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2 yr. ago

  • Let's try with a real life (but slightly simplified) math example taken from my mostly innumerate coworkers.

    Problem:
    2.5 + 2.5 = ?

    Many will answer "5"

    My coworkers won't type 4 extra keystrokes into their calculator, so they follow the written rounding rules (which shouldn't apply here) and key in 3 + 3 = 6. Six. It's six every time.

    And they will argue it to the fucking death.

    This is the depth of the problem. They have the tools to avoid doing math "in their head" and use their amazing modern tools but no conceptual understanding of the fundamental principles that will bring them from "2.5 is the same as 3 because I learned rounding!" to "there's a fundamental difference between 2.5 and 3 if you're trying to add them." They just never came to that breakthrough understanding because no one taught them.

  • I don’t think the pandemic is to blame for this.

    It's not. It has been a problem for years.

  • Pretty lady transforms into monster covered with greenish spaghetti hair, a bad outfit, and typewriter fingertips. If she puts those on your face you'll be sorry unless you're dead.

    That episode really freaked me out when I was a kid.

    I mean, really freaked me out. It's in the top ten of scariest monsters from childhood.

  • You could also go around absentmindedly eating directly from a jar of peanut butter in the hopes of crashing into someone doing the same with a large unwrapped chocolate bar.

    Those relationships usually started out rocky and accusatory, but both parties inevitably realized that they worked great together.

  • If you displease me again,

    "Bwang-ang-ang-ang!"

  • I guess we'll get to find out when and if Germany prosecutes theirs. Wiki.

    BBC article

    They didn't actually get as far as storming the capitol, but it seems like it was in the plans.

  • Tons of potential for TIT(Trekked)U.

  • I can't go to San Francisco without thinking about the nuclear wessels. My husband is legitimately worried that I'll start asking random strangers about them.

    Actually - considering the amount of unsolicited (and invariably wrong) advice we got from SF locals who saw us looking at transit maps and butted in to offer some friendly assistance... I may just do that at the next visit.

    "Are you looking for Fisherman's Warf?"
    "No."
    "It's just down that way!" \
    "I think we're good! Thanks for the help!"
    "Actually, we're looking for nuclear wessels. Do you know where I can find nuclear wessels?"

    \ He's right to be worried.

  • Ick. A fifty year old dentist with a girlfriend half his age, who he routinely hooks up to an IV drip cocktail of tranquilizers. That's just awful.

    Not to imply that she wasn't a willing participant. Addicts usually are, which makes them such easy prey.

    I do hope he gets a long enough sentence that he leaves prison as an old man or in a box.

  • Aw, I remember a confused new cat "owner" who wrote to a cat advice sub about that. He was extremely stressed out because he couldn't help himself from looking at his new cat. It was sweet. Weird and overly literal, but sweet. He seemed genuinely worried that being seen would bother the cat.

    Everyone reassured him that he could look at the kitty if he wasn't weird about it.

    Worf? Worf here is being weird about it. And holding him wrong. Worf's gonna get mauled.

  • I don't think that means what you think it means.

  • I hadn't even thought about the comparison to Guinan or Quark. The comparison makes Neelix so much worse. Guinan didn't need a redemption arc . Quark had a good one. Neither of them were annoying.

  • Neelix was awful, and probably made worse because I wanted to like him from the start.

    Without getting into Kes - which compounded the Neelix problem for me - I started to hate him less in the last few seasons when he went all dark sad clown. I was still viscerally annoyed, but he turned into almost a Michael Scott type character. He was horrible, but you could see the the pain that made him that way.

  • That's a nice and succinct summary.

    I've been following this story pretty closely. I'm nowhere near to being part of the press, but I do enjoy seeing clumsy attempts at suppression blowing up in spectacular fashion. As this one has done.

  • It's really amazing. Literally everyone in the US would have continued to not know or care about these people until this blew up - and it's all their own doing! It's like the Streisand Effect, but without the subjects already being in any way already known or noteworthy.

  • Hoping that they don't learn about "inside the box spring." That's where the real 3am magic (aka cat fights) happen.

  • I really want to see both characters and actors swap shows.

    "Back on Meepos, Unlcle Kalvash would reconfigure the deflector relays to reinforce phasers at random intervals, thus disrupting the enemy's shields. That certainly keep sheep on their toes!"

    "Cousin Larry, before you approach that woman I must inform you that your chances of dating her are approximately 1.78X10^48 to one."

    I would watch the hell out of that. So many wacky mixups!

  • The companion story: Hospital bosses ignored months of doctors' warnings about Lucy Letby suggests that not only did hospital management ignore the problem for almost 9 months, they had no interest in involving the police or outside investigators. They even required two of the doctors to apologize to her for their accusations.

    So I guess she was getting away with it just fine.

  • There's a wiki article on the subject of nurses who kill their patients. It contains some general speculation on motivations.

    The motivation for this type of criminal behaviour is variable, but generally falls into one or more types or patterns:[4]

    Mercy killer: Believe the victims are suffering or beyond help, though this belief may be delusional.
    Sadistic: Use their position as a way of exerting power and control over helpless victims.
    Malignant hero: A pattern wherein the subject endangers the victim's life in some way and then proceeds to "save" them. Some feign attempting resuscitation, all the while knowing their victim is already dead and beyond help, but hope to be seen as selflessly making an effort.

  • In 2009-ish my local US House rep had his bio edited from an office in the Capitol building. Repeatedly, in fact. I've always wondered it was done by him or an intern.

    Based on the blisteringly dumb things he'd say in public, and the fact that he was one of the vanishingly small minority of Republicans to get redistricted out of his very safe seat in Ohio by his own party - I'm betting that he did it on his own time. Not that I think his "retirement" had anything to do with the Wikipedia bio. It's just something that would fit with his ideas of "having a cunning plan."