comicjk

6 ms·

31.
by comicjk 3y ago
If I understand trial law correctly, the rules of evidence already prohibit introducing a video at trial without proving where it came from (for example, testimony from a security guard that a given video came from a given security camera).
32.
by comicjk 3y ago
They don't sell the paper version directly, but you can get it in reams from any office supply store.
33.
by comicjk 3y ago
There's also underfunded research on far-UV light, which at the right wavelengths kills pathogens without apparently affecting humans. It might really be that simple. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/could
34.
by comicjk 3y ago
Was anyone else hoping it would detect the ball by simply completing a circuit (since the rails are metal and so is the ball)? Then it could give a magnetic tug after an appropriate time. Maybe this would be flaky because of the poor contac
35.
by comicjk 3y ago
Of course, slogans cannot be perfect. Slogans are tools for communication and should be judged as such. If "most people take it as" meaning something unhelpful, then it's defunct as a slogan. ("Black lives matter" i
36.
by comicjk 3y ago
An example of a textbook which starts from the discrete, linear-algebra form of QM (using the Stern-Gerlach spin experiment) is "Quantum Mechanics: A Paradigms Approach" by David McIntyre of Oregon State University. It's not
37.
by comicjk 3y ago
Google Ngram Viewer seems to agree, putting peak usage of "do the needful" in the mid-1800s. A phrase I would tend to use instead, "do what is needed", appears to be much more recent. https://books.google.com&
38.
by comicjk 3y ago
I have long harbored an ambition of creating a Journal Of Implausible Chemistry, for the publication of research on hydrogen chains and other molecules cruelly disallowed by our impoverished reality.
39.
by comicjk 3y ago
US inflation YoY was 3% as of the most recent data. https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_consumer_price_index_yoy
40.
by comicjk 3y ago
The insurance company pays, but what they pay is not this price. US medical care is littered with dummy sticker prices that exist to give insurance company negotiators something to do besides negotiate good rates. https://www.pro
41.
by comicjk 3y ago
Your original comment didn't say that the notes contained insults and planned lies (beyond the dishonest appearance of spontaneity). Is this sample an exaggeration? It certainly looks a lot worse this way.
42.
by comicjk 3y ago
This is a classic math pitfall, described by mathematician Jordan Ellenberg as "Don’t talk about percentages of numbers when the numbers might be negative" because they're more often confusing than illuminating. https:/
43.
by comicjk 3y ago
I think you're right, though I don't think it's so obvious when it's being specifically compared with US COVID deaths.
44.
by comicjk 3y ago
Where are you getting that death number? I'm seeing numbers around 43k, 30 times lower. Is your figure including health damage from air pollution or something? Or is it an aggregate over many years? https://en.wikipedia.org&
45.
by comicjk 3y ago
They're not wrong answers, they're floating-point answers. What's wrong is the assumption that infinite precision will fit in a handful of bytes.
46.
by comicjk 3y ago
There is a correlation. Germany has the reputation of being very concerned with inflation, which happens when the amount of money in circulation grows relative to the supply of goods to buy. When there is a supply shock (such as this energy
47.
by comicjk 3y ago
They didn't ask what books both men had read - I suspect Gore has read at least a large chunk of the Bible (he still describes himself as a Baptist to this day). It's just not his favorite book.
48.
by comicjk 3y ago
An example of what makes this so difficult is the "activity cliffs" often found in drug development: many pairs of apparently similar molecules will have totally different activity against a target protein. These differences can b
49.
by comicjk 3y ago
I was baffled when I first entered my schedule for a conference into Google Maps, only to find when I flew across the country that all the times were wrong. I understand that it's a reasonable choice to use the local time zone at event
50.
by comicjk 3y ago
I see this model of science as potentially misleading. One obvious reaction to the "too many bricks" idea is to try to put together some grand theory yourself (an "edifice"), but this nearly always means becoming a crank
51.
by comicjk 3y ago
Nonprofit status makes it much harder to extract large profits. A charity founder can pay himself a million-dollar salary, but he can't sell his shares in the nonprofit and become a billionaire.
52.
by comicjk 3y ago
The question in this trial was: Will people in this at-risk population have less calcium buildup in the heart if we give them vitamin K2? The answer was, on average, no. That's the key piece of information for public health. Blood test
53.
by comicjk 3y ago
This is a randomized trial with hundreds of subjects. The two groups should be statistically similar to each other in their magnesium levels (and other attributes). That's the purpose of randomization: so you don't have to find an
54.
by comicjk 3y ago
If the proposed intervention is giving a pill, it seems fair to test that instead of a proxy. The study had hundreds of people; if the effect were big enough to be clinically significant they hopefully would have detected it, even with some
55.
by comicjk 3y ago
There is a deeper story. The realistic technical details are the bones; the flesh is the relationships between two human civilizations and a less-advanced alien race that doesn't know humans exist.
56.
by comicjk 3y ago
I think A Deepness In The Sky is actually better, especially for people on here. The story takes place on spaceships thousands of years in the future, but the characters are still using code based on Unix timestamps, and still complaining a
57.
by comicjk 3y ago
You call passing a bill through Congress "immediate", and you think it can be "undone quickly"? I think the long-term budget deficit is too high, but the budget process is not responsive enough to be used to control infl
58.
by comicjk 4y ago
There were some small Alaskan islands that Japan actually seized. The non-military population of Alaska in 1941 was tiny, about 73k, and land links to the lower 48 were weak, so isolating and occupying the territory by sea might have worked
59.
by comicjk 4y ago
The point of the police in a society is that they have a near-monopoly on armed force, and therefore criminals can't hope to win by escalation. In a world where the US has by far the biggest military, it can to some extent arrogate to
60.
by comicjk 4y ago
If Japan had just destroyed a US base, then it would have been proportionate to destroy a Japanese base in retaliation. In reality, Japan launched total war on all its neighbors, and Pearl Harbor was just the first part of this to touch the

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