To me, it seems the right have been getting ever more extreme in the ugliest ways imaginable. The left, then, has to decide whether to become more inclusive of those who lean somewhat right but are feeling alienated at this point. Do they take in the refugees, or do they stick to their principles and leave a void in the middle? In short, it’s an identity crisis and people are taking sides.

As a Canadian, I look at US politics and see only a centrist and right party. In some ways, the Democratic Party is further right than our Conservative Party, though the latter would certainly want to change that if we let them. There are some Democrats who are uncompromisingly left like say Bernie Sanders, but they are in the minority.

Oh yeah! I still have one of those from the days when our son still lived with us and started crypto mining on my dime.

The nice thing about a foot is that it divides into 12 inches, which gives you many options for measuring portions of a foot compared to metric units. But the problem is not with the metric system. It is with our base 10 numerals.

It’s actually not that hard to count to 12 on your fingers. You can even do it on one hand by pointing your thumb at the sections (phalanges) of your fingers. If you bring your other hand into it, you can even reach 144!

Regarding the τ = 2π thing, I brought this up with my mathematician/classical Greek enthusiast brother. He said “Tau? Why tau? I would’ve gone with Ϡ (sampi). It’s not used for much anymore. Would be great to bring it back…”

Doesn’t ISO8601 prefer the comma over the decimal point for fractional seconds? I kind of remember being appalled about that some years back when I was looking into it.

Ooh, I sense the presence of another hill! The vernacular use of “kilo” as short for “kilogram” must stop?

I love that in the US media, you only ever hear about kilos in the context of drug seizures. Those evil drug lords poisoning the youth with bastardized metric jargon…

What is Ruby Chocolate? Everything You Need to Know

I’ve tried it a couple of times, but it’s a little hard to find.

Now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure I did hear an American say altimeter once? I suppose if you were consistent in reversing all the rules, it could be chalked up to a dialect variation? I’ll let it go in that case. :)

The kilometre—with the accent on the ki and the re ending—is a unit of distance. A kilometer—with the accent on the lo and the er ending—would be a device that measures kilos, like perhaps a bathroom scale? centimetre, millimetre, speedometer, altimeter.

I’m actually fairly forgiving about people saying it the wrong way, but when Siri gives me GPS directions, it really grinds my gears. She should know better!

Have you tried ruby chocolate yet? I’m guessing you won’t be impressed.

I’m a musician. I can’t afford top tier sound!

Tbh I can live with what I’ve got at home. A garden variety setup today still sounds better than something high-end did when I was growing up. Just give me some decent channel separation and I can zone out.

Where there is still significant room for improvement is in stage sound. Why do monitors always have to sound like sh*t? It’s like bands spend all their budget on amps and PAs and whatever dregs are left over go to the monitors. And house sound. Don’t even get me started. Maybe their gear was good once (probably not) but it’s invariably seen one beer spill too many.

I got to tour Bruce Nuclear. I still remember entering that building and feeling like I was on the Death Star with so much machinery stretching on and on.

Didn’t kbin have a separate mechanism for supporting a post in a more public way? I can’t remember how that worked now, but it was in addition to the regular voting I think?

Oh man I have that same problem in Apple Music! I make a playlist out of my set list and have it repeat all week until I have everything down, and then the algorithm picks from it for months after that.

I’m starting to think maybe I should use one streaming service for learning and another for enjoyment?

How can they do this? It’s a confirmed natural wonder in Civ6.

Ah thank you! I will have a look at those.

Are there any apps that support scaled? I’ve tried a few and no luck so far. I like the scaled view.

A good place to start might be to look at the huge number of ethnic dishes built around beans. People around the world have been inventive in this regard for centuries.

For the North American diet, it would help if fast food offered more bean options. There’s Taco Bell and the like, I guess. And hummus and falafel are working their way into places that sell wraps. But while burger joints are increasingly offering veggie burgers that are presumably using some kind of bean or pea-based protein, I wonder why they don’t try offering a chili? We have a chilli festival where I live and it’s hugely popular with around half the recipes being bean-based.

Interesting. The article suggests the car would photograph others speeding rather than reporting itself.

Personally, I don’t mind speeders so much except when they’re weaving between traffic recklessly. I do really hate tailgaters though. So a rear-facing camera maybe?

He should embrace his orange and wear an orange jumpsuit. I know where he can get one of those for free…

During the height of the pandemic, my band went on the weirdest tour ever where we played an empty concert hall with the music streamed to various screens around the city.

At one point between sets, I noticed a solitary woman in the back hammering feverishly on a laptop, so I wandered over.

“Oh hi, I’m the entertainment co-ordinator. Right now, I’m removing posts from the website where people are still trying to scalp tickets to your show.” I reminded her that it was a free concert by an obscure out-of-town bar band with no public admittance to the actual venue, and she just rolled her eyes.

“Honestly, you’re the first people to play this hall in 6 months and it’s generated a lot of buzz. You should be flattered.” I was!