Science News Thread (for articles that don't relate to ongoing discussions)

[kerbiloid]

43 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Modern hunters certainly know about the Rut and pastoralists know about selective breeding and the relationship between a mating animal and pregnancy.  Heck biblical 'purity' of females is clearly aligned with childbirth and associated risks of pregnancy and the social costs (and if we think of the Old Testament / Torah as a written compilation of oral traditions, given that all the begats are in the book - mating certainly wasn't mysterious.

The battery can be charged with electricity of the kind which was mating. The whole still-alas-modern telegony is based on it.

The biblical example accurately illustrates the principle.
"If recharge the sheep batteries with white rams, the lambs born white. If do that together with black rams, the lambs born colorful.. If do that with colored sticks before the sheep eyes, the principle remains.", that's what happened in that story.
"Don't let a pregnant woman see ugly things, or the baby may born ugly", and other such traditions. Because they understand the birth energy as a sum of energies consumed by the fertile female.
Also this means that if a non-human "energy" had been used (Zeus' in case of his girlfriends and their sons (partially affecting younger semigod's brothers), or bull's in case of Pasiphae), the result may be viable but anomalous (a semigod or a teriomorphous monster), but absolutely not unexpected or impossible. Of course, in the archaic picture of the world.

Also, the archaic people easily can accept that a hero or a monster may have several fathers (say, a god and a king), as the god's "mating energy" enforces and overrides the human one.
So, Heracles is also the king's son.

What the archaic people often don't see, is the discrete character of a  connection between that exact mating act and that exact birth.
They see the birth as a female function from all or some mating acts of the preceding period, and other kinds of events, like seen images. The antiscientific telegony theory follows this tradition.

This also makes strange the idea that a hunter could even care about pregnancy duration of wild species before he became a cattleman and started observing exact animals in controlled environment.
It would be interesting to look at the paleolythic hunter familiar with that exact female deer for eight months instead of killing it. Especially since the deer excellently know what is a human and try to hide from this monster.

See also the example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draupadi
Her polyandria with several semigods was okay for them.

P.S.
Now compare this to the practice of most of all ancient and some modern peoples to treat a forcedly mated  girl/woman as a harlot and a shame of family, even if she wasn't be able to defend.
Think about this in their paradygm, if they believe that once being mated by a god, he will be bringing blessed children, while being mated by an enemy or a bad people, she will bring corrupted ones. 
So, they treat it as a corrupted sheep in the herd, and follow this vision, even if it looks weird for modern people.

Edited January 7, 2023 by kerbiloid

[Beamer]

18 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

A brilliant sample of pulling by ears the modern ecogreen agenda to random things, probably to pull money to the study. A sympathetic scientific magic.

1. These pictures were being painted for tens thousands of years. Why aren't they covered with myriads of marks, if these marks are something more than someone's personal notes?

2. Were they following every deer mating-pregnancy cycle? Or they were stalking for a year a particular deer, watching its belly, and making notes?
How many familiar deer do they have in the forest, when they hunt daily, to feed a hundred of people?

3. Where are the folk stories like "six long months was brave Strong Arm following the White Spot On Left Shoulder deer, because he knew from the elders that he should hunt it on the eighth month" ?

4. What makes to think that "Y" marks a "giving birth" event, rather than "our shift in the schedule", "this time we hunted well", "this time we move to the south camp", "look, I can count by eights!", "wife has her special days; please, good forest spirits, give me the strength to survive this again!" ?

5. How many modern hunters have fertility diaries of the deer in the forest?

6. As it's known, the pre-modern people often even don't see a clear connection between mating and births. They mostly understand the sex as a woman's birth-making battery recharging or so.

You don't need to track individual animals, or even a specific herd. Typical prey animals as depicted will generally mate at the same time and all give birth at the same time. People who live among animals and hunt them know these sorts of things It doesn't really matter if you think it's a battery, divine intervention or genetics, the pattern is pretty clear.

The paintings weren't made over tens of thousands of years but more like hundreds. IIRC the caves were abandoned and re-populated several times during a thousand year period or so, so each series of paintings stretches a few hundred years, say a dozen generations at most. It's generally estimated to be around 17000 years old. People started domesticating animals at least 15000 years ago.

Keep in mind stone age people were just as smart as we are, they just didn't have google. None of that means the markings actually refer to fertility cycles, but you can rest assured that people were aware of how baby deer came to be long before the Lascaux paintings were made. One of the reasons the Lascaux paintings are considered so interesting is because the depiction of the animals is quite advanced, using techniques like perspective that weren't seen before. It's safe to say these people were astute observers of the animals around them and made an effort to reproduce them in a realistic rather than symbolic manner.

I visited the Lascaux site in the 80s, it's quite impressive. I was young at the time, but to me it felt more like a library than some sort of religious site. You can't go into the original caves anymore, they've been closed to the public since the 60s, but there are great reproductions that give a good impression of the magnitude and quality of the paintings, and a museum with plenty of photographic material. I'd recommend a visit if you're ever in the area.

 

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, Beamer said:

You don't need to track individual animals, or even a specific herd. Typical prey animals as depicted will generally mate at the same time and all give birth at the same time. People who live among animals and hunt them know these sorts of things

Yes, and they happily do this without logging. Except this lonely primordial nerd.
Also, they don't need an accurate value for three simple reasons:
1. They hunt what they meet, so they don't need high precision. It doesn't matter if the deer pregnant for seven months or nine.

2. They don't have the months. They have moons. And the animals reproduce on solar calendar. A solar year doesn't match integer value of lunar month. So, any counting will meet the classic problem of calendar makers.

3. They don't have calendar to look, if it's April, 15th. Even stars are useless before they start agriculturing.
They follow a simple sequence of observable events, like "apple trees are flowering so...", "cranes are flying, so...". So, they just don't need these details. They just know that "when the hill is yellow , the deer start mating", "when we gather red berries, the deer start giving birth".

In cold climate, it's especially since the big animals tend to mate in autumn, give birth in late spring. So, all this time the tribe is sitting in a cave and eating what they prepared in autumn.
So, it's more possible that the mark at the deer picture mean "seven days passed, we ate the next frozen deer" or "seven months passed, we are out of food, but it's warm and we start gathering something to eat"..

6 hours ago, Beamer said:

The paintings weren't made over tens of thousands of years but more like hundreds.

I mean all animal paintings, not exactly these one. For tens kiloyears people were painting, one nerd left some marks, nobody had a clear explanation what are they for because they are so short that can mean whatever you want.
But of course, the ancient people first time expressed an interest in the ecology.

6 hours ago, Beamer said:

ach series of paintings stretches a few hundred years, say a dozen generations at most

Paintings or "month" marks? Did they need a few hundred years to notice that eight moons pass between the yellow hill and deer mating and the red berries and deer birth???
They are very observant both for hunters and for scientists... If someone would worry about the moons, he would need one year to count and several more to ensure.

Also trying to imagine a village where several generations are trying to do something that useless for centuries.
Especially when the only study conclusion can be:
"Well, so the deer need eight months. So, what? Didn't you know when do we start hunting? Or should we hunt them at another time? No?  Then why were you doing that, are you a fool?
PEOPLE!!! Look! We now call this fool Moon Counter! Be careful with him, who knows what else can cause his stupid head!"
Next winter everyone's fun will be asking  him daily, how many days it's left to the hunting and if can he call the deer to come now.
And every hunting other hunters would show him at a deer and then slapping their backs telling to watch and count.
Only very silly person would start in a village some studies which can't bring a profit. 

6 hours ago, Beamer said:

Keep in mind stone age people were just as smart as we are

It's just a declaration. Nobody knows how smart they were, and who are "we"? A university "we", or persons who failed the school "we". The hunting-gathering is not a rocket science, you can get a lot of people in the nearest prison to be enough smart for hunting and gathering. And a village is not much better for a nerd, it the best case he will be a popular clown.
Also, they hunt in groups led by an elderman. So, you need just several smart people for the whole tribe.
See Australia as a former prison, and any other land of pioneers. The new lands were not colonized by academicians, and being too much clever in a village is harmful to health.

6 hours ago, Beamer said:

stone age people were just as smart as we are, they just didn't have google

# metoo. Google appeared when I was 30+.

6 hours ago, Beamer said:

but you can rest assured that people were aware of how baby deer came to be long before the Lascaux paintings were made.

Exactly because of that, they didn't need any marks. The deer were their main food, they knew about the deer everything they needed to know.

Edited January 8, 2023 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

On 1/5/2023 at 2:16 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

 

As a rule, gymnosperms—flowerless plants with naked seeds—grow slower and live longer than angiosperms, flowering plants with fruits. Gymnosperms include ginkgo and every kind of conifer—including yews, pines, firs, spruces, cedars, redwoods, podocarps, araucarias and cypresses. Roughly 25 gymnosperm species can live 1,000 years or longer. The cypress family contains the most millennials, but the longest-lived species is a pine with an effective age limit of five millennia. By contrast, eight centuries is extremely old for an oak, an angiosperm. And only one kind of flowering plant, a baobab, has been positively dated beyond one millennium.

The Science Behind the Oldest Trees on Earth | Science| Smithsonian Magazine

More fun in that you can compare old living trees to old timber or archaeological finds getting thousands of years with growth rings. 

[steve9728]

Some progress from the Tokamak EAST: they break the record "A steady-state plasma with a world-record pulse length of 1056 s was obtained", and they found "a self-organizing, highly steady with quiet pedestal, robust plasma regime was discovered, called Super I-mode."

Realization of thousand-second improved confinement plasma with Super I-mode in Tokamak EAST

[Beamer]

12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Yes, and they happily do this without logging. Except this lonely primordial nerd.
Also, they don't need an accurate value for three simple reasons:
1. They hunt what they meet, so they don't need high precision. It doesn't matter if the deer pregnant for seven months or nine.

2. They don't have the months. They have moons. And the animals reproduce on solar calendar. A solar year doesn't match integer value of lunar month. So, any counting will meet the classic problem of calendar makers.

3. They don't have calendar to look, if it's April, 15th. Even stars are useless before they start agriculturing.
They follow a simple sequence of observable events, like "apple trees are flowering so...", "cranes are flying, so...". So, they just don't need these details. They just know that "when the hill is yellow , the deer start mating", "when we gather red berries, the deer start giving birth".

In cold climate, it's especially since the big animals tend to mate in autumn, give birth in late spring. So, all this time the tribe is sitting in a cave and eating what they prepared in autumn.
So, it's more possible that the mark at the deer picture mean "seven days passed, we ate the next frozen deer" or "seven months passed, we are out of food, but it's warm and we start gathering something to eat"..

I mean all animal paintings, not exactly these one. For tens kiloyears people were painting, one nerd left some marks, nobody had a clear explanation what are they for because they are so short that can mean whatever you want.
But of course, the ancient people first time expressed an interest in the ecology.

Paintings or "month" marks? Did they need a few hundred years to notice that eight moons pass between the yellow hill and deer mating and the red berries and deer birth???
They are very observant both for hunters and for scientists... If someone would worry about the moons, he would need one year to count and several more to ensure.

Also trying to imagine a village where several generations are trying to do something that useless for centuries.
Especially when the only study conclusion can be:
"Well, so the deer need eight months. So, what? Didn't you know when do we start hunting? Or should we hunt them at another time? No?  Then why were you doing that, are you a fool?
PEOPLE!!! Look! We now call this fool Moon Counter! Be careful with him, who knows what else can cause his stupid head!"
Next winter everyone's fun will be asking  him daily, how many days it's left to the hunting and if can he call the deer to come now.
And every hunting other hunters would show him at a deer and then slapping their backs telling to watch and count.
Only very silly person would start in a village some studies which can't bring a profit. 

It's just a declaration. Nobody knows how smart they were, and who are "we"? A university "we", or persons who failed the school "we". The hunting-gathering is not a rocket science, you can get a lot of people in the nearest prison to be enough smart for hunting and gathering. And a village is not much better for a nerd, it the best case he will be a popular clown.
Also, they hunt in groups led by an elderman. So, you need just several smart people for the whole tribe.
See Australia as a former prison, and any other land of pioneers. The new lands were not colonized by academicians, and being too much clever in a village is harmful to health.

# metoo. Google appeared when I was 30+.

Exactly because of that, they didn't need any marks. The deer were their main food, they knew about the deer everything they needed to know.

At this point, you are making a whole lot more assumptions than the people who published this research.

You're underestimating and/or understating the knowledge of both the ancient and the modern people. Astronomy is older than scripture, and 'counting moons' is probably as old as... well, counting. You don't count the moons since the beginning of time, you count the moons since the solstice, or the first snow, or the spring floods, etc. It wouldn't get you to the office on time but it's accurate enough for a hunter. We do know the people from 17000 years back had the same brains as we do, we can figure that out using our modern knowledge of biology, evolution, mutation rates and genetic variance among their descendants (i.e. us) combined with fossil record. We have that power. That's why we call them Homo Sapiens, just like us.

I'm not going to go point by point because you seem to be off on a bit of a rant, but suggesting that a cave that was used to document images of hundreds of animals for many generations is the result of some random doodles about last day's breakfast rather than an attempt at preserving knowledge for future generations, that's just downright silly. I don't think you understand the site. People didn't live in these caves and scribbled some random graffiti on the wall when they were bored, they went there specifically to paint, for a thousand years or more, deep inside caves where the paintings would stay well preserved.

 

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, Beamer said:

Astronomy is older than scripture, and 'counting moons' is probably as old as

Depends on what you call "astronomy".
The moon counting is trivial. The Sun and Polaris "navigation" is trivial.
Making a star map on a stone (or a bone) has nothing to do about astronomy, it's a trivial sympathetic magic.

Like shaman's drum represents the Earth like an Earth voodoo doll, the star map is his pocket voodoo sky to call the star spirits.
If he wants astronomy, he just looks up at the real stars, he doesn't need to make a map.
If he wants to walk between the stars, he just makes a star map on ground. (Like various ancient buildings are presumedly placed.)

9 hours ago, Beamer said:

you count the moons since the solstice

From what? Does anyone measure the time with stone clocks? Or a shadow direction with gnomon?

That's a fun of an agricultural settlement, not of the hunters-gatherers. In the best case they know about the solstices, but there is no practical use for them even in an agricultural village, as one is in begin of summer, another one in begin of winter, and thus none of them mark anything meaningful or can be used for any practical purpose, only for rituals.

9 hours ago, Beamer said:

or the first snow, or the spring floods

When the snow falls, all you can do is waiting for spring and periodically having trips to the forest, so the moon number is absolutely useless.

You may have a look at old Roman calendar, old Ancient Egyptian calendar, and even some of the main South American calendars,
All of them have a year of ~240 days, i.e. the warm season. Nobody cares about winter, it's even excluded from the month counting.

Also you can see additional 13th months in Ancient Roman and Ancient Hebrew, and Babylonian calendars. More of that, they are inserted not due to the math reasons, but (quoting from memory) "the lambs are too young, and the crop yet not raised enough, so in this year we decided to add a second month of this name."

Nobody cares about the moon counting in the agricultural society, even the months have different length (from 16 to 40 days in the old Roman calendar).
Nobody cares about the moons except for measuring long time periods in a hunter-gatherer society. They use direct observations. In the best case, they can move from one place to another when the Sky Centipede's head gets invisible.
The astronomy gets needed when you have to plan your activities, so, when you see the Pleiades in the morning, it's a time to prepare your tools and seeds, because two or three weeks later you should start your next agricultural campaign,

You can use lunar months only if you herd cattle in a semi-desert, without seasons. Then you don't care a lot about the solar year, and the practice of leap years with 13 months seems weird for you, thus Islamic calendar has fixed 12 lunar months and doesn't match the solar year even close.

***

The deer and other big animals mate in late autumn, spawn in later spring. They tend to be pregnant in winter.
In winter the last thing the hunter/gatherer/peasant cares of, is their latency time. He cares only about survival till spring. It plays absolutely no role for him, how long the deer is busy. He sees it - he kills it.

Also there are various edible animals: deer, bison, horse, mammoth, rhino, and others. Should they log each of them?

10 hours ago, Beamer said:

We do know the people from 17000 years back had the same brains as we do

We know the modern people have them. Why do we still have exams, trials, and diploma? All people are same smart, aren't they?
Do you have a diploma?  Why? Doesn't the fact, that somebody somewhere in the world is clever and educated, prove that everyone is?
Or you had to prove that you are same smart as "10%" of people, rather than other "90%"?
Or maybe not "10%", but "1%", or "0.1%" ?
Many people have same brain but either haven't read a book in their life, or don't have where to apply their cleverness,
Say, because they live in a village, where activities are simple, life is simple, and being too clever is very unhealthy, because others suspect you in cheating, or just hate from jealousy.
(And they are statistically right, because the rural life is simple, the work is simple, and too smart co-villager will definnitely try to take more than others, usually from the others.)

So, a declaration that "those people were as smart as we are" is just an Equestrian tale.
You may have a trip to any country where plain and sinple people live (for political correctness let's avoid listing them, even if most of them are covered with jungles and sometimes surrounded by ocean), or watch the crimes and (word filter) unwilling mating statistics, and ensure that even when they are enough smart, their smartness is often not expressed in astronomy, but instead has a very practical nature.
Some of them are hunters-gatherers, too.

***

The astronomy was not a thing even in the Ancient Greek times, until they started running across the whole Mediterranean Sea.
They were happily hopping from island to island and following the coastline, spending night on ground. It was much more important to visually know the coast and the currencies, and windy periods. Even without a magnetic compass.
The Ancient Egyptians didn't even know the islands.
The Phoenicians had trivial initial knowledge of star navigation, and thus were almost sea gods.

The eclipse period was counted as two years for millenia, and only in late Ancient Greece they discovered the 19-year cycle.
(Romans didn't carer and used 2 years).

The astronomic navigation got actual in ocean, when no visual details are available for weeks and months.

So, not big progress in astronomy from mammoths till Athenes.

10 hours ago, Beamer said:

People didn't live in these caves and scribbled some random graffiti on the wall when they were bored, they went there specifically to paint, for a thousand years or more, deep inside caves where the paintings would stay well preserved.

Yes, and the marks can mean absolutely anything. Including some children game or shaman beads.

[steve9728]

Botanists find the strong evidence shows that "Tibetan barley, barley, wheat, and jujube were introduced into China before the existence of the Land Silk Road": https://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12870-022-04022-9

Tibetan barley isn't something I can get used to personally, but I do wonder who was the first to grow that and discover it was edible.

[Beamer]

133 days of solar activity in 4K, courtesy of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:

 

 

[tater]

1 minute ago, steve9728 said:

Tibetan barley isn't something I can get used to personally, but I do wonder who was the first to grow that and discover it was edible.

I had tsampa (sp?) once in Nepal. Was a sort of slightly sweet porridge. Not very sweet milk tea, butter, and roasted flour I think. Wasn't bad, but I have no idea about the difference between barleys (something I usually only consume in the form of Scotch )

[steve9728]

1 hour ago, tater said:

I had tsampa (sp?) once in Nepal. Was a sort of slightly sweet porridge. Not very sweet milk tea, butter, and roasted flour I think. Wasn't bad, but I have no idea about the difference between barleys (something I usually only consume in the form of Scotch )

There may be a possibility that the good news is that you are eating a modified version of the flavours given to tourists, or of course that the one I went to on the other side of the Himalayas weren’t very good cooks hahaha 

The version I had was need to squished in my hands into a shape that I could eat on its own and dipped into their salty milk tea. A little greasy and dry for me. 

But the yak meat soup is very good!

Edited January 9, 2023 by steve9728

[tater]

2 hours ago, steve9728 said:

The version I had was need to squished in my hands into a shape that I could eat on its own and dipped into their salty milk tea. A little greasy and dry for me. 

Yeah, that was another form I have seen. The sweetened (? maybe just scalded milk?) milk tea was then salted and buttered so it was savory, with a bare hint of sweet. Not, um, my cup of tea, but it was given to me, so I ate it.

[steve9728]

4 hours ago, tater said:

The sweetened (? maybe just scalded milk?) milk tea was then salted and buttered so it was savory, with a bare hint of sweet.

The butter tea. It has to be said that this stuff is quite calorific.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Scientists Just Invented an Entirely New Way to Refrigerate Things : ScienceAlert

 

[Beamer]

Starship Full Stack for size...

Because when you're talking about the latest wind turbines, a banana just won't do. (Note: image not meant to represent actual turbine blade profile, just the length of 128 meter)

Quote

Size is paramount when it comes to wind; the longer your blades, the larger the swept area and the more energy you can harvest from a single pole – and when it comes to offshore wind, the sea-bed foundations carry an outsized cost, so being able to generate more from fewer locations is a big deal.

https://newatlas.com/energy/h260-18mw-biggest-wind-turbine/

 

[tomf]

On 1/10/2023 at 2:35 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Scientists Just Invented an Entirely New Way to Refrigerate Things : ScienceAlert

 

That is an awful article, no real explanation of how it works other than "ions" and loads of nonsense about how because CO2 is used to manufacture the refrigerant it might be carbon negative.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, tomf said:

That is an awful article, no real explanation of how it works other than "ions" and loads of nonsense about how because CO2 is used to manufacture the refrigerant it might be carbon negative.

You ain't lyin! 

I usually try to post legit sources and quality articles - but occasionally you find something new and weird that bears sharing. 

[Beamer]

1 hour ago, tomf said:

That is an awful article, no real explanation of how it works other than "ions" and loads of nonsense about how because CO2 is used to manufacture the refrigerant it might be carbon negative.

If you have a Science.com subscription you can find more here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade1696

There's also a PDF with supplementary text that contains a lot of extra information (no sub needed): https://www.science.org/doi/suppl/10.1126/science.ade1696/suppl_file/science.ade1696_sm.pdf

 

 

[Beamer]

Amateur astronomers discover a huge mysterious cloud of double ionized oxygen right in our cosmic back yard: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-recently-discovered-gas-cloud-near-andromeda-stumps-astronomers/

Quote

The recent discovery of a huge cloud of gas floating near the Andromeda galaxy—one of the most extensively studied objects in the heavens—is the latest proof that the sky still offers a vast amount of celestial real estate to sift through. This cloud has been hiding in plain sight for decades. And the best part is that its origin is a mystery.

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

28 minutes ago, Beamer said:

Amateur astronomers discover a huge mysterious cloud of double ionized oxygen right in our cosmic back yard: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-recently-discovered-gas-cloud-near-andromeda-stumps-astronomers/

 

Also - a discovery made by amateur astronomers... That's cool! 

[mikegarrison]

On 1/9/2023 at 6:23 PM, steve9728 said:

The butter tea. It has to be said that this stuff is quite calorific.

It is supposed to be. It's a drink that works best at high altitudes, where people need a lot of concentrated calories (especially fat calories). Fats are easier to digest in alpine situations than other types of calories, and the required caloric intake is very high.

I've never been to Nepal, but all my friends who have say they got served this stuff all the time. They also say that most of the time the butter was somewhat rancid.

[kerbiloid]

They drink same salt fat "tea" in steppe (just without yaks), so I guess they just lacked sugar.

The thing which I don't understand, is why call a broth "tea".

Edited January 13, 2023 by kerbiloid

[steve9728]

12 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

It is supposed to be. It's a drink that works best at high altitudes, where people need a lot of concentrated calories (especially fat calories). Fats are easier to digest in alpine situations than other types of calories, and the required caloric intake is very high.

I've never been to Nepal, but all my friends who have say they got served this stuff all the time. They also say that most of the time the butter was somewhat rancid.

And that's also the reason why those Buddhist monks can eat beef up there: low calories can kill, pretty soon.

[darthgently]

Butter (non-rancid) is a staple in my protein/fat centered regime.  Sometimes I put a little bread underneath my butter to get ~25% carbs into the regime mix.  Butter in morning coffee is great to get some smooth burning calories and flavor along with the caffeine.  A bit of collagen powder in the coffee also, but it adds no flavor, just calories and other benefits.  Then some half & half, for vitamin D and more fat calories.  Really nice in winter in cold climate even if not in Nepal

[tater]

24 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Butter (non-rancid) is a staple in my protein/fat centered regime.  Sometimes I put a little bread underneath my butter to get ~25% carbs into the regime mix.  Butter in morning coffee is great to get some smooth burning calories and flavor along with the caffeine.  A bit of collagen powder in the coffee also, but it adds no flavor, just calories and other benefits.  Then some half & half, for vitamin D and more fat calories.  Really nice in winter in cold climate even if not in Nepal

I made some butter/MCT coffee a few times a few years ago.