They used to be awful, and in 2009, they ran an ad campaign explaining as much and informing you that they’ve changed.

My understanding is that they are much better now, but I’ve not eaten there since then, so I’m not sure. Either way, maybe Domino’s Europe is only loosely affiliated and still uses the old shit.

My point is that Fahrenheit is not like our other units of measure. 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 1760 yards or 5280 feet in a mile is ridiculous. There’s no benefit to these units with arbitrary scaling factors for conversion. That lack of consistent scaling factor is the primary difference with metric, and it is also precisely why metric is superior. The image’s assertion that these units are stupid is valid.

But for temperature, there are some aspects of Fahrenheit that work out nicely, and learning 32 and 212 for the freezing and boiling points of water is not that bad. It’s not as nice as 0 and 100, but this difference leads to certain other temperatures being in the range of 0 and 100. My enjoyment for which temperatures fall between 0 and 100 feels about as arbitrary as your enjoyment for water being liquid within this range. At the very least, the difference here is not as clear cut as it is for other units, so I don’t buy into the idea that Fahrenheit is a bad unit of measure.

To put it simply: I don’t see any redeeming quality for our other units of measure, but I do for Fahrenheit. I’m not saying that Celsius is bad or that Fahrenheit is better. I’m merely saying that the phase changes of water are not enough to convince me that Fahrenheit is stupid.

Right. You learn two numbers for the phase changes of water, and we do as well. It’s easy to remember two numbers and understand when you’ve crossed a boundary. Sure, learning 0 and 100 might be easier than 32 and 212, but I don’t think that understanding whether a number is smaller or larger than 32 is really harder than understanding if it’s smaller or larger than 0. Both are pretty much instantaneous recognitions for a numerically literate person.

My point was merely that the Fahrenheit defines these two points in such a way that the ambient temperatures that we experience generally fall nicely within the range of 0 to 100, and I don’t think that this fact is any less compelling an argument than having nicer numbers for the boundaries of liquid water. I’m not saying that Celsius is bad. I’m just saying that the range of liquid water is not a convincing enough argument for me.

For other units of measures, the ease of converting units in metric is a clear win over imperial (or US customary). For temperature, there are benefits to both scales, and neither has as compelling an argument as we see in the meter vs the yard or the kilogram vs the pound. The only really convincing argument for me is that the rest of the world uses Celsius, and I think that is a good enough argument.

Fahrenheit is also based on water’s phase changes, but the 0-100 range just falls nicely around the range of common ambient temperatures. The basis in water is nice because it’s abundant and thus makes calibration of a thermometer easy. My contention is merely that the specific values of the phase changes are not so important that it makes the Celsius scale inherently better. I like that the ambient temperatures outside fall nicely throughout the 0-100 range in Fahrenheit, and I think that is just as valid an argument as water being liquid within this range.

And perhaps I’m particularly swayed by this argument because I live in a place that has cold winters and hot summers, so I see the full range of 0 to 100 in the weather. I’m also not going to pretend that growing up using Fahrenheit is not the main reason for my continuing usage of it.

I just wanted to point out that I’m convinced by the arguments in favor of the metric system for everything except Celsius. For that one, I just don’t think water is as compelling an argument as is always presented.

One thing to note: that hasn’t always been the case. This is something that can change.

It really started in the late 1970s with the Friedman Doctrine.

The Friedman doctrine, also called shareholder theory, is a normative theory of business ethics advanced by economist Milton Friedman which holds that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. This shareholder primacy approach views shareholders as the economic engine of the organization and the only group to which the firm is socially responsible. As such, the goal of the firm is to increase its profits and maximize returns to shareholders.

I’m trying to find the story I listened to about this on NPR a few years ago, but it essentially discussed how this doctrine was taken up after the stagflation in the 1970s (particularly as Reagan was heavily influenced by Milton Friedman). The main point was that it seemed like the traditional economic system was collapsing at that time, and Friedman’s ideas argued that it was because businesses were not focused enough on profits. Instead, many businesses were trying to be part of a broader community and work on doing things that were good for the public. Friedman’s idea was that this was too economically inefficient and that a businesses only ethical obligation should be to make money for the shareholders, and that the shareholders could decide for themselves on how too help the public.

This went over very well with business leaders, and it helped ushered in the Gordon Gecko era of unironic “greed is good”.

I’m in agreement with everything except temperature. I’m not saying that Celsius is bad, but I do think that using the phase changes of water as the sole point of comparison is a bad argument.

For most people, the interaction with temperature is through the weather, and I don’t think Celsius is inherently better for that. I like that in Fahrenheit 0 is a cold winter’s day, and 100 is a hot summer’s day. I find that more relevant in day-to-day life than the phase changes of water. The big argument I see for preferring Celsius is that everybody else is doing it, so we may as well jump in.

However, in regards to the other systems of measurement, metric is best. The imperial system was nice when manufacturing measuring tools was difficult, so using easily divisible numbers allowed for easier creation of accurate measuring devices. But it has been quite some time since that was a reasonable argument (and that’s only really relevant for some of the units anyway).

Thomas Jefferson, 1787

And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.

I think this quote puts it aptly. It obviously comes from a more tumultuous time, but the United States was borne out of the idea that violence is a valid response to injustice. Law and order are preferable to anarchy, but that doesn’t mean that all law is valid. When the laws are used to insulate the powerful few against the many, what reason is there for the many to follow the law?

This often-cited quote from Jefferson urges regular rebellion against the law so that the powerful will never lose sight of how tenuous their position is. If you let the powerful manipulate the laws for their own benefit against the interests of the rest of society, you’ll be left with a population that has no interest in upholding the law.

That is ultimately why people are happy to let this man face no consequences. People are angry at the billionaires, especially those in the health insurance industry. And this action is being picked up as a warning shot across the bow. Society is saying that we are sick of the status quo, and if things keep going as they have been, this is not going to be an isolated event.

So this mineral was found in the Mogok region of Myanmar, and the second rarest mineral, painite, was also found in the Mogok region of Myanmar. It sounds like there’s something funky going on there geologically speaking, and it’s probably not a coincidence that the country had been mostly closed off from the rest of the world for decades.

I always think about Christine Jorgensen, who was the first American to be widely known as having a sex reassignment surgery in 1952. She went to Europe to have the surgery and sent letters back home to inform her friends and family about the change. The letters she sent to her parents were leaked to the press and it was front page news by the time she returned home.

At the beginning, the press and public at large was fascinated. It was a weird story that people had no experience with, and they were mostly fine with accepting it as confusing but interesting. Over time, however, people learned to hate it and started to be more critical of the concept. It’s from before my time, so I’m not really sure of how it was received, but the impression I get is that most people weren’t bothered by it until somebody told them to be bothered by it. And that’s ultimately what seems to happen with children.

If you tell them that somebody is different, they find it amusing and then move on. But if you also tell them that it’s wrong and that they should hate that person for being different, they’ll hate them as well. The hate itself is what’s unnatural. Young kids encountering something new and confusing is entirely natural. When you’re young, everything is new and confusing.

Yeah, it would be more interesting if the middle track were empty.

Ah, ok, so “control” and “backspace” don’t actually function as control or backspace keys. Then that makes more sense.

Wouldn’t a split spacebar be two different keys that both individually can be used to type a space? This keyboard requires that both keys be pressed together to insert a space because each individual key has a different function. Given the common occurrence of spaces, that seems needlessly difficult.

The UN is not meant to be a world government. It’s meant to be a forum that allows all countries to maintain a bare minimum of diplomatic relations. The overarching goal is to prevent nuclear war and prevent WWIII.

It’s predecessor, the League of Nations, was meant to prevent WWII and had some teeth to help enforce their decisions. The result was that it collapsed quickly and did very little to prevent another global conflict.

Trump is a clear supporter of the genocide. He wants Israel to destroy Palestine and he wants the US to do more to help them accomplish this. Harris is nowhere near as bad as this. She’s not going to withdraw support for Israel, but she’s at least going to try to rein them in and return to the pre-war status. Not great, but realistically the best that we can hope for with how supportive our politicians are of Israel in general.

These are the only two people that have a chance at the White House. If you don’t want to support the genocide, don’t waste your vote on somebody that is absolutely, without a doubt, going to lose. Instead, use it to vote for the one candidate that is possibly able to win over the person that is explicitly, unequivocally supportive of the genocide.

In my eyes, not voting for Harris is supporting the genocide. Anything that allows Trump into office is supporting the genocide.

For me it’s, “I shouldn’t be doing this. I’ll never find it again. This is an awful place to put this,” as I commit to setting something down in the abyss.

Looking at a map with the current polls (and focusing on the toss-ups), it seems that the most viable path to victory for Harris is to pick up PA, MI, and WI. If she drops PA, she’d need MI, NV, WI or AZ, and GA or NC, but that seems like a big ask. If she wins PA, she could lose WI if she picks up AZ, GA, or NC and she could lose MI if she wins GA, NC, or AZ and NV. But winning PA and losing both WI and MI would require winning AZ and either GA or NC.

So there are a few paths to a Harris win, and a few don’t seem very farfetched, but none of them seem likely enough for comfort. Definitely not how I was hoping to be feeling at this point in the election.

It’s not physical damage to her brain. She has schizophrenia and developed symptoms of it at an abnormally young age. She didn’t have a clear grasp on what was and wasn’t real and that ultimately led her to stab her friend nineteen times. It’s clearly a condition that has presented itself as very dangerous for her, and it needs to be under control before she can be released.

When it comes to lead pipes, it is possible for them to safely carry water without the risk of leaching lead into the drinking water, but it relies on the pipes being properly maintained and the water being properly treated. This is where the issue came with Flint.

Prior to 2014, the Flint River was a backup source for drinking water with the primary source being Lake Huron. However, Flint was facing a financial crisis and decided to switch their water supply to the Flint River. When they switched, they also chose to save money by not treating the new water source with the additional anticorrosion materials that would be necessary for the different properties of this water. This caused the existing lead pipes to corrode through the protective layer that had naturally formed previously, allowing lead to leach into the water supply.

Aside from the dangers of lead contamination for the human body, there is another concern when it comes to water treatment. Lead reacts with chlorine, and chlorine is added to drinking water to protect against harmful bacteria. Since there was now a significant amount of lead leaching into the water, a notable portion of the chlorine was now bound to the lead and was not available to kill harmful bacteria. This created the initial problems that were identified by residents in Flint, MI, and it was later discovered that the water supply now had detectable levels of lead.

So Flint exemplifies the issue well. Lead pipes are dangerous and should not be used, but that danger isn’t absolute. Because lead pipes can be safe, we’ve let this problem fester for decades. However, it takes a lot of care and attention to keep using these pipes safely, and, as can be seen in Flint, it is very easy for those precautions to be tossed aside. When that happens, it becomes a major crisis very quickly.

I can see his attractiveness to some extent, but I think it’s mostly that he’s an average looking dude of relative youth in comparison to his colleagues in the Senate. Put most men in a well-tailored suit and you’ll set at least some hearts aflutter. Give him time and his lich core will take over.

And yeah, she looks like your typical Fox News broadcaster who has been chosen primarily due to their pretty face and ability to spread vitriol with reckless abandon.

Your assertion is that Biden has not tried to contact DeSantis to offer help. You were provided with an article that says otherwise and dismissed it as false. What evidence do you hand that supports your claim that Biden has not attempted to contact DeSantis? Other Republican governors have said that Biden was quick to reach out in regards to Helene, so it’s hard to believe that he hasn’t tried to contact Florida.