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Lonesome_Lorakian

@ Lonesome_Lorakian @ttrpg.network

Posts
1
Comments
7
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • The disaster I never imagined having to worry about

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  • When you are talking about large molecules like biologics (antibodies, most vaccines, etc.), there are a whole bunch of other things that can go wrong, but not this.

    For protein based drugs there are prions: misfolded protein isoforms able to catalytically convert correctly folded proteins, basically following the same logic as the examples of smaller molecules. So far I guess we only know of one group of proteins that do this (like the mad cow disease one) but theoretically it could always happen to others we just don't know about yet. :)

    Sorry if that made anyone feel worse again..

  • The disaster I never imagined having to worry about

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  • It is tin pest, an autocatalytic transformation of tin, and it is absolutely in the video and related to the topic (see Lvxferres comment). Just to calm down everyone who wants to get angry about clickbait before having watched the video.

    Private equity still generally sucks tho.

  • Scientists just overturned a 100-year-old rule of chemistry, and the results are “impossible”. UCLA chemists are rewriting the rules of molecular structure—it could reshape how future meds are made

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  • I am a chemistry buff and also had a look at the original research paper. Aticle is open acess if anyone is interested https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-025-02055-9. So here is the way too long explanation.

    Sadly no, they didn't discover an entirely new class of double bonds that are stable in this bent configuration. Instead those bent double bonds are very reactive and therefore can't exist for very long. But they are reactive in a specific way that proved useful for attaching those big 3D shapes to something else in interesting ways. That means that the double bonds are "used up" in the reaction and are no longer present in the new molecules they made.

    The clickbait headline in general just puts way too much emphasis on the unusual double bonds. It is not a new concept in organic chemistry at all that double bonds can be strained (=bent out of plane) and that they become more reactive when they are. The perfectly flat case is just the most stable geometry for double bonds, which makes it more difficult to have molecules that force them to be bent. Because of this the bonds in this case could also be more accurately described as one-and-a-half bonds than "true" double bonds.

    Brendt's rule (roughly, that you cannot have molecules where double bonds are strained this much) was not considered an unbreakable "principle that had stood for more than a century" at all. The first counter examples, including the ones in the article, already popped up in the eigthies, around 60 years after he established that rule. The remaining of the article actually represents the research paper pretty accurately, just the headline and first two paragraphs are heavily sensationalized.

    TLDR: The molecules in the article are just two pretty extreme cases of bent double bonds that have been known for decades. The researches here "just" (this is still impressive work) managed to use these weird edge cases of double bonds for some interesting new reactions that provide a shortcut to structures that would be a pain to synthesize in another way. Is this actually immediately useful for drug discovery? Maybe. Someone made some interesting new shapes in an easier way for other scientists to play around with. Maybe that helps with something, maybe it does not. But now we have one more tool in the chemistry toolbox to try and make new helpful molecules.

  • How it feels playing PF2E after DnD 5e

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  • I personally think so. It is in many ways similar to 5e but a bit denser on rules. It feels like the designers really wanted to make sure that there were no weird corner cases. And while there is a lot of them, the rules all seem very logical and consistent. So when playing it feels a bit more "mechanical" or "game-y" but also less wonky than 5e can be. It is a somwhat different experience than 5e and the rules are available for free at Archive of Nethys. But if you should pick it up really depends on whether your group is unsatisfied with DnD or itching for something new. Our group changed over after trying a one shot and because our DM was getting a bit bored with 5e.

  • How it feels playing PF2E after DnD 5e

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  • Yeah, just a case of sausage fingers.

  • RPGMemes @ttrpg.network
    Lonesome_Lorakian @ttrpg.network

    How it feels playing PF2E after DnD 5e

  • How would you build a world with a sound-based magic system?

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  • I mean, that would depend on how everything interacts with those strings.

    Are they everywhere and you just pluck them with your fingers basically in thin air? Then mages could just be shredding air guitars all day, which might be hilarious if thats what you want to go for.

    Do the strings vibrate with every sound that is made? Then there could be different ways of doing magic. Instumental, singing, speaking, clapping, etc.

    Is it only music? And would natural sounds also be able to cause magical effects? Or is physics even the other way around in your world? Do sounds just occur and the right whisper makes the trees sway and a loud rumble can make the earth quake?

    From there you could get into a Tolkien-like area, where the world was just sung into being in the first place.

    Just to throw a few questions/ideas out there, where this might go.