Social media has become a toxic dump. If you wouldn't allow children to play in waste effluent from a 1960s nuclear power plant, then you shouldn't allow them to play in the social media that's out there. Because, frankly, of the two, plutonium is safer.

I do, however, contend that this is a perfectly fixable problem. There is no reason why social media couldn't be safe. USENET was never this bad. Hell, Slashdot at its worst was never as bad as Facebook at its best. And Kuro5hin was miles better than X. Had a better name, too. The reason it's bad is that politicians get a lot of kickbacks from the companies and the advertisers, plus a lot of free exposure to millions. Politicians would do ANYTHING for publicity.

I would therefore contend that Australia is fixing the wrong problem. Brain-damaging material on Facebook doesn't magically become less brain-damaging because kids have to work harder to get brain damage. Nor are adults mystically immune. If you took the planet's IQ today and compared it to what it was in the early 1990s, I'm convinced the global average would have dropped 30 points. Australia is, however, at least acknowledging that a problem exists. They just haven't identified the right one. I'll give them participation points. The rest of the globe, not so much.

I mean, it depends on exactly how fast the water is moving (as well as how deep it is; both things matter). If we're talking normal river current (say, 1 foot per second), most adults can stand in eighteen inches and be fine, if it doesn't catch them off guard. If the current is faster, then it doesn't have to be as deep to have essentially the same effect, or if it's deeper, it doesn't have to be as fast.

There are of course some caveats to the above. One is, once you get past about 4-5 feet deep (depending on the person), you're floating or swimming anyway, so additional depth doesn't matter very much at that point; but additional velocity still makes a difference.

This one magnitude 7.6 ; 2011 was a 9.2, 9.1 thereabouts (I can't be bothered looking it up).

That's 2.5 or so orders of magnitude lower which, for earthquakes is a 10^(1.5*diff.magnitude) factor of difference in energy release. Which, for those who can't do mental maths (see "dollar store" rant) is 10^-(3.6 to 3.7) or between 4 and 6 THOUSAND times less energy release.

You didn't need to wake up fully. I saw the alert on my phone, did the maths, and went back to sleep.

Since "deeply discounted" does not necessarily mean a price tag of 1.00 pound-dollar-euro (or 2000 TzSh or 10000 Won) and such stores routinely post non-simple prices (integers, half integers, etc), there is a sub-story here : an appalling (or hilarious) proportion of people who cannot do simple mental arithmetic like adding up the purchases in their basket as they go round the shop.

I should be appalled, but seeing the number of morons on X or YT (and to a lesser extent here ; lesser, but not zero) who think that posting their prompt to Chat.GPClaude.Grok and the AI's response, I'm not even surprised. And they do it for what are simple matters of arithmetic, or recall of uncontentious science which is at most a Wiki search away using the keywords in their Chat.Prompt. And they seem to think that theirs is a useful contribution to the discussion.

[shakes_head.EMOJI]

People - they're skills you worked to gain (and paid, in cash, hours, or tax) ; and you need to exercise them, regularly, or you will lose them. And if you lose them, you will be fucked over - be it by a street grifter, the clerk at the grocery store, or your elected representatives.

Kids today! Gerrorf moi lawrnn!

I realise that I'm talking from a UK perspective not the US, but here, if a store sells it to the general public, the store is primarily liable for it. If it's not fit for sale, the holding company is liable for both the value of the goods and consequential losses. So if that one pound-dollar-euro power lead burns down the house, killing one and putting a couple of other people into long therm 24-7 nursing care, the store (chain) is liable for the quarter million pound-dollar-euro house plus maybe 20 or 30 million to go into trust to pay for care for the injured for the rest of their lives.

Plus punitive "don't do it again" damages on top, to the judge's satisfaction.

I know it's not America - land of the chlorinated chicken as an alternative to farm-to-table food hygiene standards - but that's why I'm rather less concerned about buying such things here.

I still look carefully at purchases, but the situation is somewhat different here.

(I also noticed, on second reading, that the link is to the Grauniad-dot-com not -dot-co-dot-uk, which did puzzle me for a few seconds - what are the Manchester Grauniad doing writing about "dollar" stores rather than "PoundLand" and the like. Who also have plenty of products which are not GBP 1.00 either, just heavily discounted. Those claims of false implied advertising sailed back out of the doors of court decades ago, when a pint still was a pound in any pub on the high street.)

I love it the Canada still uses the administrative division of the "riding", which noun has pretty much disappeared outside Yorkshire with it's North, East and West Ridings.

Ride on!

Interesting, because I've never met either foldable or rollable "In Real Life" (or even, "On Reel Life"?), but came here to say "a rollable screen sounds mechanically more feasible than a foldable one", because with fairly modest engineering (sprung steel side rails, and maybe a midline support/ stiffener) you could considerably reduce and control the minimum radius of curvature, which I would expect (from having damaged all sorts of materials by rolling or folding them too tightly, or even creasing them) to be the most damaging aspect of use. Ribbon cables trapped while sliding a 50kg 19in rack of analysis equipment back into the rack is a good one for that. Even 1.2mm insulated wires can fail if they get kinked between frame and instrument module.

Plus, a laptop screen extension is likely to have far fewer fold-cycles per month than a phone screen whose only purpose in life is to make a big screen fit into a small pocket and still be accessible at a moment's notice.

Both of those I would expect to improve such a screen's life in service. Whether it's enough to make it acceptable - is a different question. But I know I have no practical experience - though I have heard reports from several launches in the last several years that screen life-in-service was, and maybe still is, a serious problem for the tech.

If I were implementing it in that context, I'd have the extra screen space permanently attached (could you get the data rate over a detachable USB-C?) in a tubular mount on the long axis (? maybe one side or other? Needs a focus group ; as a left-hander, I'd very likely pick fault with a RH-mounted screen-extension) so you unrolled the screen from inside it's protection tube, in the process clicking side supports into place to keep it reasonably flat in use.

Then I'd roll it up by pushing it back into the tube (springs to tension it internally?) when no longer needed. That would limit my current laptop to about a 20mm rolled diameter - but I've never seen the point about screaming for thinness in a working tool. Lightness I can see the point of ; thinness, I don't really give a shit about. I still need to carry a rucksack or briefcase.

I could see that working, with larger curve radius than around a pocket phone. Whether the market would find it sexy enough - "meh".

But I don't honestly know what the state of play on reliability for this month's foldable phone designs, because I've never considered risking my money on such fragile-seeming tech. Maybe it's getting better, but it's a hard set of requirements.

Thankfully I don't recognise that description of anything I read - but I read less social media than I did last month, pretty much every month. It gets tedious and repetitive after a time.

But it does remind me of, if I remember correctly, George Bernard Shaw describing some book as

one could write this forever - if you could abandon your mind to it

(It may have been in reference to the pornography-writing machines in "Brave New World" when it was published in the 1930s.)

Does America have a version of the annual "bad sex writing" awards, or is it a global award? I forget the award's name but it's along the theme of the "Razzies", "the IgNobels" and ... oh, we're approaching movie award season, aren't we. All of them, too. The "bad sex writing award" has some stuff that will curl your toes faster than an outdoor blowjob in a snow storm.

Numerous stores already track you via your phone's Bluetooth signal.

That's easy to prevent: just turn your Bluetooth off when you're not using it and make sure it's off before going into any store that you suspect is using it to track you. Personally, I can't remember the last time I've had it turned on. Of course, I can't use those fancy wireless earbuds (or any other kind) because they don't fit my ears.

no problem.

If people would like to get their âoedisabilityâ tested and verified with more than an echo chamber and paid for personally, then the results will speak for who should be recognized vs. who should be questioned instead of coddled.

In my case, any disabilities I'd be claiming would have been tested and verified by the VA. (Currently, I'm 30% disabled, all disabilities Service Connected as I posted earlier.) Would you find that sufficient, and if not, why?

I'm actually responding to the AC above you. He is arguing that the attack wouldn't make any sense for either country to make, based on *national* interest. I'm pointing out that's not the only framework in which *regimes* make decisions.

Oh, forgot to mention I'm from the Midwest. There's no room in the garage for a _car_ of all things, haha, that would be ridiculous. No, the garage is where we keep the garage stuff. You know, the lawn mower, snow blower, garden tools, step ladder, extension ladder, bicycles, sawhorses, sports gear, extra bricks left over from when the patio was put in, spare pieces of plywood, hedge trimmers, mattocks, old paint buckets, hula hoops, bungee cords, antifreeze, grill, charcoal, lighter fluid, and so on and so forth. There are four people in this household, so the garage is pretty much full. It think there might be a cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor out there.

Sure, but if we're going to gatekeep employment and advancement behind a system that rigidly demands that you work well under time pressure, a lot of people never get to find something suited to their abilities.

I myself barely made it through university because I'm terrible at taking tests. I've been successful in my industry for almost 30 years now. But I was gated by the same tests as everyone else.

Some parts of the working world are a lot more forgiving than you're giving them credit for, especially now that remote work is a thing. Over the last few years I've watched companies drop the programming test from their hiring process—including Epic—because it didn't get them the results they wanted. They accidentally selected for people who worked well under stress, but 99% of our jobs aren't like that. They got better results with interviews that involve a lot of talking to reveal the things that you know.

In Canada, someone did a study of how much it cost to administer NSERC grants (a very prestigious, large grant for doing science research) vs. how much it would cost to just give every applicant what they asked for, and it was CHEAPER to give out the money than scrutinize each grant for its worthiness. Where's the value in withholding the money? There's good science that doesn't get funded and instead bureaucrats shuffling papers eat it all up trying to understand grant applications that they're not qualified to inspect.

You will definitely get people working the system in these cases, but there's an argument to be made that more accommodation will just give better results overall. Just give EVERYONE more time on the test. 100% of people get 6 hours to write the test. The people that are now trying to 'take advantage' of the system are returned to a level playing field. The people that need that time because they're neurodivergent don't have to ask for it. You get to see if people actually learned the material. There's little practical downside.

Time for the US to nationalise all things vehicle. Registration and taxes. Emissions and smog checks. Safety inspections. Dealership laws and regulations. Driver licensing (including for trucks, busses etc). Road rules. The lot.

Fuck that.

I want the govt more OUT of my life, I dont want to give them more pathways into my life....