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• Commented on Place your bets
  I tried to send my son to dance as a child, but being the only boy in the class was too much for him at that age. He ended up in judo and my daughter took karate....
• Commented on Place your bets
  Are you sure that was H5N1 and not H1N1? My records show BC was immunizing people against H1N1 in 2009; I remember going to a local community centre with my son to be vaccinated....
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  Sophisticated EVs use heat pumps for heating (and, I presume) cooling the compartment. There are some numbers in this article: https://www.sae.org/news/2018/11/ev-heat-pumps...
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  The bigger incentive for turning lights off at night is cutting down on light pollution for wildlife....
• Commented on WTF
  In New Zealand a large part of the temperance movement was an attempt to counteract the ill-effects of alcohol: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/temperance-movement/beginnings "It was often said that the main causes of death in colonial New Zealand were 'drink, drowning, and drowning while...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  I'm still pondering the 16-year-olds voting thing. If most of them are anything like my teenagers they're articulate and know more or less which end is up. What I am definitely in favour of is lowering the registration age to...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Not the answer to the question you asked, but maybe of interest as a data point. In New Zealand the first television channel started broadcasting in 1960 (which predates me), and the second channel arrived in 1975....
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  I suspect that, like most multi-millionaires and billionaires, RS thinks the climate emergency won't affect him. If that's the case, chances are he sees little point in spending any time talking about it, and no point in going to a...
• Commented on London Bridge
  Given the number of chemicals in tires, I'd be worried about those leaching into the potatoes. Growing potatoes in containers would be safer....
• Commented on London Bridge
  On the UK heating question, it seems to me that district heating of the sort used in many European cities makes sense, at least in the concentrated urban cores. Even in Vancouver there is some of this (mainly in one...
• Commented on The gathering crisis
  Agreed. I've noticed the Guardian quite often has spots where it appears the editorial process is not as thorough as it should be....
• Commented on The gathering crisis
  The group is defined in the paragraph, as well as the referenced link: ... https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/19/home-grown-how-domestic-violence-turns-men-into-terrorists-joan-smith-review ... “the Beatles”, the London gang members who joined Islamic State, [...]"...
• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  Speaking as one of the recent arrivals/lurkers, I'd also be sad to lose this blog + community. I've learned a lot on a number of topics. Yes, occasionally the pessimism gets a bit much, but no worse than any one...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  The raccoons compete well against the rats and urban coyotes in Vancouver, BC. They are smart, work together, have flexible fingers and excellent manual dexterity, which means they can open things the rats and coyotes can't. They can run up...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  I bought a laptop online from Apple in 2021 and was charged PST in BC. That may be because I picked it up from a local store, I guess. And the last time I bought something from Amazon.ca I was...
• Commented on Holding pattern 2022 ...
  I would find it not at all surprising if part of the reason for the multiple foreign dignitaries visiting Ukraine is to make it obvious that firing off any nukes would be a bad idea. Today the list included the...
• Commented on Holding pattern 2022 ...
  The drink safewords for a given establishment are usually on a poster in the women's restrooms....
• Commented on Holding pattern 2022 ...
  The descriptions on that page makes it pretty clear, at least to me. You (most likely female-presenting, judging by the photos) are in a bar or an evening business meeting, some dude (perhaps your boss) is hassling you. This is...
• Commented on Holding pattern 2022 ...
  Our heat pump was a replacement for a forced air gas furnace, not a ductless mini-split. The outside unit is on the side of the house, points towards a fence. You can hear it when you're outside and it does...
• Commented on Holding pattern 2022 ...
  And that should be 'Daikin', not 'Daikon'....
• Commented on Holding pattern 2022 ...
  I'm also in BC. We got a Mitsubishi heat pump in early 2020 (replacing the about-to-die gas furnace just before the pandemic hit) and have been happy with it. The A/C during last year's heat dome was a very welcome...
• Commented on Behind the Ukraine war
  The easiest explanation for the cluster of oil-filled heater fires is to remember that some 30 years ago, one of the manufacturers was obliged to issue a recall for over 3 million units in the US. This was after a...
• Commented on Yokai Land Q&A
  You might find some ideas in https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.1201/b10652/making-mathematics-needlework-sarah-marie-belcastro-carolyn-yackel Delving more specificly into knitting gives you https://www.schoolhousepress.com/books/schoolhouse-press-titles/unexpected-knitting.html, including instructions on knitting a boat (yes, really), Ouroborus, and various other items....
• Commented on Bad news day
  Ask the Dutch speaker about the linguistic relationship to Plattdeutsch or Frisian some time. The Bavarian dialect is difficult even for other Germans to understand, particularly those from the north. But Germans, in general, would prefer to hear you mangle...
• Commented on Bad news day
  The reason I heard that we no longer have those letters in the English alphabet is that in the early days of printing in England, the type characters used in the letterpress printing were brought over from Italy. The Italian...
• Commented on Bad news day
  We got some interior window inserts from Indow Windows for most of our skylights and some windows. It makes a noticeable difference in the Vancouver winter in an old house, and they are reasonably easy to put in and take...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares: spoiler time!
  I've used USB batteries quite a lot; the brand I'd recommend is Anker. The bigger ones will charge your laptop (assuming it can charge via USB) as well as your phone with no problems....
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Actually (3rd time correct) Ernst Toller survived, wrote a book, and committed suicide....
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Sigh. Make that 'all were murdered' and the link is Bavarian Soviet Republic (or Räterepublik in German)....
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  People who were of note and were mostly murdered during the chaos of the early Weimar republic days include Rosa Luxemburg, Kurt Eisner, and Ernst Toller. Information on the Bavarian Soviet Republic may also give you some ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian\_Soviet\_Republic ....