travers_r - Slashdot User

Submission + - A Mansion Filled With Hidden Worlds: When the Internet Was Young (undark.org)

Submitted by travers_r on Friday July 20, 2018 @11:14AM

travers_r writes: "The thousands of people to pass through LambdaMOO since Curtis turned on the server have imbued the house with textual life. There are worlds hidden everywhere within the walls. Dive into the pool and you may find yourself exploring a subterranean cavern full of ancient relics; poke a kitchen vent, and you may end up, as I did, lost in the heating ducts. Players may venture into floating bubbles, the coils of the television set, or the Alpine village hidden away in a snow globe sitting on an end table."

At Undark, Author Claire Evans offers a peek into the early days of internet culture and multiplayer gaming.

Submission + - California Bypasses Science to Label Coffee a Carcinogen

Submitted by travers_r on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @08:16AM

travers_r writes: Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle affirmed last week that all coffee sold in California must come with a warning label stating that chemicals in coffee are known to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. But judges, journalists, and environmental advocates fail to recognize the critical difference between probably and certainly, which fuels the inaccurate belief that cancer is mostly caused by things in the environment. From a report at Undark:
Leading experts, in fact, believe that roughly two-thirds of all cancers are the result of mutations to DNA that are caused by natural bodily processes, not exposure to environmental chemicals. This is quite the opposite of the prevailing belief among the public that most cancers are caused by exogenous substances imposed on us by the products and technologies of the modern world.

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