fermionsnotbosons

I appreciate the elaboration and if I understand you correctly, I definitely think I agree.

The way I see it, if the instances & communities that make up the Fediverse grow like a garden (rather than an invasive weed - please bear with this analogy, lol) then eventually we should get small but active plots with new ghost pepper variants or even duran trees (talk about deranged!) that people can check out or share with those that are interested. That would be very cool, and would be a maturation I look forward to and will contribute to as best I can.

Exactly. I don't understand why so many people have this mentality of 'the fediverse must grow, or it's a failure', but I think a lot of them are from the recent reddit exodus (I am too, for the record) and are addicted to the firehose of content that a massive social media platform brings.

I participated less and less on reddit in recent years, after joining in 2007, partly because it became such a behemoth. Nowadays, I am enjoying the modest size of my lemmy instance and the values I've seen espoused throughout. It's like a small(er) get together of like-minded people rather than an open-door rager - the first has always had more appeal to me, personally.

Very interesting articles - both the phys.org one and journal submission it describes. I appreciate the research group's use of solvent-free and one-pot reactions wherever possible, it really shows their commitment to finding the most sustainable overall process.

The aromatization steps using palladium (0) are of course standard processes used by the oil refining industry, but I wonder if there are other methods (maybe using sulfur?) that don't involve the use of rare metals...probably wouldn't have the same atom economy as using catalytic Pd though, I am just curious rather than criticizing their choice.

I haven't see any measurable proof of one, or any experiment proposed that would render the idea of a soul falsifiable or not. Honestly, the current debate in philosophy/neuroscience on the existence (or non-existence) of free-will seems like a more important question, that if answered in the negative would have major implications on even the definition of the word 'soul'.

Fun question though, I've enjoyed reading the diversity of thought on the matter in this thread. :)