Greetings! As September looms over the aging, derelict month of August, the reality of the SteemSTEM/Utopian meetup is becoming, well, more real than it was before. We thought it would, therefore, be a cool idea to relate more tangibly with the awesome people who are actually going! So I asked around and found three members (more to come!) to introduce themselves in today’s post - however, they feel like it - and if anybody has any questions about them, drop ‘em in the comments and see what you may discover there! ### First and foremost, our resident Debunker has a tale to tell: # @egotheist Forged in the fires of Mount Doom, there he was born. One to rule them all…oh. Wait. Wrong story. As the tale goes, there once was a boy, foolish enough to venture forth into the mysterious depths of pseudo-science and dangerous beliefs. Misguided by his own kin, many years he was lost without proper orientation. Bought every lie he was told. Eventually, he met a mentor who revealed the most painful of all truths to him: everything he believed so far was no more than a fairy tale. But instead of mourning about his lost purpose he gathered new strength, some would even call it a grim determination: with his mentor’s help, he melted his mind, crushed every last fake belief he once held - and forged everything anew. Sharp like a razor, but at the same time durable like the Hulk’s green skin, the once foolish boy had now grown into a dangerous weapon, focusing only to destroy any kind of ill-belief without mercy. Although the boy was still struggling to determine his true and final purpose in life, he found at least some fulfillment in this new fight. Whatever the future might bring, he was willing to face every obstacle and challenge which may occur - gathering both knowledge and strength along the way. As long as he lived, he would always fight. ### Next up, a poetically haunting prose about: # @scienceangel Born and grew up at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Dedicated the first part of her life to correct the error the statistical randomness of the universe made. The rest of her life will be therefore filled with pure hedonism and indulgence. Allies are welcome. No time to waste. Ambitious and aspiring towards many areas of life, including science. PhD degree was only collateral. Served the purpose of a one-way ticket though. Enjoys spending time outdoors, cannot live without regular physical activity and deep conversations with very few people she cares for in her life. Has a profound passion for traveling and discovering wonders of nature and architecture, which should always be complemented by indulgence in high quality, carefully prepared food. Because life is one and life is now, nothing comes after, just eternal darkness. Her message to the world can be summed up in a quote of one extraordinary scientist: By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. _{Richard Dawkins} Throughout history, we were able to witness devastating consequences of extreme close-mindedness for mankind, over and over again. Caution should be taken before we lose ourselves in the other extreme end of the spectrum, if it’s not too late already. ### Finally, all about the all-out altruist and voluntary taxpayer: # @alexdory Born in a family of STEM enthusiasts, raised with the concept of altruism and civism. Taught entrepreneurship since the early years, became a passionate computer enthusiast, made first money at 14 in Webdesign. Gave it all to his younger cousin to buy a computer so she can become a designer, which she later did. Likes to know how everything works, from the potato peeler to jet engines to genetics and to government policies and people. With a degree in programming and a passion for aerospace, he started working in a startup, whose mission is to provide affordable aviation services to the developing countries. Started working with 3D engines and shaders and stepped into AutoCAD and 3ds max. Worked as a one-man-team for a few years. Certified as an Air Traffic Controller Trainer by the company, met and made friends around the world, understanding that we are all the same, human beings with needs, emotions, goals and existential problems. Started out to solve some of them, starting with education which is the key for a successful individual development and social/civic awakening. Came to Steem to distribute the abundance we take for granted in some of our countries, while others only dream of the idea of it # So there you have it!

The forces of evil have colluded to align the gravitational waves from a supernova somewhere to your left in a way that allows these three deviants to attend the SteemSTEM/Utopian meetup ONE MONTH FROM NOW.

Let’s hope they don’t destroy each other like the anti-matter particles of society they are.

This page is synchronized from the post: Introducing Members of the Meetup!

Welcome to the 71^st issue of SteemSTEM Distilled, a curation effort by the members of the @steemstem team.

SteemSTEM aims to make Steem a better place for STEM, a task which we believe crucial for the long-term development of the blockchain. Our goals consist in invigorating and inspiring the minds of a community of STEM aficionados on Steem, targeting on the long-term the upgrade of SteemSTEM as a real platform for science communication. In the meantime, this goes through the support of quality, interesting and cutting-edge STEM content. For more details, a recent update on the SteemSTEM project is available here. If you want to discuss with us, please do not hesitate to join the steemSTEM discord server. In order to support the best STEM content on Steem, our team scours the blockchain and read more than a couple of thousands of STEM-related posts per week. We hence support about 200 of these posts, and present in this distilled our top 8 handpicked choices for the last Thursday-Sunday period. ## Monday - Wednesday ___

### The wave-particle duality of photons - physics explained This (delayed) week begins with an excellent physics post by @zen-art on the dual nature of light. You will surely learn a lot by her, so don’t skip this post, it might be long, but it is also very interesting!

### POSITIVE SPARK IN TRADITIONAL MEDICINE Let’s leave physics and move on to medicine and @yhubi who explains very well how blood tonic works. Were you among the ones who believed it actually produces more blood in your body? Well, you’d better read this post and you’ll be in for a surprise!

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Wednesday - Friday

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### A world with no males - reality is stranger than fiction. What would a world without males be like? How would reproduction take place without having any boys around? @carlgnash has written a great post discussing just that… parthenogenesis! Don’t miss this one!

### [Math Talk #4] Pigeonhole Principle and Applications [2] Math lovers are you here? ‘Cause we got an amazing math post by @mathsolver just for you! This is the second part of the Pigeon Hole Principle (yeah, it would be great if you could read the previous part too). We can’t wait for more of his great math posts to come!

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Saturday - Sunday

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### Animalistiary #6; Sex? Yes, They Almost Always Said Yes To Sex! @chloroform’s cool post comes next! You will love reading this piece on animals and their sexual behavior! Just don’t feel bad if some of them seem to have sex more often than you.

### Engineering Slut || How Bernoulli’s equations could solve engineering problems The engineering slut, ah sorry, @kafilat is closing our week this time with a wonderful engineering post and applications of Bernoulli’s equations. If you are into such subjects, then you will not regret reading this post!

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A few words about the nomination process

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For some time, the editorial team behind this distilled series is made of a one-woman-team, @ruth-girl, and she chooses her favorite posts (potentially discussing with other curators and/or the management). Posts written by the SteemSTEM team are excluded from the nomination process.

Please do not be discouraged if you did not make it on this issue. We are picking up in total 14 posts a week out of more than 200. The chances are thus low ;) In the meantime, you may wish to check these guidelines for extra tips on how your writing could be more effective.

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Authors upvoted by the SteemSTEM team

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In the spirit of being transparent about our actions that are now supported by @utopian-io, @curie, our delegators, our trailers and our manual curator supporters, we release every week the list of authors who have caught the attention of the @steemstem curation team.

Once again there will be no stats this week as everyone is on vacation or otherwise AWOL, including our resident stat mammouth (sp), @lemouth.

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_{[Credits: @hightouch]}

All curation rewards earned will be used to fund @steemstem project functioning and activities.

See you all next MonTuesday!

This page is synchronized from the post: SteemSTEM Distilled #71

This week, the spotlight is on de-STEM, our german-speaking sub-community. Active since half a year, this initiative works on promoting STEM content within the important german community of the steem blockchain.

^{banner by @lianaakobian}

The Team

De-STEM is managed by @sco, who also serves as a language group curator. Also, several steemSTEM mentors/honor members, like @egotheist or @lesshorrible, are actively supporting german authors to improve the quality of their publications.

Account and steemSTEM votes

Our sub-community independently runs its own steem account: @de-STEM, which has grown consistantly since its creation and has long passed a voting power of 1000 SP. From there, outstanding posts posted in #de-stem are resteemed and upvoted. If german posts follow the criteria of steemSTEM, they will be forwarded to the steemSTEM curation team and - upon being reviewed - receive our generous upvote.

Community Building

ReSTEM

Every one or two weeks, a dedicated post (“ReSTEM”) informs the community about ongoing developments, changes or challenges. Also, it provides statistics on given upvotes and a selection of particularly valuable posts for all people who don’t have the time to follow the #de-stem category on a daily base. Just as with steemSTEM’s “Distilled”, this aims at further motivating authors to publish quality content in regular intervals.

Discord

A key to every community is - naturally - communication. De-STEM has its own discord chat, where you can hang out and discuss the latest STEM topics. You don’t even need to bring german language skills - the community is always happy to teach you important german every-day words like Behördenantragsübersetzungsformular or Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz!

We can’t think of any reason why you shouldn’t speak german fluently within a week of chatting with us.

C’mon!

You speak german (or you did the discord class), and you are interested in reading, writing or discussing science, technology, engineering and mathematics? Then join us! Until then: Steem on!

This page is synchronized from the post: SteemSTEM Sub-Community Update Series: de-STEM

The main event of the Utopian.io team and community meetup is happening on September 20th and you are invited! Join us for twenty-four hours of designing and developing inspiring open source applications to benefit the users of Utopian.io and the Steem blockchain.

In addition to providing an opportunity to collaborate with some of the best tech minds of the Steem and Utopian.io community, we’ve secured a budget for prizes to make it especially tempting for you to take part and contribute.

When?

The time-frame we’ve chosen is a short one. The hackathon will launch on September 20th 6:00 am UTC and will end on September 21st 6:00 am UTC.

We don’t expect to sleep much, but we will get a lot done!

Where?

Anywhere and everywhere!

The hackathon headquarters will, of course, be at the villa the Utopian.io team will be staying at in Lucca, between Pisa and Florence.

Community members who are able to attend in person are welcome to join us at the villa from 6:00 am until 4:00 pm UTC. For anyone joining via the Internet, and attendees looking to continue their projects from home, the hackathon will continue until 6:00 am on September 21st.

How To Join?

RSVP here to save your spot, and be sure to indicate if you plan to attend in person or online.

If you’ll be joining us from the comfort of your own home or office, wherever that may be, please be sure to join the #hackathon channel on the Utopian.io Discord channel to discuss and coordinate. The hackathon will also be streamed live on DLive and Twitch, with personal commentary and the kind of fun moments that only happen on live streams.

By September 19th, be sure to form your hackathon team, or join one on the #hackathon channel by chatting with other attending community members. Each group should ideally have at least one developer and one designer.

To be included in the contributions evaluated for a prize, your work should be submitted as a Utopian.io contribution no later than 21 Sept. 10:00 am UTC.

What Will We Do?

The topics chosen for our first community hackathon are Open Source and Steem. While fairly broad, these topics cover what Utopian.io is about - empowering open source developers and contributors by utilizing the Steem blockchain.

As we get ready for the hackathon on our side, we encourage you to start a discussion regarding specific angles and technological solutions you would want to focus on. The best place to do so is the dedicated #hackathon channel in the Utopian.io community Discord. We look forward to seeing your early ideas there!

Prizes & Extras

To give you another good reason to join and excel, we’re offering a cash prize in addition to an upvote on your contribution post to Utopian.io.

First Place: 100% upvote + 300 STEEM Second Place: 80% + 150 STEEM Third Place: Upvote based on moderation score + 50 STEEM

The Utopian.io moderation teams will evaluate and score the contributions, and winners will be chosen based on the highest score awarded across teams. Winners will be announced by September 26th.

Bring Your Friends!

The hackathon is open to one and all, both at the villa or online, from anywhere in the world. To ensure maximum visibility for the event, we plan to advertise it with the local developer community in Italy, as well as to blockchain development enthusiasts worldwide.

We encourage you to send this announcement to anyone you think may be interested in participating. For any questions, please contact us on the #hackathon channel on the Utopian.io Discord server.

Can’t wait to hack away with you!

This page is synchronized from the post: Utopian Hackathon - Revealing Date, Topic, Prizes & More Details on The First Utopian.io Community Hackathon

Welcome to the 70^th issue of SteemSTEM Distilled, a curation effort by the members of the @steemstem team.

SteemSTEM aims to make Steem a better place for STEM, a task which we believe crucial for the long-term development of the blockchain. Our goals consist in invigorating and inspiring the minds of a community of STEM aficionados on Steem, targeting on the long-term the upgrade of SteemSTEM as a real platform for science communication. In the meantime, this goes through the support of quality, interesting and cutting-edge STEM content. For more details, a recent update on the SteemSTEM project is available here. If you want to discuss with us, please do not hesitate to join the steemSTEM discord server. In order to support the best STEM content on Steem, our team scours the blockchain and read more than a couple of thousands of STEM-related posts per week. We hence support about 200 of these posts, and present in this distilled our top 8 handpicked choices for the last Thursday-Sunday period. ## Monday - Wednesday ___

### Toxoplasmosis: In Defense of the Cat A well-written and interesting post is here to begin our week with! Read what @agmoore has written about Toxoplasmosis in this amazing piece!

### Pretty blue rings of death, the bacterial basis for the octopus’s venom @effofex has given us another beautiful post for this week. Read to learn surprisng facts about the venom you can find in octopuses!

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Wednesday - Friday

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### The Amateur Mycologist - Valdivia, Chile We love @dber for his originality and this time he has another amazing post from his trip to Chile for us. Nature lovers, don’t miss reading this one!

### Leaving the Past Behind Another excellent psychology piece by @abigail-dantes is here on the usual “Psychology Friday”! This time Abigail deals with the past in a must-read post!

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Saturday - Sunday

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### Slope Stabilization and the Mass Wasting Phenomenon Coming up next, a great engineering post by @abumaryam on the stabilization of slopes. If you enjoy engineering posts, you will surely like this one too!

### Female Orgasm - starring evolution (genre - mystery) Interesting, clever and beautifully written the post that closes our week. In this one, @scienceblocks discusses one of the greatest mysteries in life… the ladies’ Big O!

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A few words about the nomination process

---

For some time, the editorial team behind this distilled series is made of a one-woman-team, @ruth-girl, and she chooses her favorite posts (potentially discussing with other curators and/or the management). Posts written by the SteemSTEM team are excluded from the nomination process.

Please do not be discouraged if you did not make it on this issue. We are picking up in total 14 posts a week out of more than 200. The chances are thus low ;) In the meantime, you may wish to check these guidelines for extra tips on how your writing could be more effective.

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Authors upvoted by the SteemSTEM team

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In the spirit of being transparent about our actions that are now supported by @utopian-io, @curie, our delegators, our trailers and our manual curator supporters, we release every week the list of authors who have caught the attention of the @steemstem curation team.

Unfortunately, our stat man @lemouth is away on a mysterious adventure, so we are taking a temporary stat-vacation this week!

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_{[Credits: @hightouch]}

All curation rewards earned will be used to fund @steemstem project functioning and activities.

See you all next MonTuesday!

This page is synchronized from the post: SteemSTEM Distilled #70

As most of you already know, our second steemSTEM Meetup is approaching, during which participants will have a chance to visit the Virgo lab located near Pisa in Italy, as well as to spend some quality time socializing with each other in the beautiful city of Florence. We decided to make a series of posts about prominent people who originated from this city, so that participants will be able to truly appreciate historical significance of Florence. # Life and work of Niccolò Machiavelli Very few names are at the same time so deeply connected to politics and political science while being frowned upon, when their ideas are actually implemented. Niccolò Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was one of these people. His most notable work is called The Prince - which is, simply spoken, a regent’s guide to power and how to maintain it. In the aftermath of that book, the term Machiavellianism was used to refer to people and/or politicians who dared to use strategies recommended by Machiavelli in order to achieve their goals. _Source But who was this guy anyway and why write now about him? As most of you may know already, the @steemstem and @utopian-io meetup this year will take place in Florence, Italy. And, since you are all smart guys, you will likely have deducted that Niccolò Machiavelli was born there and later played a significant role in Florence’s society as well. Although he had a successful career in politics for a few years – getting appointed at the office of second chancery, later he became the secretary of the Dieci di Libertà e Pace and finally he was put in charge of the Florentine militia – this success did not last. After the Medici took control over the Florentine city-state, Machiavelli was dismissed from his office and later thrown into prison because it was thought he was conspiring against the Medici. Regardless of the torture he had to endure there, he did not confess to any conspiracy and eventually was released after three weeks. Niccolò Machiavelli is considered as one of the first empirical (political) scientist, since he always drew conclusions based on experiences and facts as well as pointing out, how utterly pointless a mere theorizing without any empirical evidence would be. This can, of course, also be seen in his most famous work. ## The Prince Machiavelli put much emphasis on how important it is to carefully monitor the current situation of the state and then decide how to make the most out of it – meaning, how to take and maintain control. He usually described ideologies like religions as man-made and considered them only as a means to an end. If they were helpful to seize and maintain power, then a regent should use them accordingly, but not succumb to them. Instead of relying on meta-physical concepts like gods and wonders (and justifying their own power with it), he encouraged the rulers to take risks and have ambitions to change the very being of the state and its society in total – if deemed necessary. Innovation was therefore not something a regent should frown upon but welcome with open arms, if it can be used to strengthen his grip around the state. In contrast to most former political writers, Machiavelli had not much love for the classical good and evil dualism. In The Prince he describes extensively the various tasks a regent must fulfil, if he wishes to claim and maintain his power. Sometimes this can lead to somewhat extreme outcomes. According to Machiavelli, it is an acceptable mean to kill political opponents or act out other vicious deeds to establish a new government system. It should be noted though, that he puts a lot of emphasis on how to exactly do that. A wise ruler establishes beforehand how much cruelty he needs – and then acts according to it only once, because people tend to forget one immense cruelty faster than many continuous ones. In Machiavelli’s world it is by far better to be feared than to be loved, since love can be an obstacle, if it is necessary to use violence against opponents, but if the regent is feared anyway, this is just a logical reaction. Although it is important to find the subtle balance between mere fear and hatred – a regent whose citizens despise him, will eventually have to deal with revolutionary actions and betrayal. Fear, on the other hand, can be used as a handy tool to establish control but not pushing the limits of one’s citizens beyond of what they are willing to endure. In conclusion, it can be noted that Machiavellianism can be used as a way to seize and maintain power, using opportunistic and sometimes immoral means. This is also the reason why in modern psychology the term Machiavellianism is considered as one of the dark traits of personality inside the so-called dark triad. People who score high at this trait tend to be more ego-centrical and focused on personal success – even if that means they have to exploit others to achieve that. Even today, the work of Niccolò Machiavelli has still quite some impact on various scientific disciplines and every day life. The city of Florence was the birthplace of some truly great minds – making it only logical to be the very gathering spot for great minds from all over the world. Niccolò Machiavelli | Machiavellianism | The Prince

This page is synchronized from the post: The World of Niccolò Machiavelli