🧱 The secret ingredient holding the Great Wall of China together is sticky rice.

Ming Dynasty masons (1368-1644) mixed boiled sticky rice soup into their lime mortar. The result was a tough, flexible, water-resistant binder that has held brick sections together for around 600 years.

The chemistry: sticky rice is packed with amylopectin, a complex starch. In 2010, chemists led by Bingjian Zhang at Zhejiang University found that amylopectin acts as a template, steering calcium carbonate crystals into a dense, interlocking structure instead of large brittle chunks.

That compact microstructure is why some wall sections have shrugged off earthquakes and still keep weeds out of the seams centuries later.

Read more:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar9001944
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/100608-sticky-rice-mortar-china-science
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100530093704.htm

#chemistry #history #engineering

**How to spot a psychopath: ‘It’s like the difference between a domestic cat and a wild cat’**

this is an excellent article and FWIW i recommend you read the whole thing.

in passing i see she's seperately come upon my idea that diagnosis is a red herring: what counts (for both autism and psychopathy, seperately) is that you can see the traits that mark that behaviour. doesn't matter if they *are* $TYPE; pragmatically, what matters is if they act like it.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/27/how-to-spot-a-psychopath-its-like-the-difference-between-a-domestic-cat-and-a-wild-cat

cheery all-department email: "we've had reports that folks aren't getting notifications from $HR_system! here's how to ensure you get every email from $HR_system!"

just going to pretend i didn't see that.

🍄 There's a mushroom that makes people see tiny people. The same tiny people, every time.

Lanmaoa asiatica is a bolete sold as a delicacy in Yunnan, China and the northern Philippines. Cooked thoroughly, it's a savory umami-rich food. Eaten raw or undercooked, it reliably triggers Lilliputian hallucinations, visions of tiny elf-like figures marching under doors and crawling up walls.

Classic psychedelics give everyone a different trip. This mushroom gives basically everyone the same one. University of Utah researchers sequenced it and found no known psychoactive compound at all, no psilocybin, no ibotenic acid. It points to a completely new hallucinogenic chemical.

The trips start 12 to 24 hours after eating and can last up to a week. Nobody uses it recreationally. Hot pot restaurants just set a 15-minute timer and warn you not to eat until it goes off.

Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanmaoa_asiatica
https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/scientists-identify-mushroom-behind-tiny-people-hallucinations/
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260121-the-mysterious-mushroom-that-makes-you-see-tiny-people

#mushrooms #mycology #science

just seen a post from a perfectly nice (AFAIK) and very smart woman complaining about a guy in meatspace telling her "women want x" when she's literally just told him she wants the opposite.

and i'm flashing back to all those posts from women sighing and explaining that when they say "men do x" it doesn't literally mean all men and stop making it about you, you idiot (many of the men making the argument in bad faith, but not all).

do i want to point this out to her? not really. the whole thing just makes me feel tired.