We have two cats, a void and a grump. The voids full name is Robert but he goes by Bob, my wife calls him “little kitty” because he was a tiny kitten when we got him, I call him “you fat fuck” because he got up to 19 lbs before we started putting him on a diet (14 lbs now)

The grumps full name is Norman (as in Norman Bates, serial killer) but he goes by Norm (as in not normal), my wife calls him Normie and I call him “shut up you” because he’s constantly crying about something

You did the thing you just complained about by not writing out 400,000,000 (400M) in relation to the 4,000,000,000,000 (4T)

To scale that down, it’s like someone paying 400 from a net worth of 4,000,000 (4M), or 4 from a net worth of 40,000, they would barely even notice. Of course that’s ignoring all the details of revenue and profit vs net worth or actual tax rates, and I can’t be bothered to look those up.
But imagine you own some land and a house that you bought for 4,000,000 (4M) that you have to pay property taxes on, and the taxes were 400 per year. That’s a 0.01% tax rate.

Shit, now I actually want to know what the real numbers are. according to Finbox “Apple’s effective tax rate for fiscal years ending September 2020 to 2024 averaged 16.5%.” although I think that’s specifically income tax.

Per macrotrends, apple profited 180,600,000,000 in 2024, from 391,035,000,000 revenue, a profit margin of ~45%, from which they payed 29,749,000,000 in taxes for an effective tax rate of 16.5% on the income.

Relative to net worth valuation of ~3,800,000,000,000 at end of 2024 that income tax paid is 0.75% of their net worth.

My dogs have learned that the sound of a knife on the cutting board means there’s a chance food of some kind might make it to the floor, so they come running.

I knew I recognized that name, this was always the issue with playing Munchkin. So much time spent building up levels and gear just to get to lvl 9, fight some monster for the win, have the entire rest of the table throw everything they have at you to stop you from winning, just for the next person in turn to fight a potted plant for the win because everyone played all their cards to keep you from winning.

I don’t know what the solution is, the rest of the table loses no matter if you win or the next person, so they pretty much have to spend all available resources to stop whoever is near winning first, but that just sets up the next person to win with almost no resistance.
At a certain point all strategies go out the window and the only option is for the whole table to send everything stopping one person, which isn’t really fun for anyone.

I think D+D is short hand for the writers/show runners of the Game of Thrones show, D. B. Weiss and David Benioff, whom everyone blames for the lackluster final seasons and essentially all the issues that came about from adapting books that haven’t been written yet into a TV show.

This reddit thread from a couple months ago actually covers some lesser known details about the situation, while D+D certainly deserve some ire for their handling of how the story ended which in turn may have influenced the continued lack of finishing the books it sounds like they’re not the only ones who were burned out on the project, especially if they only agreed to 7 seasons under the assurance that the books would be done by the time they got to the end.

I haven’t read any of the books yet and only watched the show about a year ago after the second season of House of the Dragon came out, I figured it was time to see what the hype was all about. I can definitely see both why it was the hottest thing on TV for years as well as why everyone was furious at the ending. I can see how all the plot points that got crammed into the final seasons could line up to end the way it did and I can see how it could have been structured differently in a way that could have filled in more of the character development, kept the important plot notes and explained why people did what they did, but I can also see that it would probably have taken another half season or more to tell that much story and without the actual books to fill in the details and actors that were ready to move on, they did what they could with what they had.
They definitely fucked it up, but sometimes there’s no good way to end something that’s not what it started as.

We have a cat that is like 95% goblin. Laziest fucking cat I’ve ever seen, literally sleeps all day and night except for when it’s food time, usually in the warmest part of the house. The only thing he really cares about is getting fed. He will come find you when it’s dinner time and make sure you didn’t forget.
We’ve had to 'goblin proof’s the house by adding magnets to the cupboard door so he can’t just open it himself and have learned to never leave any of our food out on the counters. I can’t count how many times we would get a loaf of bread or package of tortillas or stuff like that and leave it out on the counter just to find it on the floor the next morning with big chunks bitten out of them, or find the butter dish with the cover knocked off and a big divot where he licked like a tablespoons worth of butter. I had to start putting the jar of bacon grease in the fridge as soon as I had poured it out of the pan because otherwise he would get to it while we were eating and just dip his paw into it to lick at the delicious. More than once we have brought in the shipment of dog food but didn’t think to fully put it away and then later found him shoulder deep in the food having chewed through the cardboard box and the plastic bag to get to the dog food inside.
So yeah, all that to preface, this cat had to get an emergency exploratory gastro surgery to remove a black silicone rubber cock ring he chewed into pieces and ate but couldn’t pass. Little fucker still tries his hardest to eat any silicone rubber he can get to, and he knows the drawer I keep them in and has figured out how to open it, so we don’t have many silicone toys anymore.

Percentage is probably one of the easiest ways to calculate a difference but presenting a percentage change can be mildly misleading if you don’t know what the original numbers are.

An increase of 100% is really a 2x increase, 1000% increase is an 11x increase.
If there used to be 1 ICE raid a month and now there are 11, that’s a 1000% increase. Given the change in directive and ramp up in action I’d be somewhat surprised if it was only 1000%

What did you think he’s robbing from the cradle, the toys?

That’s what color they are in the “visible” spectrum, I wonder what they look like if you added in the ultraviolet spectrum that bees and other insects can see

All models are wrong. Some are useful

I think you’re referring to the ultraVIOLET catastrophe

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_catastrophe

Or fireworks. Many states have laws against selling fireworks to state residents, but all you need to do is cross a border or have an out of state license and you can buy them just fine.

I thought there was a relatively good explanation for ice spikes having to do with the volumetric expansion of water as it transitions phases from liquid to solid. Basically as an ice cube freezes there is a shell formed over the top surface and under the right circumstances it forms from the outside edges in leaving a hole, but then instead of the hole closing over ice starts forming downward into the bulk of the cube, pushing liquid water out of the hole which is then frozen into a protrusion

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_spike

Even so, each individual button needs to be connected to that PCB separately, and will only have the function of what it says on the button, or possibly a couple hidden functions through programming.
Touch screens are essentially one connection for infinite buttons with different screens and menus.

As hugin said, the best way to wash oils off your hands is with other oils. Pour a little bit of whatever cooking oil you have on your hands and make sure to thoroughly spread it on your hands, like in between your fingers and under your nails, then wash with hot water and soap. The capsaicin oils will mix with the cooking oils, dilute, and be more noticeable to remove. This also works for poison ivy oils and pine sap

One of the things I’ve read about why things are the way they are is a comparison to probabilities, the thought is that similar to how there is one and only one way to roll a bunch of dice and have them come up all ones, there would be one and only one way for there to be “nothing” in the universe given the existence of any energy because of how many different ways energy can exist it’s much more probable that you get a jumbled pile of all kinds of different things.
Now as for the question of “where did all this energy come from” you have to realize that even the vacuum of space contains energy of some level and the 'visible universe ’ that is all of the matter that interacts with electromagnetic fields only accounts for a tiny fraction of the total energy we can detect so it’s likely that the energies that make up our matter and universe came from “somewhere else” … but then where did that energy come from and then it’s turtles all the way down

I want to add Adventure Time to the good list. There definitely are some episodes that feel “lol random” but there’s a longer story arc that’s actually really deeply explored

It depends on the type/grade of magnet

https://e-magnetsuk.com/introduction-to-neodymium-magnets/temperature-ratings/

https://youtu.be/IQJL3htsDyQ

I’ll admit I haven’t actually watched the video yet but here it is

I’m just here to say I LOVE Three Panel Soul.
I’ve read through all of the artists previous comic, Machall Comics, like four or five times and it makes me extremely happy that they are still making new TPS