I’ve never thought of myself as a conspiracy theorist, but if jar-jar being planned to be the actual phantom menace, but later being taken out of the role because fans hated him counts as a conspiracy theory: Count me in! I think the arguments are compelling to say the least.
I definitely roll with “badass tiny mf”, “chill little dude”, “tiny gangsta bro” or any other title making fun of my stature. Call me anything involving “king” and I’ll be inclined to convince you that, even though I’m short, you’ll be shorter once you’re confined to a wheelchair
But it might be beer!
Where I live they were systematically nice people that helped keep everybody safe. If they found some drunk/high person that needed help, they would drive them home. When we were teens and had beach parties, a couple of them would typically hang around somewhere out of the way, and only intervene if someone was being an asshole trying to start a fight (and they would tell people to pick up their glass bottles so kids wouldn’t get hurt the next day). If we were otherwise hanging around they might chat to us and ask what was going on around the neighbourhood, and nobody had an issue telling them anything, because we knew they were just there to look after and help people.
Obviously, I can tell that my experience with police growing up is far from what can be expected a lot of other places. I really do wish more places had police like we did.
Hehe, exactly :) the thing with gases is that the line between completely fine (campfire outside) to potentially lethal (liquid nitrogen evaporating in a small, poorly ventilated garage) can be harder to see and judge for an amateur than a lot of other things. Anyone would understand that they should avoid getting acids or toxic chemicals on their skin, and the protective measures are quite simple to carry out. The same is true for most flammable or explosive liquids or solids. So the idea behind my advice was really “If there’s something that’s likely to hurt you because you aren’t properly aware of the danger involved and how to mitigate it, it’s likely to be a gas, so be extra, extra careful around gases, gas producing reactions, and volatile compounds.”
If you have a fume hood that’s good of course, but since the question was about advising amateurs on safety, my advice is restrictive, because gases can be very dangerous in subtle ways.
As an amateur: Do you know how to properly work in a fume hood so that it protects you? Do you know its capacity, and what to do if something unexpected leads to gas development over that capacity? Have you had training in using this stuff, so that you can react properly and quickly if something goes wrong, rather than freezing up?
In short: Because the potential dangers when working with a lot of gases are harder to detect, and harder to mitigate, than when working with other stuff, I’m taking a restrictive approach in my advice.
For you question on pyrophoric gases: They can remain in contact with air for a while (several minutes, depending on concentration) before igniting. Worst case, the room around you can fill with gas from a leak before causing a gas explosion. In principle you can also inhale gas from this leak, such the the explosion also takes place inside you :)
Anther chemist stepping in here: Anything that produces an off-gas of any kind that does anything other than smell bad should be considered potentially lethal. People have died from working with liquid nitrogen or dry ice without proper ventilation. In addition, a gas explosion can be far worse than any other explosion you are likely to pull off by accident, and if you have a leak somewhere you may have no clue how much explosive gas is in the room with you. Some gases will react and form acid when it gets into your airways, essentially acting as an invisible acid that can jump from the table into your face.
In short: Stay away from dangerous gases and stuff that makes them, and consider pretty much all gases as dangerous unless you know for a fact that they aren’t. Other than that, the potential dangers of backyard chemistry can largely be mitigated by using common sense and working with small amounts of chemicals, good luck :)
Good luck! :D
My solution, which I honestly believe leads to a much more happy life consist of two things:
Have a conscious relationship to what you can do something about. “Dog peed in laundry” is a great example. It’s already happened, there’s nothing I can do to change that, so I’ll just fix the problem. No point in getting irritated. The point is: Don’t get mad about stuff you can’t change/influence.
Always give everyone the benefit of doubt. If someone says something hurtful, like "your mother is a fat asshole™ ", I’ll try to think “maybe they have legitimate concerns about my mothers health, and legitimate concerns about how she’s treating others that I should bring up with her”, rather than immediately thinking they’re just trying to hurt me. That me be disproven in later conversation, but I believe it helps me treat others in a better way, and helps me be a more balanced person.
I’ve never heard that take before, cool! I’ve always loved the final cut in inception, because I felt that I just had to choose to believe that it was a happy ending. I also like the interpretation that by the end he no longer cares whether he is in a dream or not. But I just really want to believe that the top is actually about to fall when the last scene cuts.
To be fair, I’m a decent programmer: I spend a significant portion of my workdays programming all kinds of things. Writing a program to generate sudoku’s with a unique solution, without copy pasting a bunch of algorithms, but actually making it all up yourself definitely sounds non-trivial to me.
(Read: That sounds like a really hard beginner project, and you should be proud for even trying, and you shouldn’t give up :) )
This may be old advice, and I can’t speak for music or languages (where I myself have the same issue) but for woodworking and programming this is my experience: Once I get some idea for something I want to build, that becomes the goal of the project, not learning the skill itself. It could be carving a small model boat, or writing a sudoku solver, but at least for my part, once I get caught up in some project, I have a hard time letting it go. That’s as opposed to if I sit down and try to systematically learn a skill.
Some suggestions for projects off the top of my head:
The point is just to find something else that interests you, that can motivate you to learn the skill you want :) good luck!
I think this response is great, because, while I’m on the other side of the fence (theoretical chemist that sucks at anything artistry related) I think it’s a common misconception that math/science/engineering isn’t creative.
I find that misconception both with people struggling to learn it, and often with people teaching it. The reason I bring it up is that, in my experience, the “hard” sciences become both more fun and easy to learn, and more easy to teach, when creativity is encouraged. For my own part, I’m wildly chaotic in the way I solve problems, and my notes are typically a jumbled mess of drawings and scribbles. For my students part, I’ve seen stuff loosen for a lot of people when they’re encouraged to just let their thoughts flow out on their paper, rather than thinking everything through five times first.
By all means: There’s a difference between math and art, but I think a lot of maths teachers and students could have a better time if they allowed themselves to think more artistically, especially those that are well inclined to it.
Whale can really go both ways, you have to prepare it right, then it’s really good, but if you’re not careful it’s very easy to make it dry and chewy, which it shouldn’t be.
I think you would be interested in reading a bit on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbs and “the monopoly of violence”.
A legal arrest can be violent. A soldier killing another is definitely going to be violent. Both can be legitimate uses of force.
The most likely argument I see is that Trump severely strained diplomatic bonds both between North America and Europe and also within North America and Europe. Additionally, he heralded in a new degree of isolationist policy and created doubt about the resilience of NATO. Furthermore, he tried to blackmail the Ukrainian government.
In summary: Not his fault directly but his politics led to a situation where Russia/Putin saw it as likely that they could invade without facing significant backlash from Europe + North America. That probably would have worked out as well if Ukraine had folded within the first couple of weeks. The argument is essentially that by convincing Russia that they could get Ukraine without significant consequences, his administration contributed to the invasion happening.
Make of that argument what you will. Personally, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say “Trumps fault”, but reasonable to think that another administration might have been able to deter the invasion.
Hey, good news! The newer MacBooks (since like 2 years ago) have rolled back the Touch Bar, gotten back the ol’ reliable scissors switches and MagSafe chargers, as well as having enough ports to plug stuff in.
As for arm vs. intel, I’m a huge fan of the arm chips. My largest issue with them is that I need to cross compile for intel chips if I’m distributing an executable or a compiled library.
I want to respond to your edit:
wait for consensus before you publish, don’t publish anything that isn’t peer reviewed and replicated multiple times.
You need to understand that publishing is the way scientists communicate among each other. Of course, all reputable journals conduct peer review before publishing, but peer review is just that: Review. The peer review process is meant to uncover obviously bad, or poorly communicated, research.
Replication happens when other scientists read the paper and decide to replicate. In fact, by far most replication is likely never published, because it is done as a part of model/rig verification and testing. For example: If I implement a model or build an experimental rig and want to make sure I did it right, I’ll go replicate some work to test it. If I successfully replicate I’m probably not going to spend time publishing that, because I built the rig/implemented to model to do my own research. If I’m unable to replicate, I’ll first assume something is wrong with my rig/implementation. If I can rule that out (maybe by replicating something else) I might publish the new results on the stuff I couldn’t replicate.
Consensus is built when a lot of publications agree on something, to the point where, if you aren’t able to replicate it, you can feel quite positive it’s because you’re doing something wrong.
Basically: The idea of waiting for consensus before publishing can’t work, because consensus is formed by a bunch of people publishing. Once solid consensus is established, you’ll have a hard time getting a journal to accept an article further confirming the consensus.
Software is a tool. I develop stuff that i know is of interest to companies working with everything from nuclear energy to hydrogen electrolysis and CO2 storage. I honestly believe I can make a positive contribution to the world by releasing that software under a permissive licence such that companies can freely integrate it into their proprietary production code.
I’m also very aware that the exact same software is of interest to the petroleum industry and weapons manufacturers, and that I enable them by releasing it under a permissive licence.
The way I see it, withholding a tool that can help do a lot of good because it can also be used for bad things just doesn’t make much sense. If everybody thinks that way, how can we have positive progress? I don’t think I can think of any more or less fundamental technology that can’t be used for both. The same chemical process that has saved millions from starvation by introducing synthetic fertiliser has taken millions of lives by creating more and better explosives. If you ask those that were bombed, they would probably say they wish it was never invented, while if you ask those that were saved from the brink of starvation they likely praise the heavens for the technology. Today, that same chemical process is a promising candidate for developing zero-emission shipping.
I guess my point is this: For any sufficiently fundamental technology, it is impossible to foresee the uses it may have in the future. Withholding it because it may cause bad stuff is just holding technological development back, lively preventing just as much good as bad. I choose to focus on the positive impact my work can have.