It’s because we allow property and the homes that sit on it to be a speculative market. We encourage it. The only way for property values to be high, well, it’s a supply and demand thing. If you glut the market with anything, you drive prices down. And people whose entire retirement is built on that won’t be having it, let alone the conglomerate owners…

China is trying to steer into the opposite with laws against it. Not sure how well that’s working, but they can acknowledge the issue at least.

My elderly neighbor doesn’t exactly follow rules. She had a colonoscopy earlier this year. They sent her home because she “wasn’t clean.” She had to repeat the process later, and I can’t imagine she was a Sunny Country Road, but they at least completed the exam that time. I am still mortified for her, my first colonoscopy was last year, I spent a full day on the toilet prepping. Nearly slept in the bathtub.

I have yet to find a way to explain to my dog that he must not veer off the sidewalk lest his paws get burnt.

I love the assumption there though

Ugh we have people doing that in our neighborhood and it’s godawful. I think they think they’re “xeriscaping” but this is Arkansas and the incredibly hot sun makes those rocks too hot to touch or stand on (for my doggo), kills the plants that are planted near it, etc. But they aren’t going to admit their mistake and undo it.

The fucking parenthetical x86 absolutely kills me. I don’t normally wish dick cancer on people,

We know they follow a fractal pattern.

As do dinosaurs, which ate the big trees, and (in chicken nugget form) eat the small broccoli trees too

Nature is beautiful.

The periodic table is predictive. From a few elements, the rest could be projected and expected, like the Higgs-Boson. The table makes no predictions for things we cannot measure and are in fact theoretical, like dark matter which lacks any empirical evidence. Would be awesome if it did because then it wouldn’t be theoretical anymore.

They’ve gone back and forth. I think if you large-picture it, it’s pretty OK, something like 15% of bird and bat diets come from mosquitos. But at the micro level, some species may not cope. I am very fond of bats so I am ambivalent about this.