adespoton

joined 2 years ago
[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 24 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It’s highly likely that people weren’t the target at all; they likely obliterated the infrastructure.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Ah; I hadn’t realized it was in Alberta. That makes a BIT more sense then. Explains the independence petition too.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 days ago

Then you lucked out.

I used to buy all sorts of stuff at Canadian Tire in the 90s, and while it was affordable, it almost all broke within 2 years, from CCM bicycles that had their frame welds crack to Hunter kitchen appliances that had power supplies that overheated and failed, to even bouncy balls that would harden and crack. Air pumps where the plastic would crack or the pump rod (which was held in by glue) would disconnect, foldable chairs where the stitching would unravel, knives where the blade would snap.

The list goes on and on. Never had that volume of problems with any other store I’ve ever shopped at.

Also, I had relatives that worked in CT in the 90s. They’ve got even worse stories to tell.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 6 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I have a story from the one time I took my car there… when I got the car back it had a funny smell in it, and the checklist said that the horn was non-functional. This car had the horn on the end of the signal stick instead of on the steering wheel. I immediately tapped the horn to verify that it was indeed working, and one of the mechanics flinched and got this funny look on his face.

It wasn’t until I got home that I realized what the funny smell was: it was silicone glue. They’d hammered on the steering wheel cap hard enough to break the clips off, and then glued it back on, without mentioning what they’d done.

This was in the early 90s, and I’ve never been back.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Have you reached out to https://kinbrace.ca/ ? This is what they do, although they focus specifically on refugee claimants.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

It’s interesting that today, the Big Island has a full time population of just over 200,000. That means it has been almost stable since recovery from disease.

Of course, the ancestors couldn’t have predicted the onslaught of tourists….

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Like Trump, Musk revealed his personality early on. In the 1990s when Trump was losing his father’s money in casinos, Musk was making his money by using his father’s money to buy profitable dotcom startups and claiming them as his own. Then he sold them before the market crashed.

SpaceX has been kind of a blip in all this; all his other companies are very much run in the traditional Musk style though, with him taking credit where luck and other people’s hard work are responsible.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago

“Predatory” and “Pseudoscientific” aren’t the same thing. Elsevier journals for example are long-established and highly scientific, but also highly predatory. Arxiv only does pre-prints, but isn’t predatory at all.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

This is the phrase I use to place people:

“The barbed wire crosses the creek to keep the wolf out.”

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Michigan, I think. And it’s also present in eastern Ontario and southern Manitoba.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago

“A-boot” is an Eastern Canada thing; west-coast is “ah-bah-Wt” and is common from BC right down into Oregon.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago

He had a valid point though; hair would not cause rapid deceleration. The bigger question is whether it affects your terminal velocity enough that you would survive the fall.

But even that has too many assumptions. People have survived falls from airplanes flying at 30,000 feet. Was it because of their hair? The displacement of their body and clothing? The surface they landed on?

Probably all of the above plus other uncalculated factors. But I doubt that hair drag played a big part; after all, there’s a reason we deploy 70lbs of horizontal airtight fabric instead of 70lbs of thread when skydiving.

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