I loved my old iPhone SE and miss its bezel and the physical home button. I mostly use my phone on a bike mount, and the bezel provided an ample surface to secure it properly. The physical button was easier to reach, and the swipe from the edge that replaces it is not always possible when the edges are blocked/obscured by the mount. Also, I find physical buttons to be more reliable than touch screens at winter temperatures or in the rain. More buttons would be awesome, but that will never happen.

I suppose it depends on the language? For the most part I think you’re right. Exceptions are only used (if at all) in situations where a program diverges unexpectedly from its normal flow. But take a language like Python. They’re just everywhere. Even your plain old for loop ends on an exception, and that’s just business as usual.

I’ve had this notion that pickling is what you get when fermentation fails? This is not based on any background in chemistry, but rather my experience in trying a friend’s homemade wine and noticing its vinegar undertones. Keep trying, man, you’ll get there!

Yeah, I usually buy cheap drug store readers and break them regularly. Even the ones with spring hinges can’t seem to cope with my head size. I should probably go get proper fitted glasses, but I also misplace them all the time and would worry about spending the big bucks on something I’d lose in a week.

Indeed, I do look for the tall sizes when I’m buying dress shirts. I generally have no problem there. It’s more with casual wear where there is not enough choice.

I’m 6’2" and have a fairly long torso compared to leg length. So I’m ok on pants but shirts can be a problem. I have noticed that with T-shirts, the difference between XL and XXL is all in the width and not length. This is not helpful.

I have a big head and have trouble with hats. Particularly ball caps. They are supposed to be one-size-fits-all, but apparently, I am an exception to this. Even at the widest possible setting, they are too tight.

I tried one of those surveys before the last election, and it concluded that I was most closely aligned with the Green Party. Alas, they don’t have a chance in Hell where I am. They are so far off the radar I wasn’t even aware they were fielding a candidate in my district. But it does make me wonder though. If such surveys actually informed how people vote, would the balance of power shift? I think it would help if our voting system (I’m in Canada) changed to something other than first-past-the-post?

Oh wow thank you so much!

I got super busy today and only just got back on now to see the idea seems to have some traction. I will try to post/comment there to get ball rolling.

I was thinking actually, you could have posts that, like I suggested, describe a strange situation and invite people to speculate on how it came about. But you could also give some sort of narrative that describes the circumstances instead and leads up to a point where you go “…and you’ll never guess what happened next!” or something to that effect.

I had a mini sitting there for about a year before someone pointed out it was upside down on my desk. I thought the side that says “Mac mini” was supposed to be facing up? But no, apparently it’s the Apple logo side. With the power button on the model name side, I think that could fuel a nice, juicy OCD argument with my coworker?

Yeah, I was never a fan of the Whopper for that reason, but the IW is pretty good!

Yeah I always get that bun! If you go often, I strongly recommend the app. It remembers previous orders and what sort of toppings you like on your burger. It takes around 10 minutes to prepare it, so if you order before you head out, it will usually be ready by the time you get there. Also, you can get Scene points towards your next movie.

I like the Harvey’s veggie burger. It’s kind of old school, predating all the new plant-based ones, but it hits the spot for me and often goes on sale in the app.

I wish we had an Odd Burger where I live. My daughter and her vegan boyfriend are always saying great things about it.

I’ve been playing around with the disabled GIL build and though I use threads fairly extensively in my projects, it’s been smooth sailing so far. I feel like my GUI scripts might be a bit more responsive now? (I tend to farm out user events to dedicated threads, so this is entirely possible.)

But overall, everything is stable and awesome! I’m so excited! This has been a long time coming for Python.

Yeah it’s kind of an arm’s race with people feeling they need to be the biggest thing on the road to feel safe. I’ve driven a few larger vehicles as airport rentals when they had nothing else in stock, and I’ve noticed they also tend to have a lot more blind spots than what I’m used to.

I remember when I was taking lessons, my instructor said I should think of the airbag as being a spring-loaded spike that will impale you if you screw up. I guess he was trying to impress on me that it’s not good to feel safe and smug when you’re driving? And actually, I’ve read since that air bags can be pretty violent when they go off, so he may not have been as far from the truth as I thought?

Totally agree. Some people seem to think it shows moral fortitude to stick to your guns and never admit fault, but these are really the weak-willed people in society.

Another lesson of adulthood it has taken me an embarrassingly long time to learn is that when you are enjoying something and see someone—particularly a younger person—looking interested, bring them in on it. If it’s something you bought for yourself, let them have a go. This may entail a small amount of sacrifice if you let them borrow it for a time, but the joy it brings will make it worth it, and the world needs more of that today. I think about people who have done this for me in the past, and I have mad respect for all of them.

Holy shit that was one intense week! I really feel for you. Glad you got it looked at in time and hope for calm seas ahead.

Take it easy for about half an hour or so after eating and then do some kind of physical activity. I learned that this has the best effect for lowering blood sugar in battling type 2 diabetes, but I think it’s generally good advice for anyone? It doesn’t have to be a heavy workout or anything. Even just getting up on your feet and walking around a bit makes a difference.

I wish there were more regulation on the size of private vehicles, particularly in North America. It’s pretty clear at this point that what is contributing to higher pedestrian/cyclist fatalities despite better urban infrastructure is the increasing curb weight and ground clearance of automobiles. We can hope that collision-avoidance tech in newer models may reduce human-error type accidents, but at the end of the day, kinetic energy is a bitch.

I wonder how the EV transition will affect things? On the one hand, an EV would weigh more than an ICE of the same class since batteries are heavy. On the other hand, batteries are also the most expensive component by far and you need more in a larger vehicle, so from a dealer’s perspective, the margins may not necessarily grow the bigger you go like with an ICE. The sweet spot might actually be something smaller. (In fact, for me, it’s actually ebikes.)

This is sadly par for the course in green tech articles. Journalists who flunked high school sciences should not be reporting on this stuff, or at least consult with someone who has even a passing knowledge of physics.

Now regarding actual storage amounts, I have noticed utilities seem to target around 4 hours of capacity at full discharge. That seems to be the sweet spot for lithium ion at least. So by that measure, 1 GW would translate to 4 GWh…ish.

These battery farms are more about dealing with spikes in power demand than bulk energy storage. This is still a valuable role in that they can replace peaker plants which are often low-efficiency diesel monstrosities, but we still need something else for the latter application. Mechanical storage schemes like pumped hydro come up a lot in that discussion, though it’s possible something like flow batteries might be a better fit for this than lithium ion if you want to go the battery route?

I’m not an expert on any of this though, so feel free to correct me.