sp3tr4l

Climate change fueled wildfires cause home and rental insurance rates to surge; State Farm solvency in question.

There! Fixed the headline. Journalism is so hard!

It is very obviously satire of the fat acceptance movement.

They just inverted the genders and kept the rest of the analogy and lingo as similar as possible.

Laffy Taffy torso.

I grew up around Seattle and also with y'all.

Of course, a lot of people say 'you guys' and either don't care or have decided that it's gender non deterministic because ya'll is cringe and racist-coded.

Never even heard of y'uys.

Would that be pronounced Yaiz?

???

Anyway, half of those questions I could have answered with half of the options given, as they're all common enough that most people either know what they mean or use them... and then the other half of the questions were basically just one answer.

EDIT: If anyone cares, easiest way in the world to tell someone is a California transplant is that they say 'the 5', not 'I-5'. That is, for the ones who aren't always telling you they are from California.

EDIT 2: Is there some kind of map of where Americans do and do not raise the pitch of the last word or syllable in a sentence? You know, that makes it sound like a statement is actually a question?

Its that weird tonal pattern that I have always found indicates a person is self centered and sheltered. I've known it as 'Valley Girl Accent' since I was a kid, and it only seems to be spreading.

Apparently its called 'High Rising Tone'?

Pack 100 of compsognathus (compsognathii?) says hello.

Not sure how out of date the research is, but in the original Jurassic Park book, there are roaming packs of these things that overwhelm and kill people.

Though the on screen scene of them killing people happens in the second movie, it actually takes place in the first book IIRC... anyway, they're basically depicted as land piranhas.

(Again, IIRC, Jurassic Park the book basically gets set in motion with a family of tourists being eviscerated by a pack of compys... but the first movie dropped this from the story, then when the second movie comes out they basically use this scene as the intro for that, but its on a different island and used to set off an entirely new story?)

Do you have a confession to make?

There are a lot of concepts in mathematics which do not have good real world analogues.

i, the _imaginary number_for figuring out roots, as one example.

I am fairly certain you cannot actually do the mathematics to predict or approximate the size of an atom or subatomic particle without using complex algebra involving i.

It's been a while since I watched the entire series Leonard Susskind has up on youtube explaining the basics of the actual math for quantum mechanics, but yeah I am fairly sure it involves complex numbers.

The explanation I've seen is that ... is notation for something that can be otherwise represented as sums of infinite series.

In the case of 0.999..., it can be shown to converge toward 1 with the convergence rule for geometric series.

If |r| < 1, then:

ar + ar² + ar³ + ... = ar / (1 - r)

Thus:

0.999... = 9(1/10) + 9(1/10)² + 9(1/10)³ + ...

= 9(1/10) / (1 - 1/10)

= (9/10) / (9/10)

= 1

Just for fun, let's try 0.424242...

0.424242... = 42(1/100) + 42(1/100)² + 42(1/100)³

= 42(1/100) / (1 - 1/100)

= (42/100) / (99/100)

= 42/99

= 0.424242...

So there you go, nothing gained from that other than seeing that 0.999... is distinct from other known patterns of repeating numbers after the decimal point.

I used to have a Prius C, got it used.

95% of shops wouldn't touch it for anything non cosmetic. Hybrid, confusing, scary!

Learned how to work on it myself, before it got stolen.

Guess I just got the beta version of not being able to have your car serviced, due to good old fashioned blue collar laziness and incompetence.

The individual desires judgement. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization.

Jesus fucking god.

Anderson Cooper is talking to Kamala.

After Kamala basically explains some actual achievements of the Biden administration while refusing to address Biden's incoherence...

Cooper says "Yes but neither candidate explained what you just said so succinctly and quickly."

This is after Kamala has been stalling for almost an hour. When she comes in screen she's twirling her hair nervously and does it again, unable to even crack her immensely fake smile a single time.

MSNBC and CNN basically are either in shock or reporting on the entire Democratic party being in shock.

With MSNBC, after most of the panel talks about the possibility of Biden resigning Maddow just got into an argument with some other talking head over whether or not its possible for Biden to bow out, as the other person says yeah it actually is technically possible.

To sum up, Cooper asked Kamala if Joe is like this all the time.

She did not say no.

What an astounding fuck up.

I think it was his third time speaking... he was answering one question on one topic and basically accidentally started talking about something else and then was visibly confused as he realized he was making no sense.

I am legitimately going to need to read a transcript of this to figure out wtf he was talking about half the time.

Like... Biden was just asked if his age would impact his presidency.

His response was to mumble about being the youngest person in politics originally, and uh we are building more chip fab plants, and America is awesome.

Trump is now answering the same question and is actually staying on topic for his entire answer though he's lying a bit.

And Joe just went back to mumbling about how Trump is actually 6 foot 4, or 6 foot 5, or well anyway he couldnt carry his bag while golfing.

Yeah... Biden is very much coming across as a near senile grandpa and Trump is coming across far more well composed.