Just ask the parents what (s)he likes.

What’s a systematic algorithm for finding the best approximation (minimal under/overshoot of area) when you are given a raster or vector image representing the “real” borders? Or it just trial and error?

Never knew about transparent web proxies. Neat. Do they play a part in commercial DDOS protection? I’m thinking of those please wait while we’re evaluating your request messages that you get on some sites. But also about any methods used to prove that you are human.

Went to a local rock concert once. Had to go into the middle of the crowd to fetch a friend and alert him of something that had happened. The music was unbearably loud for me. Noticed that virtually everyone was wearing ear plugs.

Found it absurd. Why not lower the volume instead and have people forego the plugs? Less noise pollution in the local area too. After the concert was over I asked some participants about it. Everyone claimed they liked the loudness or that it was necessary somehow. My impression: they liked to keep up with the appearances of being hardcore, it being for tough folks. But they didn’t want the actual hearing damage.

This is true for serial killers in general though. Murders tend to be premeditated. If you are planning a murder you’ll look for ways to maximize your success and minimize the chance of getting caught. In modern times you don’t have to rely on pure strength; there’s a plethora of workarounds from drugs to guns. The actual desire to end a human life (usual enabled by some form of psychopathy) is the limiting factor. A serial killer personality type doesn’t throw the towel just because they are physically weak.

Guess what I’m saying is: there isn’t a large contingent of women out there that would suddenly turn serial killers if they were to physically become stronger.

While mosquito bites are unpleasant in themselves due to the itching and swelling I don’t think it’s common for cultures to have worked out the causal relationship between mosquitos and diseases like malaria. But I’d be happily educated otherwise.

For gluten free products: the whole production chain needs to use different tools or be sealed off from the rest. You can generally use the same mill, kneader, oven, tray for barley, wheat, rye, etc without meticulous cleaning in between. But if you want it to be gluten free you now need to either do that expensive cleaning or more realistically have an entirely separate set of machinery and ensure it never gets in contact with your main line.

Here in Germany it has been revealed that the church set up a whole network shuffling around offenders (or sending them away to south america) and muddling traces. It’s even been shown that the former pope knew about such cases. It’s systemic.

Basically it’s a combination of supposed moral authority, intransparency, and mutual cover ups. People are willing to look the other way a lot when they perceive of someone as having a higher mission or great social standing. That includes law enforcement. Think of Donald Trump who’s a fraudster-racist-rapist-insurrectionist and yet the MAGA crowd loves him. Maybe celibacy plays into it as well, sexual urges don’t stop just because you don a robe.

Younger people are less and less religious with each generation. So at least from that angle the problem might eventually go away.

In my experience the big problem is not people self ascribing personality types but type casting others. When you expect others to have certain traits you also treat them accordingly.

I can’t believe she has trouble speaking in front of crowds, she’s a lion after all.

Then again horoscopes aren’t unified or anything and you can just cherry pick from different sources and cultures to believe anything.

That sounds like a useful feature. Which apps are you using?

How do you tag another user? Did you just mean you left a mental note or is it possible to assign custom tags to users somehow?

The 35 year old requirement seems bizarrely high to me, I can’t see why a smart and capable 32 year old should be prevented from running for the office. A minimum age makes sense, but it’s weird that it’s far removed from when most states start to legally treat kids as adults (anywhere from 16 to 21).

There’s different ideas on how time travel “could” work and one of them is the timeline-split notion upon which you base your idea. In that vain it’s solid.

Other ideas are that time travel always results in a loop or that its perhaps only possible under very specific circumstances (ie you can’t pick an arbitrary location or time to travel to nor to travel from).

My hunch is that even if time travel were possible there’s simply no practical experiment to tell whether you are in a split timeline (and if so how it differs from others), aka it’s outside of the realm of scientific // logical inquiry.

If y’all like exploration of time travel go watch the show Travelers some time. It has some interesting premises in that regard.

Pretty much. I keep a sheet of aluminum ready to put on top in case the outside is getting too crisp while the inside still needs more time.

The thing that bothers me most with the current pay wall situation is that I’m not against paying for journalism in general, in fact I favor it: Reward good work with good money.

The problem is the inflexible payment methods. I want to be able to pay some cents for a single article quickly and conveniently. But most online newspapers offer only a month+ long subscription. That’s asking way too much, I want really want just this single article. And all the other stuff that you’re also giving me access to I simply wouldn’t use.

I like to read up on specific topics from a variety of sources but the current economic models heavily punish my archetype of costumer. I simply can’t afford to open up hundreds of subscriptions over the course of a year.

Now often I simply fall into the X free articles per month category because I stray across so many different media outlets but that feels bad too because I actually want to pay for individual articles and help preserve journalism but there’s no means. Best I can do currently is rotate some subscriptions each month and free ride on the rest.

In the paper era you could at least grab an individual issue (not an individual article, series or section thougn) at a newsstand and weren’t locked in.

The web desperately needs infrastructure to effortlessly and quickly transfer small amounts of currency - change my mind. European Central Bank is working on a digital Euro which could lead to this but that’s many years down the road and also going to depend a lot on their implementation.

Yeah the locker/towel thing would be a habit especially if you don’t actively think about it.

You may not have a strong daily routine but all humans have habits and it’s precisely because you don’t actively think about them a lot that it’s can be hard to become cognizant of them.

They also include behavioral preferences such as scratching your chin with your right hand when lost in thought 🤔, calling your girlfriend ‘honey’ frequently, consuming certain foods/beverages more than others, separating the trash, opening up social Media on your smart phone when bored, or taking your jacket with you when you go outside.

Those are not the same for everyone but everyone has them useless maybe some severe medical condition is present.

Tacking on: as far as translation of ancient texts is concerned there is also a selection bias. It is far more likely that an important formal document endured the times than some every day scribble. Of course a political treaty is crafted, conserved and replicated more carefully than a note someone left for their neighbor. Both the skill of writing and the materials required were much rarer and access more prevalent among the upper classes. Finally important formal documents are more likely to be translated precisely because they are important. Imagine that in 2000 years from now you would be one of the few scholars capable of translating English. You would be much more to likely to study and translate the declaration of independence than some mundane Twitter post.

That’s my point though: to me buying new garments just because they aren’t as white as they used to be is both economically and ecologically wasteful. Ideally you just adjust your sensibilities or else purchase colors, fabrics, patterns less affected by tinging.

I have to admit though I’m looking at this from my own biased perspective of a single household though. I do basic separation of light, dark and hygienic (anything that needs high temperatures to kill germs) but also spontaneous mixed loads depending on what’s in the laundry bin and what I need soon. If you’re in a big household you can actually do real nice sorting like all the reds together, all the sports wear together, all the rags and towels, etc.

It’s also that the natural resting position of our eye lids when fully relaxed isn’t fully shut (that requires muscle power). Rather the relaxed state is almost-but-not-fully shut which let’s in more light than expected.

Honestly I’m more in the “buy durable fabrics and treat them well but if they acquire a tint or lose color over time so what” camp. Good linen shirts for instance will still look great after a long time, never mind any fading. For some stuff it can even enhance the optics like the famed worn out jeans look.