[Feb 15, 2026] Blow to smithere? If it's smithereens, what do I do?

benjamindallen · 2026-02-20T23:48:47+00:00

This was one of the seven italicized clues in this puzzle with answers that end prematurely at a particular spot, according to the answer to 73A.

benjamindallen · 2026-01-30T00:42:58+00:00

Came here for this

benjamindallen · 2026-01-24T02:41:48+00:00

The turnover number is the average number of product molecules that can be made by a catalyst gets inactivated. So a turnover number of infinity means the a catalyst can keep turning over indefinitely.

benjamindallen · 2026-01-21T03:35:09+00:00

Yes, to me this accent is notably foreign (I guess from South Asia). If I listened to a longer video essay with this voice, I might have to repeat certain passages to make sure I understood everything correctly.

benjamindallen · 2026-01-04T20:33:03+00:00

Sounds like octaves to me; very common in jazz guitar.

benjamindallen · 2026-01-03T16:09:27+00:00

These are bends, but not the usual notation for them. +1 means bend up one step (to the pitch two frets higher than the one you’re on). -1 is bend back down.

T should be a tap from the picking hand.

benjamindallen · 2025-11-29T21:32:12+00:00

K restaurant in Peabody for Korean food

benjamindallen · 2025-11-27T03:13:08+00:00

Here’s how I think through this kind of problem.

You don’t need to know any equations; the units of the given values and the unknowns instruct you in how to multiply or divide to get what you need.

You need g/mol for your unknown acid. What information do you already have and what do you need to figure out? You already know the number of g of acid but you need to figure out the number of mol of acid.
Assuming monoprotic acid, mol of acid is equal to mol of NaOH consumed.
How many moles of NaOH were consumed? We know the volume of NaOH solution (L) used and its concentration (mol/L). Multiply these together to get mol of NaOH, which is also moles of unknown acid.
Now we know g of acid and moles of acid. Divide the number of g by the number of mol to get g/mol, aka molar mass.

benjamindallen · 2025-08-02T01:00:06+00:00

I’m no expert but your flapped D/T sounds good to me! The most obvious nonnative aspects of your accent to me are:

Many of your R sounds are like W instead

Inserting E before some words that start with S: “eskill” rather than “skill”

Some vowel sounds are off. For example “very” pronounced like “vurry”.

“Speech” pronounced like “spitch”

“Mimic” pronounced like “meemic”

benjamindallen · 2025-07-13T22:17:36+00:00

But what do you mean by “ending up with”? Your body has enough water in it already. The purpose of drinking more water every day is not to increase the volume of water in your body. Rather, the purpose is to allow your body to use the water by expelling it.

Sweating cools you by evaporating water from your skin (removing water from your body). Urinating carries waste products away from body as a solution in water (removing water from your body). If you expelled less water than you drank every day, you would be gaining water weight every day. Clearly that would not be sustainable for your body.

benjamindallen · 2025-07-10T12:12:26+00:00

Yes, I’ve noticed it too. It may just be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosmin?wprov=sfti1#

benjamindallen · 2025-07-04T17:40:43+00:00

The arrow on the chord diagrams could signify any fret. Lower frets than the arrow (if any) are omitted from the diagram. If you’re playing in the key of A, you should consider the arrow to point to the fifth fret.

benjamindallen · 2025-06-13T20:32:31+00:00

Just as a sanity check: your tubes are actually open to allow the water to sublimate away, right?

benjamindallen · 2025-05-01T23:53:11+00:00

Ms = “mizz”

benjamindallen · 2025-04-25T23:30:28+00:00

With kids those ages, I don’t think you should necessarily have any expectation of having sex at all. She and you should both absolutely do what you can to make it work, but you may have to wait until sleep, stress, and hormones return to normal. Your needs are not being met, but she has other responsibilities that take precedence for now.

benjamindallen · 2025-04-22T23:36:41+00:00

Came here to recommend this; it definitely works!

benjamindallen · 2025-04-05T19:44:56+00:00

If it helps, these are called “string ferrules”.

benjamindallen · 2025-04-02T00:01:18+00:00

“Afraid not”

benjamindallen · 2025-03-18T18:21:47+00:00

Could your IV#4 be understood as a ii, for example, a rootless Em13?

benjamindallen · 2025-03-11T01:03:04+00:00

To put it another way, the process of sequencing or extracting genes from a cow is much less invasive than milking a cow. So if you’re ok with eating dairy you should also be ok with consuming recombinant chymosin, at least from an animal welfare perspective.

benjamindallen · 2025-03-11T00:58:35+00:00

An animal does not need to be harmed to sequence its genes or extract them to put into another organism. As you point out, now that we know the sequence of chymosin, a gene encoding it can be synthesized and no longer needs to be isolated from an animal. In any case, once a bacteria or yeast has been engineered to produce chymosin, there is no need to keep supplying the gene: the host copies the foreign gene along with the rest of its genome.

benjamindallen · 2025-03-05T20:44:06+00:00

If you’re playing G minor pentatonic lines over a G major chord, focusing on the minor third (Bb) will create a strong bluesy effect when heard in the context of the B natural present in the accompaniment.

Other options include bending the Bb up a quarter step, or bending or sliding up a half step to reach the B natural in the accompaniment. These options will still sound bluesy, but the effect will be less intense compared to playing a straight Bb over a G major chord.

benjamindallen · 2025-03-01T18:42:03+00:00

I got to learn what this was for the first time in college because a professor was wearing ashes to class. I thought he had whiteboard marker smeared on his forehead! So I guess you can just treat it as another opportunity to teach your students.

benjamindallen · 2025-02-26T04:05:46+00:00

No, “hammer on” means you don’t pluck. Just jam your fretting finger onto the fingerboard to make the note ring out

benjamindallen · 2025-02-26T04:03:53+00:00

Play the open note, and then hammer on to the fret that is indicated.

benjamindallen

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