There have been national park visitors who have asked at what time the animals are let out of their cages and put back in them. Then again, that might be an education issue rather than a stupidity problem. Would it be ethical to experiment on these people by suggesting “we’ll tell you if you can get that dumpster open”?

Caveat: Having never seen those dumpsters, I have the nagging feeling that I could well be outsmarted by the bears.

Back at the turn of the millennium I remember enjoying 1/0 by Tailsteak. I’m glad to see that it’s still available.

You’re not wrong. The ln(5) trick is for when you have a scientific calculator but it doesn’t have the conversion built in.

‱

Obligatory repeat of the fact that the ratio between miles and kilometres is ln(5), correct to less than 0.01% (yes, that’s a percent of a percent).

The golden ratio or Fibonacci numbers are used more often for the same trick but they’re off by, at best, very slightly worse than 0.5%.

A few days ago, I saw a post about negative income tax which is something that had occurred to me independently. Wasn’t surprised to learn that someone with more brains had actually given it some serious thought and that it had an actual name.

That would be the sort of thing I’d be interested in being implemented, so that those who are on little to no income - especially those who can’t simply “get a (better) job” for whatever reason - don’t fall below the poverty line.

This is not to say that the UK benefits system (where I am) doesn’t work at all, but it’s often coupled with the expectation of getting the recipient back into work or to getting a better job where you don’t need them any more.

It would be nice if that part went away.

The strange thing is, it’s vaguely possible that “learn” in the sense of “teach” might have been hanging around in dialects of English since the similarly sounding word “leren” was still in use. “Leren” sounds an awful lot like “learn” but is completely unrelated and actually does mean “(to) teach”.

Modern Dutch still uses “leren” this way. It’s even spelled the same which is kind of rare.

I’ᴍ ʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇ ᴠᴀʟᴜᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴩᴇᴏᴩʟᴇ ᴡʜᴏ ᴀʀᴇɴ’ᴛ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇʜᴏʟᴅᴇʀꜱ. Tʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴏꜱᴇ.

What makes you think they care about that?

You’re not going insane… probably. I edited the post to use asterisks which I assumed must be the more commonly used italic markdown. It might also be that the ™ is right after the markdown character which I know can cause some parsers to choke. YouTube’s comment system is a notable nuisance for this.

Hm. I’m guessing that the formatting which works on fedia.io doesn’t work elsewhere. I used _very bad idea_™

Probably a prolonged awkward moment that I couldn’t escape. In chatting to an old friend I bumped into, I let slip that I’d heard something bad had happened to them and asked how they were doing. Rather than answering clearly, they were super interested in finding out who told me in the sort of way that I knew it would be a very bad idea™ for all concerned to reveal that information.

I can’t remember how I got out of that. I sometimes think I’m still in that moment and all this is a fever dream as my brain tries desperately to escape.

Honourable mentions: i) Zeroing the wrong partition on my own computer, all data unrecoverable. ii) Deleting all of a customer’s data rather than the one part they wanted removing. Luckily, in that case there were backups.

Edit: Blind formatting fixes(?)

You’re right. I should have used the word hypothesis.

Here’s some reaching: There’s the theory hypothesis that our universe is the inside of some construct in a higher universe* that is similar to if not actually a black hole.

In our universe, time and space inside a black hole are causally disconnected from the outside so there can be a defined beginning without there needing to be time continuity across the event horizon. It’s often said that time and space switch places inside a black hole, which could mean that our time is relative to space outside of the universe. This hurts my head to think about. Almost like our time dimension runs sideways relative to whatever was “before”.

* As to whether this is turtles all the way down / universes all the way up, we’ll probably never know.

You should try being nicer.

No specific examples, but I bet there are C-levels who have resigned* because they didn’t achieve the profits they were supposed to. That’s definitely shameful in the eyes of the stockholders. Horror of horrors, etc.

* Though this doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have got a more-than-generous severance package and a similar job elsewhere.

Now that I think about it, there are an analogous situations with police officers in some countries too.

Edit: I can grammar

So, a couple of unlikely things will have to happen for this, but if 1) Britain ever returns to the EU and 2) as a joining condition is forced to adopt the Euro, I can all but guarantee that most people will put the Euro symbol in front where the pound sign used to be, even if expressly told not to. Even those in favour of being in the EU.

Retailers would do whatever they felt like on labels and shelves unless it was enshrined law.

And the penchant for using imperial weights and measures would continue unabated across the lands.

And Ukrainians probably don’t want to be equated with Russians either.

I guess 80% doesn’t qualify for the adjective “largely”.

And a people largely indistinguishable from their own.

Edit: Note to self: Subtly pointing out that Trump wouldn’t want to invade Mexico because he’s a racist is not the way to go in the Fediverse because people will think you’re the racist.