Take numbers with a grain of salt, e.g., this link says a 7200RPM 160GB SATA drive from 2004 is $107, or about $0.67/GB, instead of the $5 claimed in post.

Not at all in this case though! Or rather, it depends on your perspective.

“Why doesn’t electricity leak out the outlet?” is a good question, if you know nothing about electricity.

“Why doesn’t electricity leak out the outlet?” is a little stupid, if you know a little about electricity.

“Why doesn’t electricity leak out the outlet?” is a great question if you know a bit more about electricity (because it does leak out, it’s just that 50/60Hz doesn’t couple to freespace well unless you have a colossal antenna).

As to this question, light in moving media: https://preprints.opticaopen.org/articles/preprint/Fizeau_Experiment_Investigating_the_Speed_of_Light_in_Moving_Media/25441108?file=45147313

It’s a matter of perspective and use — high density one place means you can have open space somewhere else, for a given amount of land.

I’d much prefer a few large dense housing complexes, surrounded by green space, than suburban sprawl.

50kW class laser.

Another source claims 1um wavelength with individual 1.5kW lasers in a hex pattern — unclear if it’s a phased array (would be awesome) or just trained on the same target (source mentions they are “combined using a mirror” so probably the latter).

Sounds like maybe high power YAG?

…using chopsticks of course, so you don’t get your mechanical keyboard dirty.

Yeah, I would additionally like to see fines be in units of revenue — $50M means wildly different things to different organizations.

Many time zones: You get to a new place and look up what time zone you’re in.

Well, sorta — but it’s no effort at all because my timekeeping device (phone) does this automatically.

For me, the time of day is internalized in a way that I think is hard to switch. Same as how I was raised with imperial units — even though I prefer (and use professionally) metric, the intuition can be a little harder to get. But to each their own of course :)

I prefer the current way — I can be in another state or another country and I know that 7am is a good time for breakfast, around noon is a good time for lunch, and so forth. (If you don’t change latitude sure, just go outside to figure this out, but it’s complicated if it’s overcast, or the latitude isn’t what you’re used to, or…)

Time has a number of meanings — UTC is great for machines, local time is (IMHO) a good concept for humans.

It could grip it by the husk.

“South Korea as a nation dodged a bullet, but President Yoon may have shot himself in the foot,” said Danny Russel, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute think tank in the United States.

I bet my man Danny came up with that line in the shower. I dig it.

It’s completely context dependent; you’re right that using male/female is appropriate for humans in certain contexts, e.g., medical usage (“Patient, a 47yo female, presented with…”). But it is — for cultural and historical reasons — generally considered inappropriate to refer to our fellow humans that way in conversation.

Re: mutt, fair enough. Bitch/stud are examples of how animal terms, when applied to humans, take on very different meanings. Purebred is afaik not specific to species, but it is wildly inappropriate to refer to people as such.

At the end of the day, the logic behind what is and is not appropriate has history behind it; animal terms have been used extensively to refer to subjugated peoples; it may be scientifically accurate but that doesn’t mean that it’s inoffensive.

Of course we’re animals, but let’s use some common sense wrt cultural norms here. A dog of mixed lineage is mutt, but it’s completely inappropriate to refer to a multiracial person as such. A female dog is a bitch, a male is a stud; the sexism is pretty obvious when applied to humans. It’s fine to talk about owning a dog; it’s not ok to talk about owning another human (except perhaps children, in certain contexts).

Yes, we are animals too, but that doesn’t mean we should talk about each other in the same way. (And I say this as a vegetarian who thinks we should treat all animals with significantly more respect than we currently do.)

Unless we want to use group pronouns like we do with animals.

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly why referring to women as “females” is problematic — using male/female as nouns is fine for animals. Humans, not so much…

UPS and American companies in general

But this is USPS, which isn’t an American company, it’s a US independent agency.

Their mandate isn’t (AFAIK…) to make a profit, but rather to serve the mail requirements of a very large country.

Personally, my experiences with USPS have been generally positive, from passports for infants to free change-of-address forwarding service to tracking down quasi-scam products from Amazon. YMMV though.

Anyway, how’s your sex life?

Anybody want a peanut?

Well yes, but so is Canada, which has a higher HDI than the US.

Parent was asking why Mexico is excluded from the list while Canada is not.

By “don’t have incentive” I’m just referring to an on-paper incentive from an HDI ranking.

Canada has roughly the same HDI ranking as the US, whereas Mexico is somewhat lower. So from the “looking for a better life” perspective, Canadians don’t have an incentive to move to the US (other way around actually, from HDI).

Just a guess though.

Janeway’s toilet would just be full of coffee that’s had the caffeine extracted. So…decaf. Blech!

Not to mention mortgage interest.