunch of other learning types for cooking.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

"Cooking is jazz. Baking is science."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

“Baking is chemistry for hungry people”

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

I like scientific cooking. I'm a big fan of Sebastian Lege, who is a cook and food designer, and who knows all the little chemical tricks of the food industry. I wish he would publish a cook book: On the left, a recipe for the dish as made by a professional chef with normal ingredients, on the right the recipe for the same dish as made by the food industry.

I remember one show where he made "Banana Milk". The banana flavor was made from vinegar, some alcohol, and some other acid...

Just today, I applied one of his ideas. I made a Chinese dish with chicken, and added baking powder to the marinade made from soy sauce, ginger, garlic, honey, salt, oil, and chili. And it was amazing!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

The state of being alive is just applied chemistry, too.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Chemistry but wirh a high margin for error and where someone can make a ketchup sandwich and claim its good food.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

What a fun thread! If any of you get a chance, you should see “Lessons in Chemistry” with Brie Larson. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and based on the excitement in this thread, I think you might too. ☺️

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

I worked as chemist for a while and I love to cook. It's fairly common hobby along with home brewing, distilling and cheese making. We also all worked in the food industry so lots of overlap

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It certainly is! And you can eat the results!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You can eat the results of your chemistry class, too, if you're punk rock.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Tight. Tight tight!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Or you were working with your old chemistry teacher

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Someone is watching Lessons on Chemistry.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

That's like the plot of the TV series "Lessons in chemistry" (which is based on a book), lmao.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Better living through chemistry

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Baking is applied chemistry. Cooking is jazz

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

My mom teaches a class on the chemistry of food and cooking. And my dad says that a good chemist generally is a good cook

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Baking even moreso.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

…and chemistry is just layman’s physics.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

And physics is just math for kids.