TheVat

The one you select was determined 13.7 GYA. Thank goodness for Dewitt's Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum theory! Kind of exciting to imagine there's a universe where you chose to have "I" be the fourth word of your first sentence. I have goosebumps.

There's been some scare-mongering here in the States over glyphosate in corn, given that researchers testing non-organic corn could not find detectable levels of glyphosate. As a lawn treatment in "Roundup" I avoid it because it's so indiscriminate in what it kills. I like a fairly natural and diverse range of plants in our groundcover. We opt to yank and tug, in lieu of chemicals. Keeps you limber. What specifically do you want to discuss?

Read. The. Answers. Already. Posted. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-have-solved-mystery-how-wombats-poop-cubes-180976898/ Science!

This is now added to my list of favorites. Another was a story about wombats having rectangular poo and using it, like bricks, to make protective walls around their burrows. Amusing to watch someone have the sleep apnea/drugs factors explained over and over and it having seemingly no effect on their single-minded fixation.

This is an area where I did some research for a company I used to work for. One thing that stood out is how many supplements offer little or nothing to a person eating a balanced diet. Zinc is one to avoid unless there is some pathology causing deficiency. Also, bioavailable forms of zinc, like picolinate or citrate, tend to block absorption of other minerals, especially copper. Have some oats and nuts, maybe some pumpkin seeds, and you will be fine. Where dis you get those figures? My source (Chan School of Public Health at Harvard) has it around 8-11 mg for adults. Anything over 40 mg is potentially toxic.

Thanks, I had not been aware of the rough seas problem. And that would make a fast ferry difficult. My experience is limited to calmer Pacific waters, and also one that ran from Cape Cod to Nantucket. Sorry to hear notaries are such a pain there. As in UK, notaries here are a very simple thing, just witnessing and stamping documents. And they are everywhere. I used to shop at a supermarket that had a notary. Libraries, banks, post offices, municipal offices, etc all have notaries.

I was surprised so short a distance (60-70 km, from the map I looked at) would need a flight. Is there not a ferry boat of some kind? Flying seems like an expensive method for inter-island travel.

Screwing is sometimes more literal than I had realized.

Yes, there are no Good Guys in this conflict. And Israel didn't have to lower themselves very far - they have always paid lip service to "warning civilians in advance," so they could evacuate, but that's just putting lipstick on a warthog, it's clear they have no respect for innocent Palestinian lives. Or, apparently, the lives of Israeli hostages. All is collateral damage.

Looks like Hamas crossed that line, in terms of atrocities against civilians, where the two state solution is essentially dead. I am sorry for the Palestinian people, most just trying to survive, whose future has been torpedoed by Hamas. Like many people in the world, the desecration of corpses and other Geneva violations erodes my sympathies.

When all else fails, play dead... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/oct/11/female-frogs-fake-death-unwanted-advances-study When it comes to avoiding unwanted male attention, researchers have found some frogs take drastic action: they appear to feign death. Researchers say the findings shed new light on the European common frog, suggesting females do not simply put up with the male scramble for mates – a situation in which several males can end up clinging to a female, sometimes fatally. “It was previously thought that females were unable to choose or defend themselves against this male coercion,” said Dr Carolin Dittrich, the first author of the study from the Natural History Museum of Berlin...

I what you mean. Maybe one could combine Clarke's space elevator and a magnetic mass accelerator so that one could accelerate a shuttle without the use of onboard engines until it came off the rails already at some velocity. You would have some engineering limits, e.g. crushing passengers would not be permitted.

As former HG peoples, we have a deeply felt need for mobility - any sense that we cannot move about freely (as is felt by, for example, most residents of Gaza) can arouse a trapped anxious feeling. We have an instinctive grasp that prisons and prison-like states are places we do not want to be. People cope with such conditions of confinement by finding interior freedoms to compensate. You don't have to be Mandela to do that. That was the point of some of the cruelties of Guantanamo, to try and deprive detainees even the freedom of their imaginations by blasting music at them, depriving them of sleep, etc.

Trump keeps cementing the view of him as a monumental human turd, so it reaches the point where any claim of Trumpian perfidy is plausible. It is certainly possible that Trump's big mouth could have resulted in Iran assisting Hamas, via Thom Hartman's Russia - Iran - Israel chain. But I doubt that Trump's cognitive processes have ever been sufficiently organized to actually transmit anything useful, with specific technical details re Iron Dome.

There's some irony, when one reads Arthur Balfour's letter of 2 November 1917... His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. Sigh...

Yeah I'm wondering how the hostages will work out. Hamas already has said it seeks the release of all Palestinian prisoners (4500 is the number I've seen) in Israeli jails. Some of the insiders are saying all the Israeli hostages will severely limit Bibi's response, some are saying they will bomb the crap out of Gaza anyway. I would think public sentiment, in a country where people formerly marched in the streets and rended their garments over one Israeli soldier hostage (Gilad Shalit), would mean they'd have to tread very lightly. PIJ alone says they have 30, and Hamas has dozens more. Yes, maybe not stupid.

I can see some truth to the first paragraph, but your second went in a tinfoil hat direction I would question. I can see political opportunists making the most of a war, but welcoming it? Especially when that attack in the south made Israel's defense forces look inept and clueless and sort of asleep at the wheel.

Must be related to the collision impact, and the relative effects. An IC engine block and drive train are fairly durable in an impact. I don't about batteries and other EV components. Maybe there's a lot of expensive fly-by-wire stuff that's delicate?

Seems like that would be the classic distraction tactic. Guys like Bibi pretty much created the Hamas of today. And now their timing couldn't be better for bolstering the Likud Party and its corrupt boss. It was also the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war, which began October 6 of that year. Hamas basically just gave Israel its very own 9/11 attack, and an excuse to level Gaza. I don't know if they're just stupid or fatalistic, maybe both.

I was curious, so looked at a few citations, starting with the EPA. https://iwaste.epa.gov/guidance/radiological-nuclear/orphan-sources Which provides basic definitions. Then looked at a list of incidents on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orphan_source_incidents And this catalogue is used by professionals to help find orphaned sources. https://www.iaea.org/resources/databases/international-catalogue-of-sealed-radioactive-sources-and-devices One disturbing bit I found in my meandering was that a lot of orphaned source materials end up as scrap metal, which scrappers are often unaware of.

Believe. I had difficulty with this, which I presumed to be some sort of rebus. Axe ewe rocket time? Pick ewe launch time? Hmm. I look up British synonyms and see first image also called a mattock. Nope, that doesn't work. Or ewe could be the more general sheep. Nope. The non-AI continues to struggle, though leaning towards something about picking your launch time (or lunch time? if one is willing to bend a word, something I don't see an AI doing). With AI, the question is if it can figure out a context. I went straight for a rebus, but perhaps it would waste time trying to construct a narrative and flounder around in that context....Pick a sheep to send on the eight o'clock rocket. Humans are good at zooming back and assessing a larger context, so a human would realize a narrative would likely be pretty silly and move on to it's being a rebus. We also presume a left to right sequencing, if our native language follows that convention. And that there is likely to be a verb. Could an AI home in on those assumptions? Probably. It's really larger context that seems to be the challenge.

Unless we go to Clarkeian space elevators or rockets using some exotic propulsion that drastically drops payload costs, I would see privatized space travel as mostly creating a playground for the wealthy. Even if there were asteroid mining or similar profit ventures, very few people would physically go up, as automated processes (without expensive life support systems and radiation shielding) would be far cheaper - engineers and other technical staff would likely run such operations from the ground while robots dug out the minerals.

There was that odd tinkling that coincidences make, when I read "Flannan Isle" in your post, as I had just the past week watched a 2018 movie about the Flannan Isle mystery. The Vanishing offers a solution a wee bit more dramatic than that a storm surge swept them into the sea.

No. That would be....weird. Early 20th century American slang, "tickle the ivories," for playing the piano. Ivory piano keys were common then. Mostly from walrus tusks, IIRC. (common misconception that they were from elephants)

You have failed to capitalize Jelly Roll! It is Jelly Morton Morton, the ragtime/blues piano icon. You have offended the Piano God! I speak of the coming annihilation of the heretics who are not humble before the Great 88 who tickles the ivories of heaven! There is no God before the Piano God! Prepare yourself!