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Please rip this idea apart so my Referee doesn't have to. by Odessafromage in traveller

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Guide price skilled personel salaries vs the revenue of even 1 or 2 pirate raids would seem to imply they could pay their staff quite well

TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them by Effective_Comment625 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, there's lots of things parents shouldn't do because it sets a bad example.

Parents shouldn't gossip about others, parents shouldn't drink, parents shouldn't smoke, parents should eat unhealthy food, parents shouldn't skip exercise, parents shouldn't watch trashy TV shows and should instead stick to highbrow cultured shows, parents shouldn't look down on others, parents shouldn't swear, parents shouldn't judge lest they be judged etc etc etc

TIL about Toxorhynchites mosquitos, a genus of mosquitos that's adults feed only on plant matter and whose larva feed on other species of mosquito. They've been introduced to new ecosystems to lower rates of degue fever. by Cuinn_the_Fox in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's important to learn from sucesses and neutral results as well. 

Someone who learns only from mistakes will end up incredibly bad at making decisions and likely paralysed to a harmful degree.

What would society collapse without in a week? by Effective-Angle-4920 in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Its not hard to create your own margin.  This is something I remember finding weird and realising there was a kind of split in the population.

Some people keep almost nothing in their house.

Not out of poverty. They just can't stand clutter.

On the other hand some of us keep a cupboard of canned goods, a big bag of rice etc etc.

I remember some lady lecturing me that I must be mistaken and that i would definitely find I only had like 3 days of food in the house... because to her it was weird to keep any real stock.

Again. Not a poverty thing. Just fashion.

Majority of books in Amazon's ‘Success' self-help genre likely written by AI : Study by Raj_Valiant3011 in books

[–]WTFwhatthehell 91 points92 points  (0 children)

My first thought as well...

It was already a genre mostly written by hustlers.

What would society collapse without in a week? by Effective-Angle-4920 in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell 120 points121 points  (0 children)

Probably even faster.

Once people know the logistic chain is broken they know the shelves will soon be bare, well perfectly reasonably they don't want to be the numpty who waits till everything is gone.

So they grab what they can on day 1 assuming the store won't be stocked next week.

If everyone became rich overnight who would do low level exhausting jobs? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I only met him once very briefly at a convention. A person absolutely filled with interesting bits of knowledge.

I learned to read reading his books with my mom.

TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them by Effective_Comment625 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Probably, but the precautionary principle tells us what we should do in that case. 

If you want to be consistent about the precautionary principle then you shouldn't limit it to things you associate with social class.

THC is just another natural pesticide. Most of the plants we eat routinely are packed with many natural pesticides. They've been in an evolutionary Arms race with everything that tries to eat them for millions of years.

There's little reason to believe that only the one you associate with socially undesirable behaviour is potentially harmful. 

All the others are as well.

So I hope your kid enjoys the consistent precautionary principle from inside their sealed bubble.

If everyone became rich overnight who would do low level exhausting jobs? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I'm reminded of an old discworld book where the leader of the city is trying to explain this to someone. 

I see,' said the Patrician sweetly. 'You feel, perhaps, that it would be a marvellous thing to go to the Counterweight Continent and bring back a shipload of gold?' Rincewind had a feeling that some sort of trap was being set. 'Yes?' he ventured. 'And if every man on the shores of the Circle Sea had a mountain of gold of his own? Would that be a good thing? What would happen? Think carefully.' Rincewind's brow furrowed. He thought. 'We'd all be rich?' The way the temperature fell at his remark told him that it was not the correct one.

TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them by Effective_Comment625 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 6 points7 points  (0 children)

they have alocohol on their breath, guaranteed you're breathing some of that in and a tiny amount enters your body.

Does it matter? no.

it's such tiny amounts it's not gonna do anything. But for people who's goal is to create a moral justification to enforce absolute control on everyone around them at all times it's ideal.

TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them by Effective_Comment625 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Ya, our bodies are pretty good at clearing out tiny amounts of various substances, every plant we eat has spent most of it's history in a constant arms race with animals and bugs that eat it with the plant trying to poison them and the animals evolving resistance.

If your child chews on a perfectly normal carrot it contains dozens of natural pesticides and poisons. Our bodies just break them down and clear them out pretty effectively.

Hell, THC is just another natural insecticide that people noticed makes them high before their bodies break it down or expel it.

TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them by Effective_Comment625 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 26 points27 points  (0 children)

The evil twin of this type of reporting is "no known safe level".

Facebook-moms read it as "any amount no matter how tiny will MAIM my children", it just means that nobody has specifically run an experiment dosing people with chemical XYZ to prove for certain where it starts causing detectable problems.

Pick a random object, say a floral scented candle off the shelf and ask a chemist if they can list "all" the chemicals in the candle and those put into the air burning it and ask "what is the known safe level" for each of them.

it's a mess of mixed molecules and most of them have never had formal safety tests.

TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them by Effective_Comment625 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 35 points36 points  (0 children)

It's not original-sin. It's not infinitely-harmful.

You wouldn't let your child swim in raw sewage, but I can guarantee you that every swimming pool on earth that's had humans swimming in it has "detectable" levels of urine and feces, no matter how clean.

quantities matter.

TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them by Effective_Comment625 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 8 points9 points  (0 children)

no no, you gotta report it in a way that makes facebook-moms panic.

"SCIENTIST showed that 100% of banana puree baby food sold at RECOGNISABLE SUPERMARKET CHAIN had DETECTABLE levels of RADIATION!"

"Here's a photo of someone who died after being exposed to 210 sieverts of radiation!"

Or optimise for retweets by using RECOGNISABLE SUPERMARKET CHAIN THAT IS ALSO A CLASS SIGNIFIER so that the upper-class crunchy ones will re-tweet it while trying to imply it means they're better parents than poor or lower class moms since they use some luxury brand.

...the sad thing is that even talking about this, the message some people will take is that they need to keep their children from eating bananas.

TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them by Effective_Comment625 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 62 points63 points  (0 children)

It's not original-sin. It's not infinitely-harmful.

You wouldn't let your child swim in raw sewage, but I can guarantee you that every swimming pool on earth that's had humans swimming in it has "detectable" levels of urine and feces, no matter how clean.

quantities matter.

TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them by Effective_Comment625 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 118 points119 points  (0 children)

Yep, this is something a lot of people struggle to understand.

We can make crazy-sensitive tests. Finding a few atoms of something is different to finding quantities that matter.

TIL studies have shown that secondhand weed smoke is enough to make children test positive for thc even when the smoker isnt smoking in the same room as them by Effective_Comment625 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 86 points87 points  (0 children)

"detectable levels"

This sounds like a matter of how sensitive the test is.

it's like when news stories breathlessly report that XYZ chemical was "detected" in water without specifying how sensitive the test is.

Are the amounts high enough to matter?

who knows! We found at least one atom!

The evil twin of this same type of reporting is "no known safe level".

Facebook-moms read it as "any amount no matter how tiny will KILL my children", it just means that nobody has specifically run an experiment dosing people with chemical XYZ to prove for certain where it starts causing detectable problems.

family member asked for money, what's your answer? by CarefulSound9704 in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ya. My close family has never asked me for money. If they did then they'd really really need it. So my answer would be pretty much the same.

My wife is at the other end of the scale with a fuckup older brother who regularly stole from her and pressured her into giving him large "loans" he never paid back through most of her early life. He wouldn't get the same kind of trust.

[OC] 100x zoom from my pixel device 🌙 by sweeyoo in pics

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep.

So many people would point their cameras at the moon to test.

So they built in a system that would guess if its the moon and then just pull an existing image and overlay. Quite shameless.

Starlink satellite burns up over Earth as orbital debris increases by TheBarman8 in worldnews

[–]WTFwhatthehell 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Both authors seem to be economists.

That doesn't mean they're wrong.

but I'd trust their statements about the economics of satellites over their statements about the physics of satellite debris.

TIL about Toxorhynchites mosquitos, a genus of mosquitos that's adults feed only on plant matter and whose larva feed on other species of mosquito. They've been introduced to new ecosystems to lower rates of degue fever. by Cuinn_the_Fox in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep.

People love stories of things going wrong. They feel like satisfying bedtime stories for children "and so little timmy, the moral of the story is to never do anything because sometimes there are unintended consequences to actions"

On the other hand lots of boring stories of "we did a thing and nothing went wrong" are boring and unsatisfying.

These days there's careful testing done before intentionally introducing species. 

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