Google decided that I was a minor, the idiots. And they didn't need to do so. So I've switched from Google to Duck-duck-go, and abandoned my gmail account. (I didn't want to even log in enough to delete it.)

I suppose I'll eventually need to find some other way to sign up for sites that demand that kind of id. For now I'll just use the existing gmail account for that, since most sites no longer work from an ordinary email account.

Large computer centers in space seems like a really bad idea, unless you plan on doing something like capturing an asteroid to use as a heat sink. The moon is much more plausible..but you'd still need to connect down to bedrock.

Not really. It really *IS* a danger. IIUC, however, currently most of the things it predicts don't really work. (This is also true for professional organic chemists!) So it's going to be something expensive to implement...and require a bit of research (i.e. actually building stuff and testing it).

OTOH, bacteria have been doing this research as long as they've been around. So don't immediately freak out. (Most of our fancy medicines are just tweaks on the bacterial research projects.)

My wife used personal pronouns when talking of the car. (OTOH, she also used to say, when driving, "the cars knows the way to" any favorite location.)

Don't read too much into the use of particular pronouns.

Pigs are relatively large animals. Small islands don't support enough genetic diversity. (Well, that's my guess. Perhaps there's another answer...like small islands don't have multiple water sources or something.)

Whatever the reason, the fact remains. Possibly small islands are inhabited by people wherever it's possible to live. Small narrow islands don't have much interior.

You need to study pacific island ecology. There are reasons why many were cannibals...the only proteins available were fish...and most of those are low fats. Topical plants produce lots of carbs...and not much else. (Yeah, they imported pigs onto many of the larger islands, but most of them are too small for that.)

In a song from the early 1950's ("The Roving Kind") a man being a politician is used to justify the claim that he's a "good and righteous man". (But that may be a hang-over as it's a rewrite of a song from much earlier that I don't know.)

Health coverage is a good idea. Insurance is the wrong model. It should be more like clean water or garbage collection, a "public good".

Actually, I retract my earlier statement. I had read something about Tinker earlier today on another site, but crossreferencing, it appears to have been wrong.

This product is a 'me too' since there's already tools to help you fine tune various Big Player models.

That's not what this is. This is a tool for creating foundation models.

Would you prefer the word "proprietary"? Because AFAIK that's all he means by that.

My sympathies for your lose.

[Eye twitch] [Eye twitch]

"Jane Goodall, Famed Primatologist "

Also, famed primate.

The evidence is more the other way around: this is evidence that life could get established there, not evidence that life made these things.

Past studies:

* Volatile, low-mass (100 u) nitrogen- and oxygen-bearing organic species.

* Single-ringed aromatic compounds.

* Complex, high-mass (exceeding 20 u) macromolecular fragments of insoluble organic material, featuring multiple aryl groups connected to hydrocarbon chains, along with nitrogen- and oxygen-bearing groups.

* Aryl (aromatic) and oxygen-bearing compounds in older E-ring grains.

Current study:

* Confirmed aryl and O-bearing compounds in fresh grains (ruling out that they formed due to space weathering)

* Aliphatic O-bearing compounds with carbonyl groups attached to a C2 organic, with acetaldehyde or acetic acid being likely candidates (aldehydes are interesting because they're intermediates precursors in the formation of amino acids)

* Aliphatic and cyclic esters and/or alkenes (on Earth, these are involved in the formation of fats and oils)

* Two classes of ether and/or ethyl compounds (on Earth, these are regularly found in living organisms)

* Tentative N- and O-bearing moieties. Potential candidates for these molecules include derivatives of pyrimidine, pyridine, and nitriles like acetonitrile (such molecules are involved in the reactions that form amino acids).

TL/DR: there may well be not just the atomic building blocks of life in there (CHONPS), but the molecular building blocks as well.