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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Beer and bread share a common ancestor: gruel. Put grain in water to soften. Works better if you also heat the mixture. Now you have a carb-rich slurry or paste in which bacteria have been killed off, suitable for staying alive.

    Don’t eat it all right away. Let it sit around for a bit, and wild yeasts will grow in it first, before bacteria start colonizing it.

    Pour off the liquid: that’s a primitive beer. Let the remaining mash dry out a bit; that’s a primitive bread.

    Actual beer and actual bread are just evolutions along the same lines.


  • The point is that, because it’s a flat rate, you end up paying more the more money you have.

    The rich dont spend much of their money on consumer goods. They spend most of their money on investments, financial services, etc.

    So when you and I spend nearly 100% of our money on consumer goods, we are paying 25% of our income in taxes. But the richest among us, whose consumer spending amounts to 10% (or less) of their earnings, pays just 2.5% of their income on taxes.

    Flat rate taxes on consumer spending are wildly regressive.













  • There is no evidence that they didn’t receive alerts. Frankly, it’s rather ludicrous to assume nobody bothered to look at the weather.

    I’ve seen some of the videos of the rising waters, showing locals out setting up blockades to stop drivers from entering flooded roadways, just as they do in every flood. Those locals knew the floods were coming. They’ve seen dozens, perhaps hundreds of floods before, and they responded to this flood just like they have always responded to floods.

    The videos also showed those locals quickly moving their barriers to higher and higher ground: far higher than where they normally need to erect those barricades.

    What most likely happened here is that the camp did receive their warnings and they took their usual flash-flood precautions. But, the actual flooding greatly exceeded the degree of flooding they usually see in severe storms, so their precautions were inadequate.


  • Oh, this one went somewhere, just not anywhere you wanted it to go.

    You can say “billionaires harm society, literally”. That’s a literal statement that is true.

    You can say “billionaires benefit society, literally”. Thats a literal statement that is untrue.

    You can say “billionaires are human, literally”, so long as you are talking about individuals, and not corporate entities.

    You can say “billionaires are steaming piles of shit, figuratively”. They are not literally turds emitting water vapor. That metaphor is quite apt, but not literally true.

    Likewise, they are not masses of mutated cells. That metaphor is also apt, bit is not literally true.

    You can say “teratomas are cancer, literally”. You can’t say “this argument is literal cancer”. It is figurative cancer, not literal.



  • So, billionaires are not “literally” cancer, but “billionaires are literally cancer” is supposedly a correct use of “literally”?

    That is my point. Literally can be used correctly in a statement that is not correct,

    This is generally true, but in this particular sentence, the reason the sentence is false is specifically because of the meaning of “literally”.

    “The sky is literally purple” is a correct use of “literally” in a false statement. This is what you are trying to argue.

    “Billionaires are a cancer” is a correct, figurative statement.

    “Billionaires are literally cancer” is false specifically because “literally” does not mean “figuratively”.



  • Watts are a unit of power. Regardless of voltage, if your appliance is drawing 3000 watts, it is heating up the same as any other device that draws 3000 watts.

    Wires are not sized on the number of watts they can carry. They are sized on the number of amps they carry. If a wire is sized for 10amps, and you are using 12v, you can only get 120 watts through it. Increase the voltage to 120v, and you can get 1200 watts through that same wire. Increase to 240v, and you can get 2400 watts from that wire. The higher the voltage, the less copper you need to carry it. You need thicker insulation to handle that increased voltage, but insulation is cheap. It’s more dangerous to humans who come into contact with the wires, but you can build in additional methods to restrict human contact, such as fancy plugs and sockets.

    The UK and Europe had a severe copper shortage when they rebuilt after WWII. They standardized on 240V to reduce the size of wires they needed in their homes. Instead of dozens of, low-amp circuits, they installed only a couple high-amp circuits for their entire home. They designed their household wiring so that the same circuit that powers the alarm clock on their nightstand is also used for their 3000-watt space heater.

    They further reduced copper consumption by using undersized wire in a “ring” circuit instead of properly sized wire in a “branch” circuit. Failures in ring circuits are extraordinarily dangerous, because there is no immediate indication that they have failed. Each outlet receives power from two sides of the ring; if one side fails, they draw all their power from the other side, overloading the ring.

    The US solution to these problems is intrinsically safer household wiring. We threw copper at the problem, because we had the copper to throw. But what we got in return was a vastly safer system. We managed to get a 240v system that only carries the risks of a 120v system.