We were taught a similar trick in physics - point your right-hand thumb in the direction that current (or electrons, same same) is travelling and the curling of your fingers shows the direction of the resultant magnetic field that the current creates.

I had a little chuckle-up myself

Such an interesting perspective, thanks for your contribution! I guess our ‘shopping centres’ are essentially the first condition you’ve described that also have grocery stores attached, and it’s likely the grocery store (in Australia this basically means one of 3-4 companies) that are keeping these structures going in the modern age. Our shopping centres tend to be built ‘up’ rather than ‘out’, with 3-5 storey shopping centres (with up to 7 storey parking lots) being fairly common within city limits that are closely accessible to more than 50% of the population.

That being said though, I live fairly equidistant between two of the largest shopping centres in Sydney and still choose to go to my local, smaller, single-storey shopping centre which is very small by Australian standards (<40 stores) which feels much more like a ‘mall’.

Do you guys have a lot of standalone grocery stores that you can drive right up to, park, shop and leave? Because that’s definitely the minority here!

That’s really interesting! In the Australian content, we would only ever call a strip of shops a ‘mall’ if they weren’t connected by some interior structure. In fact, our ‘malls’ are almost all outdoor connections of shops. So interesting how our vocabularies vary!

Out of curiosity; where are your grocery stores, pharmacies and post offices? Because here in Australia, most of them are in shopping centres (Aussie for ‘mall’). The vast majority of us go to do our weekly shop, grab medication, send back returns from our online shopping etc. so they’re still very much alive and well.

Speaking from an outside perspective; malls (what we call shopping centres) in Australia didn’t die anywhere near what has happened in the US. We have a very different geographic landscape (hyper-concentration of population in city centres) and definitely don’t have the same level of penetration that companies like Amazon do, but we have shared a lot of the same economic headwinds that the US has. From my armchair perspective, this would generally suggest that it’s less to do with economic position and more to do with idiosyncrasies of the US, but I have absolutely no data to back that up.

And it’s also only banned on work devices. There’s no ban on government employees having TikTok on their personal phones, although I personally don’t.

I think he’d feel this similarly devalues it.

I respect Watterson too much to assume his stance.

Well… which is it? Do you respect him too much to assume his stance or are you assuming he’d feel this similarly devalues it?

Forgive my uneducated arse but is this a problem that cold fusion could solve? Like, could we theoretically create stable isotopes to use in significant enough quantities by fusing atomic nuclei and chucking in or subtracting some electrons from the mix?

Holy shit, is this why lowly assistants are colloquially called gophers?!? I never drew the connection. Sometime we just take weird words or phrases for granted without thinking about their etymology.

I like your idea of using 3 as an approximation to get ballpark figures - if you wanted to add a smidge of extra accuracy to that you can just remember that in doing so, you’re taking away roughly 5% of pi.

0.14159265 / 3 ≈ 0.04719755

Add in around 5% at the end and your approximation’s accuracy tends to gain an order of magnitude. For your pizza example:

108 in^2 x 1.05 = 113.4 in^2 which is accurate to three significant figures and fairly easy to calculate in your head if you can divide by twenty.

You could even fudge it a little and go “108 is pretty close to 100. 5% of 100 is obviously 5, so the answer is probably around 108+5=113”

Yeah it’s totally worth it though. They’re extremely diligent by industry standards when it comes to ethical sourcing of cocoa.

The blocks are a bit weird, the segments are an odd geometric tessellation where no two pieces are identical. Great chocolate though.

No one is going to crash the economy so you can buy a house I’m sorry.

I think you might have missed where I said this:

I say this as someone who is lucky enough to be able to have a mortgage: it’s inherently unfair that my fellow citizens have to miss out on that opportunity.

What you say also seems extremely unlikely to me, given that humans who have sufficiently advanced to the state we live in now will be unwilling to accept subsistence lifestyle.

I didn’t predict anything; you’ll note I said that this is what I would hope happens.

I’m not talking about a market failure; I’m talking about trying to take away the whole concept of a ‘market’ applying to residential real estate altogether. Because it’s so intertwined with the value of our economies, taking it away will cause a significant, permanent shrinking of GDP and other economic measures, and I think that’s appropriate given the circumstances we’re in now.

It’s a big and bold move, and as I’ve said before none of us can be exactly sure how it would pan out, but nothing is gained in life if nothing is ventured. We need to try something. I say this as someone who is lucky enough to be able to have a mortgage: it’s inherently unfair that my fellow citizens have to miss out on that opportunity.

A policy this significant would cause a market crash so massive that it would entirely reshape the market. I don’t think any of us could genuinely guess how it will work out.

My hope is that it would cause a crash so significant that essentially all owned properties that are not lived in enter the market, causing homes to be sold for insanely low prices in order to avoid paying taxes, causing rates of home ownership to skyrocket. The government then needs to buy up anything leftover to rent as social and affordable housing to low-income people who can’t afford a mortgage at that time. Crashing house prices also mean that the value of these taxes drops in absolute terms as well.

Then we have a situation where everyone who has a stable income owns a home, and those who can’t will rent directly from the government at extremely affordable rates. Homes are the object we as humans own that we regularly lease to one another the most - particularly for profit or capital gain. It’s super weird and it needs to stop.

The main issue is that economists would shit their pants because so much GDP growth is locked up in our property markets. It would cause at least a recession, if not a depression, and depending on which country did it, the effects could ricochet throughout the global economy such as during the GFC.

It’s pretty simple, just have a new real estate investment tax that is only levelled on residential properties you own but do not reside in, and that tax needs to be set at a rate higher than the property market is expected to gain. E.g. (with made-up numbers) if the property market gains 5% value per year on average, set the tax rate at 10% of the value per year. There’s an insanely slim chance you can still make money on the investment, but 99+% of investors would dump their properties immediately, leading to a massive crash where average people could suddenly afford to buy the home they’ve been renting.

Some people play those mindgames not because they believe in them, but because they believe that’s how you’re supposed to act when dating. This is particularly common for younger people with less dating experience, and is often introduced/reinforced by media narratives. I think you’ll find that being direct while also very courteous and polite will have the best results as you may catch someone who is actually thankful not to have to go through the rigamarole of silly dating games.

Something along the lines of:

“Hey, so I think you’re really interesting and I’d love to grab a coffee/drink/meal with you sometime if you’re interested”.

If you face any resistance whatsoever, back down politely. Something like:

“No problems at all! Thanks for being direct with me, I really appreciate it. Let me know if you change your mind.”

You’ll put off people who want to be chased but trust me - they never tire of the chase and you definitely will before they do. I’ve been with someone before who needed to be chased and it’s exhausting. This method means you’re whittling down potential dates which may seem difficult at the time but you’ll thank yourself for it later.

Fingers crossed you meet someone you vibe with mate!

Ehh, that’s a self-selecting feature there mate. You don’t want to be with someone who communicates through inscrutable clues and then becomes upset if you don’t pick up on them or read them wrong. That’s a recipe for an emotional bad time.

High-heeled shoes were invented in Persia for cavalrymen and later used by sharpshooters. Men wear flowing cloth garments like skirts/dresses in many extant cultures. Men used to play all of the female roles in Western plays, in full clothing and makeup. Men have been removing and shaping body hair since the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. Even as recently as the 1970s men would wear cropped tops and short-shorts.

There are so many examples to deconstruct things that we view as feminine or masculine as being entirely arbitrary, culturally-locked and era specific. It’s all socially constructed, and therefore can be deconstructed - but only if you’re willing or able to engage in reflection.

Wait, do you go to the dentist literally just to get them to clean your teeth? As in they’re not checking for cavities or issues, they just brush and floss you and you’re on your way? That’s super weird.

I only go once a year for a checkup - they give me a clean as well, but that’s not the purpose of the visit. I’ve never met anyone who goes to the dentist just for a clean.