ScienceNostalgia101

I've never paid too much thought to the plastic bottle aspect. I'll keep that in mind wherever glass bottles are available. That said, my apartment can be kind of messy, but I've never kept pets in it. I'll... try not to worry too much over this sort of thing. Just a quick soaking in vinegar and call it a day. In any case, thanks again.

I was under the impression that soap was chemically meant to slide off skin and didn't necessarily slide as easily off of other surfaces. But if it slides just as reliably off plastic, then yeah, it's soap and water for plastic caps too from now on. Thanks again!

I'd be worried about accidentally ingesting some of the soap, too, if any was left on it inadvertently. How much rinsing is adequate to get the soap out of the cap? Does it depend on whether the soap used is dish soap or hand soap?

I'm a little worried about germs coming into contact with the ring of plastic beverage cap, but I'm not sure how best to disinfect it without doing more harm than good. Would immersion in saturated saltwater kill whatever floor germs got on it, or is that only good for deterring bacteria from entering a particular environment in the first place? I'm very hesitant to resort to any stronger chemicals as I'm worried those chemicals might do me more harm than the bacteria themselves.

Wait... let me take a step back. Was your earlier post meant to call it nosy of me to weigh in on the risks to which someone is subjecting their own selves, or was it merely to say that request for proper safety protocols be in place should be inferred even when not stated outright? (If I misunderstood you at all, I apologize, but I'm just so used to other sites in which people call me nosy for butting in perhaps a little too much over stuff people do with their own lives...)

For the record, I didn't mean to come across as "demanding" that they do, just requesting it.

Either of those options sound pretty risky. Am I to presume you intend to do these with gloves and goggles on, either outside or in a fume hood?

More so TV than movies, but in The Simpsons, Burns' multiple diseases infect him in "perfect balance", causing him to be asymptomatic while infected with everything. Is this even a thing that can happen?

I'll make sure not to do that too often, then. Thanks!

I sometimes like to throw excess fat or grizzle from barbequed meats onto the outdoor fireplace the evening after my meal, as it enables the whole backyard to smell like barbeque. I was considering trying this with other food items, but don't want to risk inhaling anything that's less safe to inhale than to ingest. Does anyone know of any list of which potentially-harmful fumes are associated with the combustion of specific food or drink items, and/or whether or not it depends on whether or not these food or drink items are expired?

Ah. But did you mean "green up very quickly in spring", or does "green up very quickly spring" mean something else?

"Green up very quickly spring"? I have a feeling there's a word or two missing from that statement. Apart from that, thanks for the explanation!

Eh, my landlord handles the walkway. I handle the patio. (Not sure if I'd have to pay extra to have him handle the patio. I could probably use the workout from time to time anyway.) In any case, thanks. And yeah, Dakotans and Canadians have much in common!

So it's that time of year again; wintertime cyclones bring snow, then snow-melting rain, then the mixture of rainwater and meltwater can freeze in the colder temperatures that follow both. Typically I've only seen the latter on streets, not patios, though I'm not sure why if at all there isn't a risk of the same happening on patios, if for any reason marginally less so. I'm wondering what the most practical way to deal with that is. Is it better to shovel the snow off the patio before it transitions to rain, or does that just expose the rainwater to the subsequent cold temperatures? Conversely, if one were to deliberately leave the snow on the patio, to insulate the meltwater underneath the snow, would it freeze anyway, and then leave a layer of flat ice if I managed to get rid of the snow above it, or would the snow be so effective in absorbing the water for the water to freeze onto the snow, instead of onto the patio? Presently I opt for "clean the snow before the rain starts" approach, but didn't particularly often check how well it actually works. (A false fire alarm this morning gave me a good fright that I might end up needing to escape through the patio one of these days. Although I left my old boots next to it so it probably wouldn't be much of a problem to escape through the snow...)

So in the South Park movie, Stan claims the grass is green "under the 3 feet of snow". The movie takes place in Colorado, where all of that snow could indeed have fallen within the prior 24 hours, but the question is whether the grass is still green underneath it. What would kill the grass first? The weight of the snow, the temperature being brought to the freezing point by contact with snow, or the reduction in CO2 making it to individual blades of grass? If any of these were enough to kill the grass within a day, would it lose its pigmentation that same day, or would there be a delay between the death of the grass and its discoloration? Of course, the movie also doesn't specify whether Stan is telling the truth, but still...

How much more expensive would it be to harness jet stream wind, though? If the gov't were to impose on aircraft manufacturers a requirement to build wind turbines fitted to their aircrafts, would this constitute a significant impediment on their ability to be flown, or a minor one? If one were to structurally reinforce a several kilometre tall wind turbine to withstand the torque applied by the wind, would this require significantly more maintenance costs than an ordinary wind turbine, or would it be a one-time investment that would pay for itself? My apologies for neglecting to consider ocean currents. That said, I am aware of Hadley Cells and was referring to the net effect of the atmosphere in the "initial position, final position" sense (ie. treating the horse latitude downdrafts and midlatitude updrafts as cancelling out).

Think of it as being like the average motion of an air molecule. Some of them are moving in one direction, another in the opposite, but I'm referring to what appear to be the norms. I'm not just "rabbiting" on or whatever; each sex has its positive traits and its negative traits on average; (and in retrospect that last part of that earlier post may have been pushing the bounds of topic relevance) but I think we need to take into account what these traits are before pretending any response to this issue has to be "gender-neutral" and that all effects of hormones and anatomy on behaviour should be ignored. This thread was originally intended, just to be clear, to focus on the "is the 'because it's too hot out' claim" and whether or not it's sincere. I'm not sure in retrospect to what extent discussing the merits of whether or not to consider such things "gender neutral" is within the realm of acceptable thread branching.

Wind is basically a massive convection current, lifting warm air over the tropics and sinking it over the poles. It stands to reason that if we built enough wind turbines to harness a non-trivial fraction of the wind's kinetic energy, the poleward transfer of heat would be somewhat reduced, and the polar amplification aspect of climate change in particular would in turn be reduced. This on the whole would be a good thing; less Arctic/Antarctic ice melt. (However much wasn't also prevented by the implied transition to renewables.)

While I don't agree with Jordan Peterson on everything (and it is a tad alarming how many of his fans seem to think he has all the answers) I think the best case for the notion that he... might be onto something can be found in the fact that some of his critics resort to strawmanning what he has to say:

Actually, I'd been making "human nature isn't gender neutral" a central plank of my reasoning since this early in the thread. I wasn't referring to "every" guy in my reasoning, I was referring to the average guy. Obviously a guy who is exclusively homosexual isn't necessarily as likely to feel flattered as a guy who is straight or bi. (Putting aside whether or not they are otherwise aware enough of how much straight guys enjoy it to not blame her or judge her for leering in the first place.) How would you even prove a guy is being leered at AND doesn't enjoy it? We know one sex has been more often known to object to it, the only question is whether because they're the only sex that doesn't enjoy it or because they're the only sex it happens to. How would a guy prove he's actually been leered at and he isn't just making it up to sound sexy? How would a girl prove a guy didn't enjoy her leering at him and that she isn't just fishing for compliments/sympathy? (Putting aside that I don't even know where to start looking for either type of anecdote.) There are 4channers who claim to be upset by their ex-girlfriends using them for sex, as if being sexually desired by her was not enough in his eyes if she didn't love him at all. Should their word be accepted as proof? If not, why is this any different, and if so, why has it not made a dent in males' reputation for only wanting sex?

I've already cited girls claiming to have a problem with being leered at by guys. Do you have an example of guys having a problem with being leered at by girls? If you presume said leering doesn't happen (even though the gender-flip of things often compared to it; like catcalling; have been known to happen) doesn't that still count as "human nature isn't gender neutral" even if in a different way? As for the body image thing, I'm talking about the (possible) contradiction between wearing the aforementioned types of revealing attire and fretting over one's weight, etc... you see this more in analyses of fictional characters than of real people, but that might be because of the taboo against singling out specific real life women to insinuate they are fishing for compliments. (Although it also bugs me a bit that women doubting the sincerity of guys' attraction to them is fair game, but guys doubting the sincerity of their insecurities is unthinkable.)

So you're accusing them of being disingenuous for attention? If so, have you said as much to them? In a world with weapons, anyone has power to do harm to anyone. This was never about women's supposed inability to harm men and always about men's supposed inability to feel offended by sexual attention from a woman. . . . What if an individual guy feels warm more easily than others? I know at the office I'm often the one always cranking up the thermostat the lowest in winter and the A/C the highest in summer. (Luckily, I have an office room to myself.) How much biological variance, typically, is there in the extent to which you "feel" the heat? . . . Anyway, coming back full circle to the notion of "it's warm out" as a reason vs. excuse, what of the aforementioned in the OP example of fan theories on fictional characters? Is speculating from certain attire that such characters and/or their real life counterparts are faking their body image issues more valid than blaming it for distraction and arousal, or less so?

The phrase "stare rape" comes to mind. One sex is non-ironically comparing being looked at by the wrong guy to being raped (or at the very least, tending not to actively criticize such talk) while the other sex has never been known to take a woman staring at him as anything other than a compliment. (Well, so long as she's smiling sweetly, that is. A frown might make him worry that it could be a stare of hatred.) I'm guessing it all leads back to evolution; one sex, for much of evolution, needed to be picky enough about partners to deal with 9 month consequences, the other to deal with one night's consequences. (STDs notwithstanding; and would that even have been as significant a risk before international travel anyway? Surely if a community keeps their orgies within the community, they can keep the STDs out...)

Source on the more closely related to chimps than bonobos part? Saying nakedness "wasn't an issue" for our ancestors leaves out whether or not they had as much to lose from pregnancy or STDs as we did. The idea that clothing "enhances" desirability instead of impeding it leaves the question of what sort of clothing enhances it, how, or why. Have you been to the mall lately? Everything from conventionally-feminine dresses to tomboyish tattered jeans have been seen on women who go to the mall with their boyfriends. Which of those were meant to "enhance" it to a supposedly even greater extent than the parts underneath?

Which is why I already mentioned that we have more to lose from the resulting pregnancies and STDs (for instance) than bonobos did. In addition, we also have more to lose from distraction, from unwanted arousal in a context that thinks more ill of it than they do, etc... I never claimed bonobos "ever wore clothes" in the first place and I'm not sure where you're getting that. On the contrary, I'm arguing that clothes might, for all we know, be the only thing holding bonobo-level horniness back.