Hundreds of years of burning coal has spread mercury compounds all over the land, so that quite often when they build a new dam for hydroelectric power it’s dissolved into the water and ends up concentrated in fishes that people eat.
having to be careful about how much fish you eat due to mercury is one of the top dystopian things to me. People think about agriculture and grains with civilization but when you look at how important and common fish was to our diet for so long. Its crazy.
And they feed fish products to cows and chickens. The mercury should be there, too.
I dunno man, sounds fucking woke to me
its all big alchemy immortals trying to keep mercury’s benefits under wraps
I KNEW Qin Shi Huang was still around, fucking us from the past!
also its organic mecury, which is more toxic than the metallic form.
Man, humans have fundamentally and irreversibly fucked up this planet. We burn coal, so we have that problem you mentioned. I learned recently how chemical companies have done decades of a poor job just dumping chemical waste wherever they want or developing things that does more harm than good at the planet’s expense.
Enjoy it while it’s here I guess.
There’s no way to make a backdoor for encryption that keeps the encryption secure. Politicians and government flunkies can’t seem to wrap their pea brains around that concept.
The “magical formula” for stairs.
If this rule isn’t followed when building stairs, then it feels uncomfortable and more accidents will actually happen there.
In easy terms, it says: 2x riser + tread = average step lenght, usually 63cm.
Oh man I hate it when stairs are not built to the proper ratio. It feels so weird.
I’m curious how this compares to eras before this formula was normalized and if this is universal or more so just a matter of keeping things the same so people get used to them.
Visit any old city in the UK (York and Edinburgh for example) and a lot of passages between streets have steps with uneven heights.
When you’re expecting it, its fine, you take extra care. But when its a modern building and they’ve fucked it up you really notice
[it’s] a modern building and they’ve fucked it up you really notice
How about the stairs leading up from a subway stop?
I know of a few cases in religious buildings where stairs were designed to have a mystical effect. In Angkor Wat, for example, the stairs have a steep and tall tread pattern. Commoners weren’t used to them so they’d be exhausted, but the local monks were used to them so they could ascend and descend with ease.
My house is over 100 years old and all the damn stairs are different.
Same here. My stairs seemed to be an afterthought meant to squeeze in where it shouldn’t, built by someone who shouldn’t even been allowed to hold a hammer. I have size 13 feet, they hang several inches over the step when I use them. I’ve went down those stairs faster than intended a few times now. The basement stairs were even worse, but they’ve been replaced now.
This is all so relatable lol… Oh well, have a spooky house with lots of quirks, so can’t really complain.
Ya old houses can be… interesting to say the least lol! The last person that owned this place died on the living room floor about 4 feet where I’m sitting right now. Bonus is I got new flooring out of the deal.
I’m actually slightly surprised it wasn’t the stairs that finished him off.
I mean, did the seller specifically tell you it wasn’t caused by the stairs? They might have just managed to drag themself to the living room before expiring!
Lol well the official cause I believe was a heart attack, but you never know for sure…
What part of the world? The house I grew up in is 110 years old and all the steps are even. Central Europe.
New England. When I was looking at houses I went in a few of these as that’s basically a lot of the market here, and most of them had at least one set of stairs I found myself uncomfortable on. Mine aren’t too bad, just narrow and short, but I’m short so it doesn’t bother me really. The attic is the weird one because it’s this set of spiral wooden stairs that leads into a really nice, large, fully finished attic. It could absolutely be another useful space…except…the stairs start out in a bedroom closet.
You have an effin secret lair and complain. Some people, I swear
Yeah. The novelty probably wears off, but from here that sounds neat.
Yup. Can confirm from Canada. To be fair, they usually got them close to right here.
I guess in China the number is smaller because the average people are smaller. Otherwise it is universal. It has been found out, not made up arbitrarily.
I come from a family of carpenters, building all kinds of stairs for most of my life, and I’ve never heard of this. This is why I love construction; learn something new all the time. Thanks!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol
I’m surprised we don’t have global internet outages more often.
DNS constantly has weird little issues and attacks, same with ARP. Meanwhile, BGP just keeps on chugging along in the background, ignored and unappreciated, day in and day out.
Also, the route back to the source host doesn’t have to be same as the route out.
Despite the many issues that it can cause, that is an important feature of BGP. Since network connections can be asymmetrical, and outbound and inbound connections can have different requirements, the best (or most adequate) route from A to B might not be the best route from B to A.
An example from my field of expertise: Mixing different kinds of metals in wet environments causes the less noble one to corrode.
The phrase “sacrificial anode” comes to mind
That reminds me, I need to get a new one for my hot water tank. I’ve lived here 6 years, you’re supposed to change them around 5.
It can be the difference between a water heater lasting 7 years and lasting 30.
Wait, that’s a thing?
If it is, then my 10 yr old hot water heater isn’t happy.
Yup, they stop your tank from rusting out. If you replace them regularly your tank will last virtually forever. If you don’t, you’ll be replacing the water tank before too long. A sacrificial anode costs around $50 bucks or so, a tank costs a lot more.
Here’s a video showing you how to do it. It’s not very hard at all. https://www.thisoldhouse.com/heating-cooling-2/how-to-replace-an-anode-rod-on-a-water-heater
Well shit.
Yeah. The worst part is that a lot of engineers and technicians don’t fully understand galvanic corrosion when specifying how to attach two different metals together.
The longevity of concrete isn’t just tied to the cylinder break strength.
Also, concrete with certain aggregates end up creating silica gel, which is bad for concrete.
This is indeed a concrete technical fact!
Well, played, my friend, well played.
Got to make sure I’m providing what OP wants.
Which aggregates?
What are some other tests you can use to decide which concrete is best for you?
Aggregates with a lot of unstable silica like strained quartz can cause the creation of silica gel when exposed to cement. The aggregate supplier should be the one running tests to prove they don’t have reactive silica.
Other tests include air entrainment and the slump test. The concrete mix requirements should be chosen by the engineer or architect.
Good to know, thank you!
In german and english, the comma in numbers is swapped. So the number 123.45 in german would be written as 123,45 while ironically, the thing that we used to separate thousands from hundreds is also swapped. So one-thousand-four-hundred would be written as 1,400 in english but as 1.400 in german …
On top of that, you would pronounce 678 as six-hundred-seven-ty-eight in english … guess what it is in german:
Sechs-hundert-acht-und-sieb-zig (literally six-hundred-eight-and-seven-ty)
i’m actually trying to change this point specifically because it irks me … but i am sadly alone with it.
But French has a number problem four twenty ten nine times worse.
This is soo nineties!
There are many European mechanisms that make more sense to me, like aluminum being “alumINIUM”, as with many other elements.
But periods in the middle of numbers always felt wrong to me. We already have structures for sentences that pause, then eventually close a thought: “Billy played with Susie, and her dog. Cute!” Not “Billy played with Susie. and her dog, Cute!”
And even more fun is that some German speaking countries do it like the US. Like Switzerland for example…
By the way, it’s absolutely not just Germany that does it the other way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Conventions_worldwide
It’s 1’400 in german.
Ah yes, one foot four hundred inches. /s
oh interesting, this is the first time that i see this. but it kinda makes sense, thanks.
Unser Weg ist der richtige! 😜
Microwaves can cause water to become super heated and explosive upon touch.
This includes things that are mostly water, like uncracked raw eggs.
Even cracked raw eggs can be volatile if you don’t scramble them.
The asphalt pavement of roads must be 4 inches thick to last forever. 3 inches lasts 5 years, 2 inches lasts one year, 1 inch is crumbling before you finish. You constantly see crumbling roads in the third world because of corruption, they don’t put as much pavement down as they charge for.
Now that’s a concrete fact
An asphalt fact, rather. Asphalt facts have lower modulus, so they are more adaptable to the point of the conversation.
Concrete being called cement.
I don’t see how that creates any issues
The workers at the jobsite are going to have an issue when they’ve showed up to pour a slab and your cement order arrives.
It’s like expecting dough and receiving a bag of flour.
I understand this anology.
i’m not sure why that is weird … aren’t they the same thing?
Cement is only the binding agent that makes it harden. Concrete is made from sand/gravel, water and cement (+ additives).
You need to test your restore procedure all the way through & periodically to have confidence in your backups
Mitigating actions are celebrated, while preventative measures are ignored, or even mocked as unnecessary.
The borders between countries in the Middle East including India/Pakistan were deliberately drawn to cause conflict. Of course when that conflict started to come back home everyone was shocked pikachu faced about it. I really don’t understand why people of those countries don’t just throw away the map and sort it out amongst themselves like adults, but I guess expecting world leaders of a majority of countries to act like adults is a bit much to ask most of the time.
kashmere, and northern india/bordering china. one wants the whole terrority the other wants the same, a pretense to expand later on.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect.
