sethboy66

I have personally written code for quantum computers to save time due to algorithmic complexity; I was a college student at the time.

So if their usefulness is stuck in the unknowable future then I’m a time traveler.

I don’t understand your reply; I think you misunderstood my comment. OP is from Ireland (Europe), I’m saying that he is the one with Euro-identity bias, not you. From his locality within Europe, American shops appear ‘rundown’ in presentation, and there’s an implied suggestion that this is a uniquely American thing (within the global North-West). With that comes the bias that since he’s in Europe, the rest of Europe (or global North-West in general) would share this perspective.

I’ve had this same bias myself, having grown up in Italy I had assumed that was generally representative of Europe and there were many things I thought of as purely American that were actually common in parts of Europe.

Based on your and the other guy’s comment this sounds like European/Old-World identity bias (and a bit of availability bias); Assuming that other countries within one’s group-identity are very similar and [non-European country] is a lone standout when it comes to some aspect that one just learned they differ on. It’s so common to see these kinds of comments on posts of the form ‘why do American’s do this one weird thing different than everyone else’.

I mean… the title is pretty clear; it’s a ‘warning’ of a ‘risk’, not an announcement of the current situation. A risk is a possibility, and a warning of a risk must come before it is unfolding.

I mean, you are correct, it was not two fish. But is 64 fish some sort of good sample size?

Given the results, it is significant.

Follow up question: does this type of thing accumulate in small fish and then concentrate in larger and larger fish?

No, tritium is treated by organisms just like normal H2O, bioaccumulation is no problem.

The Vatican is its own country, they don’t pay themselves taxes.

No, this is the media conflating the publics perception of physical security and cybersecurity to make a story. If you ask an average person how hard it is to steal money from a casino they’d say it’s next to impossible, but if instead you asked them how hard it was to hack their attached hotel’s booking system they’d say they had no idea.

Gunter’s chain is 20.1m, so half a Gunter is approximately a decameter; a rope would be unwieldy as it’d be one and two thirds rope per decameter.

No, the fact that businesses pay for it for something of that guarantee despite there being free peer-alternatives means that it is a better guarantee.

When you see businesses electing to pay for something despite free alternatives, there is likely a reason (or a number of them). I’ve seen free tools go from active maintaining to completely dead in a single update due to the work needed to get it back up and operating with new environment-side changes.

They make $10,000,000,000,000 a day? Must be a hell of a business model.

While I agree with your main gist, I actually think this overall creates less misunderstanding than more; at least, and probably solely, with respect to what organic means. Because people read that headline and think ‘z0mg life discovered on mars’ and then one of a few things may happen which leads them to realize that organic != organism. Though some of those ‘few things’ may include temporarily spreading their incorrect interpretation to others, I believe even a slightly intelligent person will realize that they may have wrong information when this finding doesn’t end up as front page news and ‘breaking news’ segments around the world.

So at least in that respect, this kind of journalism constantly teaches and reminds people that organic doesn’t mean life. Though, ultimately, I still dislike it as much as the next guy.

Naturally, organic simply means carbon is present in the (non-metal) structure. Generally carbon-carbon, carbon-hydrogen, and a few other bond-types are considered organic. Many articles prey on people’s misunderstanding of this in order to craft a good headline, since “carbon-based material” doesn’t sound as exciting as “organic material”.

And when they say it “be created by processes not related to life as we know it” they should also probably mention that it can be created in the absence of any life at all; since if that weren’t true then it would in fact be direct evidence of life.

You want to both abolish the government AND overturn these rulings? Those two acts are mutually exclusive, or at the least meaningless in both instances of order of precedence; if you abolish the government these rulings no longer exist or have legal meaning, overturning them would require re-establishing a government which accepts all previous supreme court rulings. Which seems idiotic, since if the intent is to overturn these rulings why accept them in the first place?

Read my comment above which corrects @Candelestine’s assertion that candle flame is a plasma.

Only very hot flames are a plasma and usually only within certain regions of the main body of the flame; most flames one encounters in their life will not be a plasma due to low or non-existent ionization. A candle flame is almost certainly not a plasma, rather it’s a combusting (oxidizing) gas which appears as a flame due to the emission of photons in the visible range from regions where the fuel is reacting with air. Furthermore, fire does not require mechanical or kinetic force to combine a fuel and an oxidizer, there is no need to ‘ram’ these particles together. Simple contact between a fuel and an oxidizer in states which would allow redox will cause burning and possibly visible flame (not all redox produces visible flame).