Seriously. Saying “we’re fucking morons” for being surprised by the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center might be hyperbole, except the same group tried the same thing in 1993! They were just bad at it. Instead of being a KIND OF A REALLY BIG HINT, that incident just kind of disappeared down the memory hole.
Salt is a preservative, so salted butter will last quite a lot longer when unrefrigerated.
Scenario: I want to call a friend in Bulgaria. It’s 11:23AM GMT. What’s he likely to be doing right now? With timezones, I can quickly calculate that it’s 2:23PM local time, and intuitively know. Without, I’d have to look up a timetable of daily activities in Sofia.
I guess if I called regularly, I could memorize the timetable, or maybe roughly calculate an offset in hours to add or subtract from GMT to intuitively relate his schedule to mine. For example, my dinner time is about 11PM GMT, so his dinner time is about 7AM GMT.
But, I wonder, if I went there to visit, would it be easier to memorize the local timetable, or just do the math when I check the time?
I would make the written English language 100% phonetic.
Nobody speaks written English, so how do we know it’s not already phonetic?
Well, the chief of police in my city did this (accidental discharge of gun in the oven) once, so make of that what you will. He did have the integrity to discipline himself, per department policy.
Almost literally true, which is why it makes a great response to OP’s question.
Oh, hell, classes just resumed at the university here, so the new batch of freshmen is here, and some days I feel like it. But I don’t count the Cold War as a war, just like the Holy Roman Empire wasn’t holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
When I was born, the United States wasn’t involved in a war.
Reminds me of an old Yakov Smirnoff routine. Espresso powder makes espresso, and milk powder makes milk. So what does baby powder make?
That’s true, but our theory of physics is far more complex than those simple patterns. It actually consists of many, many interrelated theories that mutually reinforce each other. And that so many of them describe phenomena described with c as a term strongly indicates the speed of causality of pretty fundamental.
In any case, I’d be very interested to learn how it shakes out, but I probably won’t be around in 300 years to do so!
Ah, but “major technological breakthroughs” != “major technological breakthroughs concerning faster-than-light travel”. Certainly, there will be more of the former in the next 300 years, but our understanding of physics precludes the latter.
The quality of our understanding of physics is proved by the technological advances that we’ve already made with it. Yes, we’re missing some major pieces, like how to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics (how to quantize gravity), but the problem that physicists face on this front is actually how stunningly well the Standard Model holds up, and has so far resisted attempts to break it. It’s highly unlikely that we’ll discover anything which completely upends the laws of physics as we know them.
Honestly, I feel like too many people have a cognitive bias from living in a time of unparalleled technological advancement. We’ve gone from, e.g. mechanical chronometers to calculate longitude on wooden vessels propelled by the wind to GPS-guided international flights in a historical blink of an eye. The pace of technological change even in living memory has been immense.
Not knowing how any of it works, it’s easy to think of it akin to magic, and to extrapolate from “18th century humans -> 21st century humans” to “21st century humans -> alien technology”. The catch is that this technological surge has come about because we’ve figured out how the physical universe works, not in spite of missing out on big chunks of potential knowledge.
All of our technology has plumbed the depths of our physical, scientific knowledge. The same physical knowledge that allows us to do wonders also shows us the limits, and provides the definitive answers as to why there’s not “alien technology” out there that would seem like magic to us.
Put another way, it would be really bonkers if the scientific knowledge that has enabled us to do so many practical things, like create tiny devices like the one I’m using to tap out a message, was somehow totally wrong.
This is probably 10 years ago that I read it, but I don’t expect that the numbers have changed much: The median number of lifetime partners for men is 4, while the median for women is 7. The median means that half of the group had that many or more, and half had that many or fewer. If every heterosexual encounter by definition has to include a male and a female, the way that that works out is that there’s a subgroup of men who have a partner count way over four.
In short, yeah, that observation checks out in the research. Among men, there are a few Wilt Chamberlains balanced by thousands with only a partner or two. (NB: extreme example for rhetorical purposes)
Shout-out to Raritan Engineering. I accidentally cracked the porcelain bowl of the head that was original equipment in my 1974 sailboat, and needed a new one. Not only is the company still in business, the parts from a model they still sell are compatible, 50 years later! Their support techs were able to tell me exactly what parts I needed to buy.
Actually, quite a few marine brands are always reliable. The harsh environment at sea tends to out cheap crap in a hurry.
I think you have some stiff competition on the shortest war from the Conch Republic. You’d have to sign the peace treaty in 59 seconds to beat the record. (Be sure that the enemy sets their killbots for a very low preset kill limit.)
I think it makes sense in two ways: Some people in right-wing world think that women are property, without individual agency. If another man has been able to have sex with her, you have failed as a Real Man™ to protect what’s rightfully yours, in the same way as you have failed if a fox gets into the henhouse.
Or, a Real Man™ is so good at sex that his wife doesn’t want anybody else. Either way, being a “cuck” means you’re not a Real Man™.
How about a government-sponsored, non-profit authentication service? That is, it should be impossible to get a loan, open a line of credit, or anything else in somebody’s name, without the lending institution verifying that it’s actually on behalf of the named individual. Eliminate the security-through-obscurity technique of using bits of easily-leaked personal information as a poor substitute for actual authentication.
I mean, (as a comparative example) I have to go through an OAuth2 consent dialog to connect a third-party app to my email account, yet somebody can saddle me with huge debts based on knowing a 9-digit number that just about everybody knows? It’s the system that’s broken, tightening up the laws on PII is just a band-aid.
Deep state fake news!
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, either, but my preferred suspicion is that it’s aliens. They’ve tried a number of techniques, from implanting mind-control devices (Mitch McConnell and the way his face carries a look of horrified disgust at the things they make him do) to direct infiltration by putting one of their agents in an ill-fitting human suit (Ted Cruz). Ultimately, they seem to have given up the finesse approach, and settled on lobotomizing humans with existing personality disorders to create a RAID (redundant array of inexpensive dipshits) to simply overwhelm our system of government.
It’s the only explanation that really makes sense to me.
Nah, like 50% of it is just telling people to restart their computers.