What comes after the soap, ballot, and jury boxes?

Tl;dr: mosquitoes are good at learning, but they’re unlikely to become attracted to deet outside of laboratory environments in which their response to it is directly being tested, because they go a long time between feeding and each formulation they encounter is more likely to be different. Additionally, it was difficult to get them to feed the first time in the presence of deet, so the risk is probably highest when the repellent is wearing off, meaning you should reapply following the instructions on the product.

It’s a common source of annoyance for American tourists and those serving them that tap water isn’t always free and available at restaurants and Americans expect it to be, so I interpreted it in that light, but I could be mistaken.

I’m American, but I live in Germany

That’s why Americans would be annoyed about other places not having it - it feels like an obligation in the US

I work at a bakery in the downtown area of a small but touristy area. Homeless people tend to come by relatively soon after we open and hang out in the winter months, because we open early first and it’s really warm with all the ovens going. I immediately became one of the favorite bakery workers for most of them through no intention of my own, just because most of my other coworkers are actively shitty to them. If they buy something, I treat them like any other customer and let them sit there as long as they want, just like I would a customer with a laptop nursing one cup of coffee for hours. Even if they can’t pay for anything, I let them sit down and use the bathroom as long as they want. We have outlets in the cafe for customer use, so I don’t have any issues with someone who can’t pay for a cup of coffee using one, especially when the cafe is otherwise empty, and I give people hot or cold water if they want it. Since I’ve been there longer, I’m now comfortable buying or comping them a sandwich and a cup of coffee or hot cocoa once in a while, but at the beginning I wasn’t sure if I would get fired for that, so I only offered water, a seat, and access to electricity and a bathroom. There are a couple of people who are disruptive to other customers or staff, and I don’t allow them to stay, but I don’t make that determination based on whether I think they look homeless or not.

I’m not trying to toot my own horn, because that’s literally just the baseline of how humans should treat each other (and even other animals, tbh). It’s depressing as hell that my unfriendly, autistic, foreign (I have trouble understanding people who are slurring, speaking a heavy dialect, or missing a lot of teeth, all of which are more common among homeless people) customer service is deemed one of the best by a whole demographic of people, just because other people are willing to deny people their basic needs.

Three of my regular customers who were homeless have died in the four years since I’ve been there, two froze to death overnight after not having eaten the day before and one went into diabetic shock during the day in public and no one noticed. This is well known at my bakery, and somehow many of my coworkers still don’t get or care that something that would cost them €0,24 could literally make the difference in whether a person survives or not.

Water is even more important in the warm months and it’s essentially free (plus every restaurant ever wastes more water in general operation than is actively requested by customers), which makes it especially galling that people don’t care enough about others to expend the slightest amount of effort for their benefit.

This is one of the reasonable things that bugs Americans. Water is a basic need and it’s fucked up to deny someone something that costs you a fraction of a cent and they require, just because you can’t turn a profit on them.

Or Christmas cookies

The conception of an identity as a woman being rooted in sex and sex based rights being fought and won for by successive generations against a male dominated and sexist society

That’s the part that’s not universal. It’s how the issue is portrayed in the UK, but I’ve never seen it described as such in Germany, for example. “Womanhood” is experienced by those who are judged femme by society and women’s rights are related to gender, not sex. James Barry didn’t advance women’s rights the way that Elizabeth Anderson did, because even after the autopsy, the culture didn’t look at Barry and call him a woman.

But don’t freak out, vitamin c is still good for you

“Thus, the results observed here for these food additives are not true for natural substances found in fruits and vegetables,” she added.

The last time I bought a prepaid phone, I had to give them my identity to register it (not an eSIM), but you could just as easily drive three cities away and use a pay phone at a truck stop or train station (only places I see them anymore, and they’re often hidden away, but still there). Maybe take a cab from a nearby area to the truck stop to avoid linking your license plate with it? I’m honestly not sure if they’d put that much effort into solving it, but you could also probably ask to use the phone at a library and they’d let you (though it might not be private enough for you to make it a convincing call)

Also as someone that holds a law degree from a country with codified law and a very strict and proven legal theoretical construct, I find the idea of case law rediculous. It’s outdated - by centuries

Can you elaborate here? What makes case law outdated and what drawbacks does it have, in your opinion?

Yeah, there are a lot of potential business purposes for it falling on a Wednesday, it’s really just that I can’t imagine 4 am working as well or better than basically any other time of day for this.

Although laying a tenth of your staff off immediately before some of their benefits vest is also bound to disgruntle employees, so maybe it’s just hubris.

Not coming into work I totally get, but that’s why most companies do this on a Friday during the afternoon, cut off access during the conversation, and walk the person out, if they’re on site. Doing in the middle of the week and compensating by giving the employees a WFH day is an abnormal choice, but whatever, maybe their pay periods start on Thursdays or something.

Announcing layoffs during the middle of the night and thereby ensuring that your retained employees are less productive on Wednesday (if not the rest of the week, we’re generally affected by sleep disruption a lot more and longer than we realize and having everyone a little bit affected will magnify the effects across the entire company) and the newly laid off former employees receive that news when they’re not as emotionally stable as if they had an uninterrupted night of sleep is bizarre.

Meta plans to lay off about 10 percent of its nearly 80,000 employees on Wednesday, with notices going out to affected workers’ personal and corporate email addresses at 4 am in their local time zone, according to a company-wide memo sent on Monday.

What an insane way to do things. How is ensuring that the majority of your employees either stay up way too late or wake up really early (after a likely restless night’s sleep) smack in the middle of the week going to improve efficiency in any way?

Palantir UK chief Louis Mosley, grandson of British Union of Fascists founder Oswald Mosley

I know you don’t get to choose your family and it’s not Louis’ fault that Oswald was a fascist, but I do wonder if there were some “alternative” values that got passed down in the Mosley family

Blau, aber nicht blau

The “experiment” is one you conduct on yourself, it’s not for thinking about a process and using your imagined results as the basis of further study. It’s very useful in a number of non scientific fields, and it can serve as an aid in scientific education though, so it shouldn’t be written off generally.

The paper clip thought experiment is a punchy, memorable example of the conflict between what input you give to a computer and what the computer interprets from that. The goal is for people who hear it to remember that they need to be thoughtful about what exactly they want and precise in their phrasing when they’re programming or training an AI.

Our teeth aren’t good without fluoride.