I’m going to disagree with everyone here. Loads of people throughout history have learned to swim by literally being thrown in. It’s not a good way to learn, but people do it. Even babies can do it.
Given a little bit of reading first, you’d do just fine. Yeah, the motions might be a little off cause it’s hard to learn a complex movement from a book, but it would be good enough.
You’re getting downvoted for saying something sorta close to true, but not exactly. I agree strongly with everything you said here, though.
Generally, with any complex human-machine interface, you want to cast as wide of a net for accommodation as possible because there are so many variables that come into play.
Like if you are putting together a basketball team, you probably want a bunch of tall dudes, but you never know how many Muggsy Bogues’s are out there unless you let everyone play.
For a fighter pilot, would you rather have a female with greater ability to distinguish color, or a male that can pull higher g’s? It’s impossible to say what specific traits would lead to the best outcome in all possible engagements.
Even things like colorblindness can be a positive in situations because camouflage can stick out to colorblind people. Some types of deafness comes with immunity to motion sickness.
That’s not true. With no controls, there is no significant difference in tolerance by sex. When controlled for height, females have lower tolerance than males. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3753357/
Basically an allied country having a base in your country means that any attacker would presumably also have to attack your ally, drawimg them into the conflict. Obviously agreements like NATO article 5 can do that, but people can back out of agreements. Physical presence is more binding than paper.
Southern baptists were pro-choice until the rise of the “moral majority” required southern baptists to fall in line with the catholic church on abortion to create the supply side Jesus we know today.
The last paragraph is a good catch. Someone from outside the US is not going to catch the difference between “a Wisconsin state senator” and “a senator from Wisconsin”.
It’s such an easy thing to predict happening, too. If you did it perfectly, it would, at best, maintain an unstable equilibrium and just keep the same output quality.
Total War: Empire. I’ve previously played Rome 1/2, Medieval 1/2, and Atilla. For anyone who’s played other total war games, there are a couple of game mechanics that are new in Empire.
There are actual naval battles, where you put ships into a battle line, and you can board enemy ships. It’s cool but hard (for me) to control. Also many of the buildings in a territory aren’t located in the capital because it’s meant to represent colonial holdings, so you can have a sugar plantation or something outside the protection of a city, and a lot of the warfare ends up being small skirmishes sacking outlying buildings.
The new campaign missions seem a lot longer than what I remembered of the original campaigns. I like that they tutorials now give you some strategy, too.
One of my friends had their water hookups backwards, too, and they had no clue until I checked after they complained to me about how all their clothes were shrinking despite only ever washing on cold and hang drying. Sounds like a nice feature to have a sensor in there.
I’ve definitely got a soft spot for any electromechanical appliances. Computers have gotten so cheap that every appliance built now runs on them, but it’s much harder (for me, at least) to do anything about it when one stops working.
My chest freezer stopped working, and i was able to put in a new relay for $2. The circuit diagram made it easy to diagnose with a multimeter. Oddly enough, i had to buy a 10 pack, so i likewise have a bunch of spares I’ll never need.
My dishwasher stopped working, and the manual specifically showed which wires to connect to to test resistance of each component to see if anything needed to be replaced. It turned out that the float was gunked up, so it read as having enough water even though it didn’t.
My fridge ice maker stopped working, and I just had to stick in a jumper wire to put it through a test cycle that immediately made it clear what was going wrong (a short), and i was able to fix it.
This is all in contrast to my clothes washer that runs on a computer, and it gives me an error message that basically just means “it’s not draining right”, and there’s like 8 potential causes, and I’ve tried to address them all, but it’s still get the error message.
All concussions are traumatic brain injuries, not all traumatic brain injuries are concussions.
I found this good review article based on a study commissioned by the Canadian government.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2023.2295338
It seems like potential IQ effects are still difficult to distinguish as a dose response, so they weren’t able to come up with a point of departure. It doesn’t help that in a lot of studies comparing “high” and “low” fluoridation effects on IQ, the “low” is still higher than the WHO recommended level of 1.5 mg/L, and the US recommended level of 0.75.
I think the optimal level is likely going to vary by municipality based on the quality of dental care and the use of fluoridated toothpaste (that everyone overuses), and consumption of high fluoride beverages like tea. I guess my main takeaway is that people need to read their local water quality report, and do what they will with that information
Do not obey in advance. The only way fascists succeed is by people chosing to appease them.
The UK largely doesn’t fluoridate, so this is one of the (few) areas where the US actually does better than the UK. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_by_country
The UK does generally have better tooth health in the grand scheme of things, but it’s actually pretty close, and the US is still really high on the list.
https://www.yongeeglintondental.com/blog/healthy-primary-teeth/
Without checking, I suspect the US’s slightly higher cavity rate is more down to sugar consumption than received dental care.
It basically says you can’t add anything to water except for “water quality additives” and has a fuzzy definitely of water quality additive.
403.859 Prohibited acts.—The following acts and the causing thereof are prohibited and are violations of this act: (8) The use of any additive in a public water system whichdoes not meet the definition of a water quality additive as defined in s. 403.852(19)
And then 403.852(19) has
“Water quality additive” means any chemical, additive, or substance that is used in a public water system for the purpose of: (a) Meeting or surpassing primary or secondary drinking water standards; (b) Preventing, reducing, or removing contaminants; or © Improving water quality.
Bold are the additions. The “primary and secondary drinking water standards” are legally defined terms where the EPA sets limits on maximum allowable amounts of stuff in water.
https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/how-epa-regulates-drinking-water-contaminants-documents
Personally, I would argue that fluoride is added to water for the purpose of “improving water quality” because water that protects people’s teeth is higher quality than water that doesn’t. If I were someone from a municipality whose job was ensuring water quality, I would read this as still allowing the addition of fluoride. If anyone doesn’t like that, let them try to prove in a court that fluoridated water is lower quality.
Tamara Rubin is a grifter with no expertise who bought an XRF gun to use to scan random objects as fodder for her blog where she gets money from affiliate links. Her wikipedia page talks about a few of her financial crimes. I wouldn’t worry anything she puts out.
I just do not know what to think about outfits like this. On the one hand, it’s hilarious that they are using the exact same compound that is released by fossil fuel companies, so any attempts to regulate its release will effect fossil fuel burners more than them. Some states have already banned the intentional release of anything designed for positive effects on the climate, though (i think Tennessee was the first).
On the other hand, the carbon credit economy is largely a sham and a fake fix for our woes, and only really serves to facilitate companies to wash their hands of environmental impacts. Solar geoengineering introduced to this system is destined for failure as well, I believe. We may need to resort to solar geoengineering to preserve what we can of our world, but it will have to be through international cooperation and study combined with reduction of carbon pollution, not by two dudes in a fly-by-night operation releasing balloons.
The act that they performed this under is the “International Emergency Economic Powers Act” which allows the president to declare a national emergency and take some other actions if there is an:
unusual and extraordinary threat… to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States
It specially says the powers:
may not be exercised for any other purpose
The Powers include:
(1) At the times and to the extent specified in section 1701 of this title, the President may, under such regulations as he may prescribe, by means of instructions, licenses, or otherwise— (A) investigate, regulate, or prohibit— (i) any transactions in foreign exchange, (ii) transfers of credit or payments between, by, through, or to any banking institution, to the extent that such transfers or payments involve any interest of any foreign country or a national thereof, (iii) the importing or exporting of currency or securities, by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States; (B) investigate, block during the pendency of an investigation, regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any acquisition, holding, withholding, use, transfer, withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation of, or dealing in, or exercising any right, power, or privilege with respect to, or transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States; and.[1] © when the United States is engaged in armed hostilities or has been attacked by a foreign country or foreign nationals, confiscate any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, of any foreign person, foreign organization, or foreign country that he determines has planned, authorized, aided, or engaged in such hostilities or attacks against the United States; and all right, title, and interest in any property so confiscated shall vest, when, as, and upon the terms directed by the President, in such agency or person as the President may designate from time to time, and upon such terms and conditions as the President may prescribe, such interest or property shall be held, used, administered, liquidated, sold, or otherwise dealt with in the interest of and for the benefit of the United States, and such designated agency or person may perform any and all acts incident to the accomplishment or furtherance of these purposes.
Noticeably absent from that list is tariffs. Under the major questions doctrine, the fact that congress did not specifically delegate that power to the executive branch means that it did not do so.
Yeah, it’s really frustrating when someone with higher body fat that floats like a cork tries to tell you how to do it.
Technique can’t overcome density. I will say that I got slightly better at it after learning to SCUBA dive (or maybe I just got fatter). In scuba, you move up and down in the water column by adjusting the range of your breathing. You basically try to get your neutrally boyant setpoint at 50% lung capacity. To go down, you try to control your breathing from 0-50% and to go up, you breathe from 50-100%. It made me slightly better at keeping my lungs really topped up with air.
To float, I basically have to hold my lungs at max capacity, and then exhale-inhale as fast as possible, which is unnatural and takes concentration. I usually have to use my arms for a little bit of upward thrust through that breath.
There’s no lungs in my legs, so those will sink no matter what. People claim you can “use your core” or some other BS to keep your legs afloat, but the fact of the matter is that if your upper body is positively buoyant and your lower body is negatively buoyant, there will be a rotational moment pulling your legs down, and it can only be counteracted by external application of force (i.e., kicking your feet). I can either float on my back with a mild amount of kicking, or i can do like a face-in-water deadman float, and just pull my head out of the water occasionally to quickly breathe.