They’re just autistic! This is a time for a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and we should take a breath.

“Those kids” have already graduated college and are in the workforce. Computer labs got removed from my local schools in the early 2010’s, which was a literal decade ago. The middle schoolers (at the time when the computer labs were removed) have bachelors degrees now.

I call them Rubber Duck Managers.

There’s an old story about a website designer finishing a site. But they knew the approval for the site would need to come from one specific manager. This particular manager was notorious for changing things just to be able to say they contributed. Nothing could ever pass over this manager’s desk without at least one revision, because the manager wanted to be able to say that they had a hand in the project. They weren’t ever content with just sitting back and going “yeah, looks good. Ship it as-is.”

So the designer got the site looking exactly how they wanted it. It was perfect… And then right before they sent it off to be approved, they added a banner of spinning rubber duck gifs at the very top of the page:

The manager sent back “yeah, just get rid of the damned ducks before the site goes live.” By giving the manager a big bright “this needs to be fixed” thing to change, the designer was able to get the site they actually wanted. So if you’re ever dealing with a manager like this, be sure to give them a figurative rubber duck to “fix”.

Yup, this is my guess. Whether or not it’s official policy doesn’t matter; The bigot behind the clerk’s desk is confiscating paperwork regardless. It’s possible their superiors don’t even know about it, and they’re just quietly shredding the IDs without telling anyone else in the office.

But the important point is that the bigot feels empowered to do so, because they don’t believe they’ll face any repercussions for it. We need to make bigots afraid again…

The Photoshop of map makers; Amazing if you know how to use it, but absolutely useless if you don’t.

+1 for the Tale of Two Wastelands mention. It’s the single greatest mod you can install, because it brings all of the quality of life improvements from New Vegas (like true iron sights) into FO3. Plus all the mods you install on FO:NV will also run on Tale of Two Wastelands, so you can actually get a decent playing experience.

They’ve been pro Israel the whole time. They’ve never been about defending Jews; They just defend Israel, and call any opponents antisemitic. The issue is that as Israel slid into fascism, the ADL found themselves having to defend it. Which means that now they find themselves having to defend Israel’s fascist allies, who are doing blatantly fascist shit.

Yup, that was the first thing I noticed too. Basically lorem ipsum for product codes.

They ended up developing a rudimentary sign language based on facial expressions and gestures. Because the women who were taking care of them were strictly instructed to never speak… But they were never given any instructions regarding facial expressions or gestures. So the kids learned that expressions and gestures are how to communicate.

This is also why trees are so fucking crazy to think about. It is impossible to pump water up a hose more than ~32 feet. Like it’s literally physically impossible to stick a pump at the top of a tall building and suck water straight up a pipe. You need a complicated series of pumps and one-way valves to pump it up in stages. Because you’re not really “sucking” the water up the pipe. You’re just lowering the pressure in the pipe, and atmospheric pressure pushes the water upwards to fill the low pressure. After 32 feet tall, the top of the hose/pipe will be a perfect vacuum, atmospheric pressure won’t be able to push liquid water upwards any farther, and the water will just begin cold-boiling in the top of the pipe as the liquid water turns into gas (steam) to fill the vacuum.

But tall trees can move water all the way to their leaves by using only passive capillary action, and suction created by water evaporating out of their leaves. The capillary action is created by tiny straw-like fibers that run all the way up the tree and are bunched together really tightly. Due to surface tension, water is able to “climb” the capillaries as the surface tension fills as much surface area as possible. Then at the top of the tree, as the water evaporates out of the leaves, it draws up fresh water to fill the void.

But that means the bottom of the tree should need to support the pressure of all of the water above it. But it doesn’t, because the surface tension holds the water stable inside of the trunk.

The electric field one is also interesting, because the cable length doesn’t actually determine how long it takes to turn on. All that matters is the distance between the power source and the device. Electricity travels at the speed of light, which means we can measure how long it should take to travel down the wire.

But let’s say you have a 1 light year long power cable, made out of a perfect conductor (so we don’t need to worry about power loss from things like wire resistance or heat). Then you set the power source right next to the device and turn it on. The logical person may say that the device would take a full year to turn on, because the cable is one light year long. Others may say that it will take two light years to turn on; Long enough for the electricity to make a full circuit down the cable and back to the power source again.

But instead, the device turns on (nearly) instantly. Because the wire isn’t actually what causes the device to turn on. The device turns on because of an EM field between itself and the power source. The wire is simply facilitating the creation of that field. The only thing that matters is the distance between the source of power and the device. That distance, divided by the speed of light, is how long the device will take to turn on. If the device was a full light year away from the power source, it would take a full year to turn on. But since the device is sitting right next to the power source, it turns on right away.

Sous vide is the way to go for steak. Let it sit in the bag with a sprig of rosemary to perfectly cook all the way through, and then add a sear at the very end to finish it.

There’s a reason why there were the “loose lips sink ships” posters.

Yeah, the Department of Defense has to hold regular “know your number” meetings, to remind old shits with security clearance that if a hot woman is flirting with you, she’s 100% a spy. Basically, they have to be super blunt and tell all the horny dudes “you’re a fucking 2 out of 10, maybe a 3.5 at best. You look like a potato that is a little too old, and you smell like wet beef and cigarette smoke. If you’re at the bar after work and an early-20’s dime is flirting with you, it’s because she wants something besides sex. Know your number, because the fact that the 10 is even within arms reach should throw up all kinds of red flags.”

And they have to do this specifically because the “send in a hot woman to get him drunk, then act really interested when he says he works for the DoD” strategy is so incredibly effective.

I’ve found red note to have far fewer of the American-style “just trying to sell you something” influencers. Chinese influencers seem to just stay in their little bubble of focused content.

If you’re paying a school $20k per semester, they can afford to eat the cost on some paper and toner.

and our store manager threatened him and kicked him out.

As difficult as it may be in the heat of the moment, the best thing to do in this circumstance is to initially act like nothing is wrong, and then quietly alert the authorities ASAP. If you just kick them out, they’ll find someone else to do the work, but they’ll be more careful with that next person. You don’t want to scare them into the wind, because then investigators will have a much harder time.

Not weird, but funny and unexpected.

I work in live entertainment. I deal with all kinds of shows, but the vast majority of them involve clients making/sourcing content to use in their shows. For instance, something as simple as a PowerPoint presentation on a projector, or music tracks for a dance show. So I use a lot of computers that don’t belong to me.

The funniest interaction I’ve ever had involved a speaker for a Black History Month presentation. The speaker brought his laptop in, with his slides all ready to go. So we plug it into the projector and he opens it up. As soon as he logs in, we’re both greeted to some hardcore porn playing in full screen. This lady was handling a whole 12 inches like a champ.

Luckily I had the projector blacked out, so it wasn’t catastrophic. It was only the two of us who saw it. What made it so funny was the fact that the dude wasn’t even ashamed of it. He took a beat, admired what was on the screen, gave a quiet “uh huh”, nodded solemnly, and then slowly moved his mouse cursor to close the browser tab. If he had acted flustered, it would have been a funny interaction. But the fact that he wasn’t in any rush to turn it off (despite the fact that I was sitting right next to him, waiting for him to boot up that presentation,) just had me fucking rolling.

Even that is capped though, so the smaller states are still vastly overrepresented. Living in LA means your vote is only represented at ~1/100th as much as the least populated areas. Because even the least populated areas still get a representative, but the populated areas are capped on how many they can have.

Knives go dull much faster in the dishwasher. If you want to keep your knives sharp, you should be hand washing as soon as you’re done with them.

Also, get a damned knife block; Having your knives rattling around in a drawer is just asking for dull knives and accidents.