It’s the “people are still voting for him” part that terrifies me. Because we can defeat Trump, but you can’t do a whole lot with a rotten electorate.

Blocking out the sun is good for us only in very specific doses.

If you pay attention at the beach you will totally notice people wading in to take a piss and then wading back out of the water. I know the ocean is big and all but there’s something… uncivilized about it.

I think part of it is that when good people gain power they realize that they have also taken on responsibility. And when you are shouldering a lot of responsibility, and the people around you are not, it’s easy to see them as childish or selfish, or not thinking things through thoroughly (because let’s face it: they’re not).

Plus as a responsible party you have to be responsible for everyone and this can mean limiting your beholden-ness to any one party. That can look like distancing or lack of empathy for that person. “Oh now that you have power you’re too big for me, huh?” Pretty much yes, actually.

If you’ve ever been in charge of something you know what I’m saying. And when I see people blindly bitching about people in power I know they’ve never been responsible for anything bigger than a shopping cart.

Sadly it’s probably also the case that publishers’ ebook pricing to libraries is based on paranoia about them destroying all book sales, plus the usual corporate greed.

This might actually make sense. Borrowers can’t lose or destroy a digital copy, or bring it back late. Probably a digital copy enables more checkouts. Max of 26? Well think about he condition if the last library book you checked out that had 26 stamps on the list. Hard copies don’t last forever. Sad that they had to charge more based on these assumptions, but you can imagine some reasoning to them.

That’s a shame. They need more licenses per book, it sounds like. But at least your community is highly engaged with your library!

Any Kindle owner should go find out how easy it is to get library books on their Kindle. It’s totally the way to go. You don’t have to buy their shit and deal with their rules.

LOL I thought I was going to hear an actual argument. A shit one, but something. Fuck off…

Good question. No idea. If higher frequency correlates with more scattering, then UV should also be scattered, right? Or is it something about blue visible light being just right for our mix of gases? Interesting question since that mix has changed over time. Perhaps the sky was another color during life’s early years. Is that why they’re called the Cyanobacteria? Because they turned the sky blue?

Yep the atmosphere is transparent to all colors of light except blue. It doesn’t absorb blue light but it does get scattered. That’s why no matter where you look in the sky, you see blue. Because the gasses there are scattering blue light in all directions, including toward you.

True but it does look like planting trees has been their entire thing up until now. Maybe they’ve done 1-time things like this before, I dunno.

I guess they’re announcing it in advance so that if anyone objects to funding humans instead of trees (as someone surely will) then they’ll be free to not use Ecosia on that day.

Somehow I’m also an idiot with finances. I guess the moral is I had a hands off dad who didn’t know shit.

This is what happens when you have a banker for a dad.

For years I just drew a line and then sawed down the middle of it. 🙄

If you already knew this expression, here is chapter two:

Account for the width of the blade.

Or they even say this is a sign of wear and means you should throw it out.

And because I enjoy sharing knowledge more than boasting I know more than others: the reason it moves is to account for the thickness of the metal hook itself.

It makes a difference if you are hooking it onto the back of something and measuring from there, OR butting it up onto something and measuring from there.

If you want accurate and consistent readings in both of these situations, the hook has to move. It basically pivots around the true point you’re measuring from.

There’s no way I’m going to let you characterize the Great Leap Forward as “famine happens.” That is absolutely criminal apologism.

China has only moved away from a state-run economy in the last 50 years, resulting in its current, larger and much more dynamic economy. It’s probably the world’s best current example of a country abandoning communism for capitalism, and reaping the benefits. There is wealth inequality, but fewer people are starving. All they’re keeping from their former regime is centralized single party political control.

Under economic Communism they proved over and over that a central government can’t command a entire set of industries and markets better than they can run themselves. People starved in the tens of millions finding this out. An uptick in suicide rates is nothing by comparison.