• 1 Post
  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 12th, 2023

help-circle
  • I’ve worked in retail, and… That’s not an actual RFID alarm sticker, and it’s not just there for the potential theives.

    Some manufacturers will actually put an RFID tag on the inside of the box. These tags work exactly like the RFID stickers, and they’re deactivated the same way (usually a magnet underneath the store’s counter).

    This sticker is actually a “chip away” anti-theft sticker. They frequently go on the same products that get RFID stickers, but all they do is tear apart instead of peeling off. They’re mostly an internal tool for LP to try to link thefts and fraudulent returns (that number is the store number that it came from). This one just happens to conveniently have “ALARM” printed on it as a secondary feature, letting thieves know that the item will set off the alarm without showing where the RFID tag is.

    Edit: I should probably add that they also put them on high-theft non-alarmed items, but they probably didn’t get separate sets of stickers.





  • If you’re into hard sci-fi and you’re looking for a good read, they actually dropped a pretty good recommendation with that reference at the end - Larry Niven does a great job of blending real-world theories like Dyson spheres and advanced propulsion drives, with some of the more far-flung standards of the genre like an intra-planetary teleportation grid.




  • I don’t want to be a downer, but… The rats probably aren’t high if they’re just eating weed. Buckle up, y’all, time for a stoner science lesson:

    THC is present in cannabis in two main forms: THCA and Delta-9 THC. Throwing around those delta numbers can seem scary given all of the unregulated Delta-8 in illegal states, but it’s really not. THCA breaks down into Delta-9 THC naturally with time and heat, through a process called decarboxylization… Which is great, because THCA isn’t psychoactive, while Delta-9 THC is. Because of this, smoking a joint or eating a properly made edible will get you high, but eating an entire ounce is just having a terrible salad.



  • That’s actually a really good analogy. Mind if I throw some numbers on it to flesh things out?

    Let’s set that moving walkway going at 5mph, and we’ll put ourselves on that walkway, on a turned-off rascal scooter. The scooter is stationary on the belt, but it’s still moving at 5mph - that’s your tailwind pushing the air around the plane forward.

    Now, let’s turn that scooter on and throttle it up to 5mph. The scooter is plugging along comfortably at 5mph, but it’s actually moving at 10mph. This is your plane flying with a tailwind, performing normally for its indicated air speed, while having a much higher ground speed.

    Curiously, this does make the phrase “supersonic speeds” somewhat debatable. While they were traveling over the ground faster than sound would, they weren’t moving faster than sound would in the air around them.



  • I’m not a scientist, but one could argue that it’s likely that all three planets had nitrogen, but only Earth still has it.

    I don’t know much about Venus, but I know that part of why we have way more atmosphere than Mars is due to Earth’s magnetic field. Earth has a much stronger magnetic field than Mars, and it does a pretty good job of shielding us from the solar wind; meanwhile Mars has been slowly trickling atmosphere into the void for ages because it lacks that shielding.

    Given that CO2 is actually super heavy, it makes sense that Mars would lose almost everything else first. You mentioned H2, but it’s also almost twice as heavy as N2 - because of this, nitrogen would concentrate at higher altitudes, eventually becoming exposed to the solar wind as lighter gases were stripped away.

    As for Venus… Again, I’m not an expert, but a quick search suggests that it has a weak magnetic field as well. With a primarily CO2 atmosphere and a weak magnetic field, one could infer that Venus is in a similar position to Mars, and any significant nitrogen that may have been in its atmosphere has simply been stripped away by the solar wind.


  • You’re talking about an e-liquid tank full of distillate, kind of like this, right?

    If you just filled it, you should just have to let it sit for a while - I left mine overnight before I hit it to let the distillate soak into the coils.

    If it worked for a while before dying, though, then the atomizer might have burned out. You can replace it, but you’ll have to empty and refill the tank, so it might be easiest to just empty it into a spare tank and use that one for a while.


  • I feel like I would use it voluntarily if it put the sponsors in the “add a destination” menu. I tend to use Google maps for longer trips, and I try to add any stops on the way to my route so I don’t miss them - if I hit “add destination” and it offered, for example, Citgo stations, 7-11s, and Dunkin Donuts on my route, then I would probably get gas and snacks at sponsored locations almost every time.

    As it is, though… Well, just having a Dunks on the way to the laundromat doesn’t make me want to stop in and buy a coffee. Driving by ten of them “randomly” on my way to another state isn’t going to make me any more likely to stop at one.


  • Believe it or not, that’s actually what the complimentary branded matchbooks that smoke shops and strip clubs used to give away were meant to be!

    They weren’t an ad directed at you, though - they were an ad directed at your friends. You’d go hang out somewhere, set your cigarettes and matches down, and people would see the logo.


  • It really bugs me when people do stuff like that… I grew up in VT, where laws are lax, tons of people have guns, and nothing ever happens. Responsibly handled and in the hands of a stable person, guns can be pretty safe - but, if you remove either one of those things, they’re incredibly dangerous.

    In light of that, I wouldn’t mind if access were restricted somewhat. I’m totally fine with my neighbor having a rifle to kill varmints on their property, but way less fine with folks like my paranoid uncle having a safe full of assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammo in a densely populated suburb.





  • Basically, yeah.

    Essentially, old folks have always taken up a good chunk of the housing market by having a bunch of small households (think two sets of grandparents vs a family of four). However, the baby boom was, well, a baby boom - as the boomers are aging, they’re taking up a lot more housing than the preceding generation did at their age, which is squeezing the market as younger folks try to buy houses.