The "Contain, Verify, Explain Foundation", dedicated to the study of and protection against cyber-anomalies

I find that hard to beelieve

Satin undies?

Close. Soiled undies.

Is it me or does that post author name look like a lot of the bots named "WordWordNumber"?

Because that's what the other person asked. "Secluded myself" isn't really an answer. I can seclude myself counting leaves in the forest, lay down and stare at the ceiling, walk circles around my room and try to make them perfectly circular...

It's not that you have to tell; saying "I don't know" or "I'd rather not say" would be an answer too. But you made a snide remark regarding the other person's reading comprehension (why?) and fail to properly comprehend their question (or mine).

I'm autistic, which results in me deconstructing and analysing jokes instead of laughing (often to the displeasure of the people who think I didn't find their joke funny – I promise, if I'm taking the time to disassemble your joke that means I found it funny and want to understand why).

The flipside is that I occasionally crack out carefully engineered bangers, because I understand the importance of a setup, building expectations and putting the brain on one track of thought, then capping it off with the "derailing" of those expectations. The shorter you can get it, the less time the brain has to get off track on its own, diminishing that derailing effect.

Of course, getting the inspiration and figuring out a way to put that into practice is it's own unpredictable beast, and some jokes just fall flat despite my effort. Sometimes I misread the room or the audience too. I'm not a particularly talented comedian.

But at least I'm not a setup without a punchline.

A particularly nasty version of absurdism, more like. If nothing matters in the grand scheme, might as well go and make the best of your life. Except most people can still acknowledge that empathy does matter for your life at least, while he doesn't give a shit.

A definitional concession to make exponential series work. xⁿ for n &in; (0, 1) is the nth root of x, which gets ever closer to 1, while x^{n for n < 0 equals 1÷ (x}n^{). Between them lies the neutral element with respect to multiplication 1 (neutral meaning that x × 1 = x; a factor of one doesn't actually change anything). Hence, x}0^ = 1.

That rule breaks down for x = 0, obviously. Negative exponents don't work at all because they're division by zero, while all exponents > 0 result in 0. Semantically, 0⁰ probably should be undefined, but the neutral element rule does provide a definition. There also isn't really any reasonable use case where you'd need that to be consistent with anything else.

...and what did you do while high?

Not me. I don't care. The version of me that I've got right now is alright, I'm in no hurry to "find myself". Either I'll come across myself by chance or it can't have been that important.

huffs excessive amounts of Copium

It's a cargo cult. They don't understand, but they like what it promises, so they blindly worship. Sceptics become unbelievers, visionaries become prophets and collateral damages become sacrifices.

They may use different terms, but if some job became obsolete, that's just the price of a better future to them. And when the day of Revelation comes, they'll surely be among the faithful delivered from the shackles of human labour to enjoy the paradise built on this technology. Any day now...

It's not the goal itself that's the issue. Protecting kids from harmful content until they're ready to deal with it is absolutely a worthwhile endeavour.

But the means to that end often pose a massive security and privacy issue.

You're supposed to give all your identifying details to some website and trust them, that they'll use it only for the legal purpose of verifying that identity and promptly deleting them, rather than selling them to criminals who now have everything they need for identity theft. Hell, just storing them is a risk because we all know how many companies (and people) treat IT security as an afterthought at best and a breach compromising the identification of thousands of people would be a fucking nightmare.

And what if your kid tries to circumvent it? Now their face is out there on some server, whether or not they succeed. Is that really better?

The argument is that the onus should be on parents to protect their children and help them find their way safely, rather than compromising everyone else with poorly thought-out and invasive policies.

What about Black Hole by Betraying The Martyrs?

If I'd managed to stick a robot landing on a rock hurtling through space, you bet I'd be celebrating hard too

So what's wrong with cumming the backstreet

Solid vitamin C is relatively stable, but it decomposes rather quickly when dissolved in water. Factors such as pH, temperature, oxygen, and the presence of catalysts (iron, copper) influence the decomposition process. The lowest rate of oxidation is observed at pH 3, where vitamin C solutions are the most stable. Raising the pH to 5 increases the oxidation rate by a factor of 2.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3510389/

The study uses particularly clean water (clean enough to be suitable for medical injections) with a pH of ~7.4. At that acidity and a temperature of 20°C (≈70°F), it takes about 95 days for the vitamin C to decay to 10% of its original concentration, or 28 days to reach 50%.

Normal drinking water has a pH of 6.5-8.5, but also contains a lot of other substances, which might increase the rate of oxidation. Given the potential time between treatment and consumption as well as the fact that people might boil it and increase the rate of decay that way, it's just not as economical to add ascorbic acid to the water supply if only a small percentage of it will ever reach the consumers.

Additionally, the exact dosage will be hard to control, leading to a risk of excessive side effects such as kidney stones. People with a specific enzyme deficiency may also suffer anemia as excessive doses.

Compare that to, say, lemons, whose juice has a pH of ~ 2.4 and renders the vitamin a lot more stable. If you want people to get a good intake of vitamin C, tell them to eat fruits and vegetables, preferably uncooked. The vitamin C dosage you'll get from that will hardly lead to megadoses, unless you eat such vast amounts that you'd probably get other problems anyway.

The reason fluoride is added is that it's quite stable, safe and effective, while also being fairly cheap.

Did George Lucas know that?

I don't know. There is a certain tendency in western media to overrepresent the significance of swords in pre-gunpowder combat (at least when they're not treating bows like they're guns and catapults like artillery).

On the other hand, with well-made swords often serving as a status symbol (due to being more expensive in terms of required material, labour and skill of the craftsman) it makes sense for the Jedi to wield them as a symbol of affiliation and the reputation that accompanies that affiliation. Everyone can buy a Blaster, but a Lightsaber?

Or maybe he just wanted to emphasize the mysticism around katanas.

It doesn't have to be either/or, I think both are plausible.

Heh, flavour

(I like Fedora, but it obviously doesnt taste as good)

...and then you finished reading the sentence, right? Just in case it adds more nuance or context, or makes an argument you didn't consider, right? You engaged their comment in good faith and gave them the chance to make their case before deciding whether you actually disagree with them, right?

There’s plenty of one handed lightsaber usage.

The only one that I'm aware of that uses them exclusively one-handed is Dooku, and he's a bit of a special case. Otherwise, the cases I'm aware of switch between one- and two-handed strikes, which means they'd want their offhand free.

Ashoka famously dual wields.

Hence my point: Space Wizards can do that, but that still means there's no offhand free for a blaster.

I think it more like how some samurai considered firearms dishonorable.

Samurai did use bows and other weapons beside their sword, so it's not that they strictly adhere to one weapon like the Jedi seem to, but yes, Obi-Wan does describe it as "uncivilised", so that is an element as well.

Since you brought up the analogy, I'll point out that the Samurai diminished in power and importance as firearms spread, coming to a head with the Satsuma Rebellion that ended with their whole class being disbanded. To a degree, the Jedi being shot down by the newly formed professional army at the behest of the Emperor very much mirrors... well, the Japanese Imperial Army shooting down the Samurai that opposed the reforms (except the Jedi weren't even given the chance to oppose and rebel, which probably would have gone quite differently).