This is also why trees are so fucking crazy to think about. It is impossible to pump water up a hose more than ~32 feet. Like it’s literally physically impossible to stick a pump at the top of a tall building and suck water straight up a pipe. You need a complicated series of pumps and one-way valves to pump it up in stages. Because you’re not really “sucking” the water up the pipe. You’re just lowering the pressure in the pipe, and atmospheric pressure pushes the water upwards to fill the low pressure. After 32 feet tall, the top of the hose/pipe will be a perfect vacuum, atmospheric pressure won’t be able to push liquid water upwards any farther, and the water will just begin cold-boiling in the top of the pipe as the liquid water turns into gas (steam) to fill the vacuum.

But tall trees can move water all the way to their leaves by using only passive capillary action, and suction created by water evaporating out of their leaves. The capillary action is created by tiny straw-like fibers that run all the way up the tree and are bunched together really tightly. Due to surface tension, water is able to “climb” the capillaries as the surface tension fills as much surface area as possible. Then at the top of the tree, as the water evaporates out of the leaves, it draws up fresh water to fill the void.

But that means the bottom of the tree should need to support the pressure of all of the water above it. But it doesn’t, because the surface tension holds the water stable inside of the trunk.

The electric field one is also interesting, because the cable length doesn’t actually determine how long it takes to turn on. All that matters is the distance between the power source and the device. Electricity travels at the speed of light, which means we can measure how long it should take to travel down the wire.

But let’s say you have a 1 light year long power cable, made out of a perfect conductor (so we don’t need to worry about power loss from things like wire resistance or heat). Then you set the power source right next to the device and turn it on. The logical person may say that the device would take a full year to turn on, because the cable is one light year long. Others may say that it will take two light years to turn on; Long enough for the electricity to make a full circuit down the cable and back to the power source again.

But instead, the device turns on (nearly) instantly. Because the wire isn’t actually what causes the device to turn on. The device turns on because of an EM field between itself and the power source. The wire is simply facilitating the creation of that field. The only thing that matters is the distance between the source of power and the device. That distance, divided by the speed of light, is how long the device will take to turn on. If the device was a full light year away from the power source, it would take a full year to turn on. But since the device is sitting right next to the power source, it turns on right away.

If you’re paying a school $20k per semester, they can afford to eat the cost on some paper and toner.

and our store manager threatened him and kicked him out.

As difficult as it may be in the heat of the moment, the best thing to do in this circumstance is to initially act like nothing is wrong, and then quietly alert the authorities ASAP. If you just kick them out, they’ll find someone else to do the work, but they’ll be more careful with that next person. You don’t want to scare them into the wind, because then investigators will have a much harder time.

Not weird, but funny and unexpected.

I work in live entertainment. I deal with all kinds of shows, but the vast majority of them involve clients making/sourcing content to use in their shows. For instance, something as simple as a PowerPoint presentation on a projector, or music tracks for a dance show. So I use a lot of computers that don’t belong to me.

The funniest interaction I’ve ever had involved a speaker for a Black History Month presentation. The speaker brought his laptop in, with his slides all ready to go. So we plug it into the projector and he opens it up. As soon as he logs in, we’re both greeted to some hardcore porn playing in full screen. This lady was handling a whole 12 inches like a champ.

Luckily I had the projector blacked out, so it wasn’t catastrophic. It was only the two of us who saw it. What made it so funny was the fact that the dude wasn’t even ashamed of it. He took a beat, admired what was on the screen, gave a quiet “uh huh”, nodded solemnly, and then slowly moved his mouse cursor to close the browser tab. If he had acted flustered, it would have been a funny interaction. But the fact that he wasn’t in any rush to turn it off (despite the fact that I was sitting right next to him, waiting for him to boot up that presentation,) just had me fucking rolling.

Loops is basically impossible to join though. The email verification takes literal hours, if the email arrives at all.

Or at least release the server code when you shut the game down, so anyone can spin up a server of their own. Community servers are fine, but you should always be able to host your own for friends to play on.

And that’s why I mentioned random drug tests. You don’t always get the luxury of knowing you’ll be tested days in advance. And yes, it’s easy to say “just don’t do drugs while on probation” but the sad reality is that drugs are surprisingly easy to get in prison. It’s common for many people to become addicted while incarcerated, (because it’s one of the few respites they get while incarcerated prison) and then they piss hot after being let out on probation, and get thrown right back in again. It’s a cycle that the system has intentionally set up, to ensure prisons are perpetually full.

You’d think so, wouldn’t you? It should be common sense that if you’re interviewing for a job, you should probably not be doing drugs in case they test.

But also, random drug tests are a thing in some jobs.

I can almost guarantee someone was trying to pass a drug test. Fake piss became easy to buy, and even include things like under-belt harnesses and fake penises. So even if someone is in the room watching you take the test, it still looks legit. So modern drug tests will also check to see if the urine is at (or at least very near) body temperature.

And this presents a problem with fake piss kits, because the surface of your skin doesn’t typically stay at body temperature; It’s usually anywhere from 90-95° instead of 98. Which means that even if you wear the belt pack all day, your body heat won’t be enough to warm the fake piss up enough.

So some people will resort to microwaving it just before they walk in. Get it to like 103° at the gas station across the street, (warm, but not enough to burn you when you wear it) so that by the time you walk across the street to take your drug test, it has cooled down to body temperature.

Yup, I work with 4/0 (0000) cable pretty regularly, for things like generators or powering large systems. We have a few trunks full of cable, and it takes a crew of 2 or 3 to actually lay it because it’s so heavy. Usually one person pushing the trunk along, one focuses on uncoiling it from the trunk, and one focuses on actually laying the cable. We use five conductors at a time (one neutral, three 120v hots leads, and a ground,) so it’s a big bundle. Each cable weighs a little over a pound per foot, and there are five bundled together. So a 150’ coil can easily weigh 750-800 pounds.

It’s a reference to Asuka (the character on the GPU), and a very creepy scene near the end of the series. The main character jerks it over Asuka’s unconscious body, and we see his hand covered in white fluid (just like the thermal paste is covering the hand in this pic) afterwards.

It’s a symbolic scene that is meant to turn the audience against the main character. Basically, he starts his journey with a very similar shot of his hand covered in blood. And the scene of him jerking it over an unconscious girl’s body is basically the end of his journey as a “good” guy. Evangelion is a very psychological show; The series is meant to turn a bunch of tropes on their heads, and it actively works against the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” trope. It accepts that what doesn’t kill you probably leaves you traumatized. So by the end of the series, all of the characters who started out as heroes have ended up broken and hurting, and are basically treated like Vietnam veterans.

I mean… It’s not wrong. The main character is a fucking creep.

If they’re a repair tech, they have thermal paste in bulk. That was maybe $3 worth of paste. Probably much less.

I’m partial to GNOME for aesthetics and ease of use.

At that point just get a Mac. Gnome has the same “we know better than you do. If you want to do something outside of our extremely specific use cases, you’re using it wrong and should figure something else out” mentality that Apple does.

Worth noting that the wiimote just uses Bluetooth, so it doesn’t take any specialized equipment to connect to your computer. And Dolphin has built in support for it. The sensor bar was also just a pair of infrared LEDs; All of the actual “sensing” happened at the wiimote directly. So you can just throw a wireless sensor bar (like $15 on amazon) underneath your computer monitor, and it will work fine.

The profiles can be nice for setting most things, but having it default all of your games to Fullscreen instead of Borderless Windowed (and no way to change what the default setting is anywhere in the program) should be fucking criminalized.

To expand on this: You can migrate accounts fairly easily. You can export your subscribed communities, and import them into your new account. So the only real thing you’re losing is your post history, but even that is seen as a bonus by many users who are looking to burn their old account.

Okami. Every time I finished an area, I thought I was nearing the end of the game. And every time, I was presented with a new, even larger area.

Worth noting that the masks in the cabin aren’t designed to keep you awake. They’re just designed to keep you alive. They’re basically just hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst, which mixes when you pull the mask down. The resulting chemical reaction produces a small amount of oxygen for a short time. This is also why the instructions say to put your own mask on before helping any children; You only have 15-30 seconds of usable consciousness before you pass out, so you need the mask to stay awake long enough to help anyone else. The pilots are the only ones who actually have masks good enough to stay awake, and that’s why they immediately dive to a breathable altitude.

Also, the entire cabin would immediately fog from the sudden pressure and temperature change. We’re talking “can’t even see your fingertips when your arm is outstretched” levels of fog.

And while we’re talking about it, the cabin would suddenly be cold. Like absolutely fucking freezing.

Lastly, your ears will painfully pop, and will likely ring for a while afterwards. The sudden pressure change will feel like you got slapped on the ears.