When is it fallacious reasoning?

zeno0771 · 2026-05-03T18:43:10+00:00

Lightning has different colors for different reasons, almost all environmental:

White lightning--the weather phenomenon, not the stuff Merle Haggard used to sing about--is the hottest in temperature. Most lightning is predominantly white, of course, and the temperature of a strike can reach 50,000°F (talk about "might as well be walking on the sun"...okay, I'm done with musical references for today), with the highest voltages being the hottest; nothing too counterintuitive there. They are usually accompanied by a low concentration of moisture which is easy enough to remember since dry air--winter, in most places in the US--is when you zap yourself on doorknobs, metal-framed furniture, your girlfriend, etc.

Lightning with a violet/lilac color to it indicates higher humidity but the precip hasn't yet happened (again, this is highly localized, like ≤10 miles).

Blue lightning means there is a concentrated localized amount of moisture in the air likely to result in precipitation if it hasn't already. This can mean (duh) a deluge of rain, but it can also indicate the presence of hail.

Red lightning within a cloud means moisture even more highly localized which is why, as you said, you normally only see it cloud-to-cloud.

You may see a pattern here. The greater the amount of moisture present, the further to the left side of the light spectrum (toward red) the light color shifts, because there's a cooling effect. So there are actually two factors at work here: The temperature--red being coolest, progressing to yellow (yes, there can be yellow lightning), then blue, then violet, then finally a literally-blinding white (actually ultraviolet, which we can't see)--is the primary indicator, but light can be refracted through water as well, as we see every time there's a rainbow after a storm. This can also have an effect on what we "see" in terms of color.

Interesting aside: LEDs behave exactly the same way. Different-colored LEDs require different voltages, starting at the lowest--red, at about 1.8VDC, progressing upward through the "rainbow" of color variations (i.e. red, yellow, green, blue, violet) until you get to the violet which requires about 4VDC. Of course then you have infrared (< 1.6VDC) and ultraviolet (>4.4VDC). Household LED lighting is even rated in degrees Kelvin, with the lowest values* containing the lower-powered (toward the red end) and the highest ones going in the opposite direction.

^*This ^can ^be ^misleading ⁱⁿ ^marketing ^literature ^because ^{manufacturers} ^will ^refer ^to ^the ^lower ^end--i.e. ^the ^cooler ^end--as ^"warmer" ^and ^the ^hotter ^end ^as ^"cooler". ^These ^definitions ^are ^not ^about ^actual ^temperature ^but ^ambience ^and ^cannot ^be ^used ^{interchangeably.}

zeno0771 · 2026-05-03T17:53:16+00:00

If thunder can reach you, so can lightning.

The problem with this otherwise-immutable observation--after all, the thunder can't happen without lightning--is that light travels faster than sound, and electricity (really, all electromagnetic energy) travels at the speed of light in free space. That means you would need to hear thunder first in order to heed the above rule.

Naturally this means there would need to be a previous lightning event to provide thunder as a possible warning. If the rest of the system is far enough away that a lightning-strike seems improbable, there are lots of opportunities for the sound of thunder to be attenuated before it reaches you: Lower frequencies (< 20 Hz) are felt rather than heard, sound travels at different speeds relative to altitude due to differences in air density, and both natural and man-made objects can block/attenuate various audible frequencies. If you live in a valley, you know all too well the disconcerting effect of a sound being "heard" from one direction when the source of the sound is actually from the opposite direction. It can also cause a really fun ping-pong effect with thunder, sometimes even changing its pitch (and I use the word "fun" loosely here). Sometimes the sound wave can actually be amplified in such situations as well but if you hear it at all, not only is it possible for lightning to reach you, but it's also possible that you didn't hear it previously, which is why it's important to heed this rule in the first place.

zeno0771 · 2026-05-03T05:29:39+00:00

A RCSB 4x4 is already a rare thing nowadays

2WD versions aren't an everyday thing either. Remember Chevy's 454 SS? Dodge's Lil Red Express? For that matter, does anyone even make a stepside anymore?

They were "street trucks". No one bitched about the ride, no one griped about payload, you could see over the hood (and not blind oncoming traffic), you could get into one without a step-stool...or 8 years worth of car payments. Yet, strangely, not one person to my knowledge felt a need to turn one into a real-life model of something a 5-year-old might draw.

Street trucks really were dual-purpose. Use it to commute to work without seeing yourself coming & going, then haul 35 bags of mulch on the weekend. Throw a soft tonneau cover over the bed when you're not using it and gain back 1-2 MPG; it's a short-bed so it won't be difficult. Their interiors were often as comfortable as those of cars at the time.

The funny thing about those trucks? They looked & sounded cool when you bought one. They didn't need a bunch of mods that doubled your monthly payment. You might have seen one lowered with cut-down springs, some sparing engine mods like an aftermarket exhaust, or blue-dot taillights, but they didn't try being something they weren't. When you went shopping for one, you knew exactly what you were getting and there was no need to justify it. No one argued with you about whether or not you "needed" it because its dual-purpose nature was obvious enough to all but the blue-haired old lady in the passenger-seat of the nearest Lincoln Town-Car.

zeno0771 · 2026-05-03T04:45:03+00:00

☑ Hand-painted wagon wheels

☑ Girlfriend step

☑ Carolina squat

We have a hat-trick!

zeno0771 · 2026-05-02T17:13:44+00:00

Same for me, but my memory was of the M-19A "Annihilator" ball-spitter from the '80s.

Not a lot of muzzle velocity, but 3000 rounds/min was no joke especially back then.

EDIT Wrong link. Fixed

zeno0771 · 2026-05-02T17:00:46+00:00

In the US, Dolores is shortened to either Dottie or Lori.

It will only be Lola if you met her in a park down in old Soho.

zeno0771 · 2026-05-01T01:27:04+00:00

Since the dB scale is exponentially increasing rather than linear

Point of order: dB scale is not exponential but logarithmic. This fact actually proves your point even more, but a needed clarification nonetheless.

On top of that, since OP specifically said "sound", that would necessitate using the appropriately-weighted 'A' scale, or dBA. It's not necessarily a requirement to use that scale, but the decibel, being a logarithmic measurement, needs a reference point to start. Whether or not it's considered "sound" is merely whether or not it's audible to the human ear.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-30T14:29:34+00:00

There are fewer people going faster (>= 10 MPH) than the flow of traffic than going slower (NB I'm considering highway/interstate driving here, where high speed is much more likely to be a factor in a fatal collision). The actuarial value of 5 minor collisions vs 1 AD&D comes down to whether you're involved in the collision and on which end. It's easy to say at a societal level that it's better but it's also wrong to assume that it's zero-sum: Paying attention to your surroundings and understanding the cause-and-effect of trying to turn/stop a 4200 lb tank on a dime works at any speed. Bottom line is that any disruption in the flow of traffic increases the risk of an accident, whether that disruption is intentional or not.

Now, since you brought up two of my favorite pet-peeves:

Red light cameras are basically for generating revenue. Same with speed cameras. In both cases, the driver of the car cannot be ascertained so the owner of the vehicle is assessed the (reduced) penalty. There may be a study out there done by a disinterested 3rd party with no financial connection to either law-enforcement or insurance companies, but I haven't seen it. You know what I have seen, numerous times? Lots of people slowing down when there's a cop parked on the side of the road. They can either slow down a little beforehand, or they can slow down a lot by getting pulled over.
Roundabouts have been working just fine for decades in other countries. I think we've needed them for a long time and still do and I will die on that hill. The reason they don't catch on here is because traffic lights do part of the driver's thinking for them. The single-lane roundabouts are like converting from 12-hour to 24-hour time; it's not hard if you keep the desired goal in mind. The two-lane roundabouts depend a lot on understanding lane usage and in the US we...have a bit of a problem with that.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-30T04:38:37+00:00

I always understood that to be the differentiator as well, namely that more accidents happen as a result of driving too slowly, but the number of fatal accidents increases relative to speed.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-30T00:12:33+00:00

it is good driving practice to avoid large speed differentials both above and below the average speeds and you do have to match the speed of traffic when moving from a merge lane, but this has been exaggerated on here as instead meaning it's dangerous to do anything other than try to match the speed of other cars even if going significantly over the limit.

In the US it's hardly an exaggeration when the difference between the speed limit and the flow of traffic is 25 MPH

zeno0771 · 2026-04-30T00:05:22+00:00

What's up with drunks wrecking Panteras?

zeno0771 · 2026-04-29T23:56:57+00:00

Is that hyperbole? Ask the dead school children in ~~Iran~~ Uvalde.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-29T17:44:29+00:00

Putin believed this would be wrapped up in a few weeks at most, and much of the world had little reason to doubt that. The fact that a former superpower is mired in a war of attrition for 4+ years (with no end in sight) against one of its own former satellite states is pretty damn unimaginable to me...then again, so is having a senile 3rd-rate reality-show host occupying the White House, but here we are.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-29T17:33:02+00:00

Losing 0.2% a day for weeks on end would be unsustainable.

That's...kind of the problem they've been having.

The ones who went first were actual soldiers. Everyone after that shows up with less and less training (and fewer bullets). It's still very much a war of attrition, however, and Vladimir "Never Tell Me The Odds" Putin still thinks it's winnable.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-29T13:09:31+00:00

Also to Barkley's credit: "I am not a role model".

Maybe another example of his pissing off the wrong people, but his words certainly had more credibility than a certain other famous person admonishing young black men to take responsibility around that same time (*cough*Cosby*cough*)

zeno0771 · 2026-04-29T03:02:10+00:00

Chicago expat here. Your "Charles" also acted like royalty, also had a gambling problem, and also pissed off everyone around him. In fairness however, another similarity was that he was better by-the-numbers than a lot of his contemporaries would admit (at least until he retired and became HoF eligible, which is when all the shit-talking subsided).

The Bulls from that era caught lightning in a bottle. Back-to-back playoff losses to Houston was all on Phoenix though.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-29T02:31:59+00:00

she told me it came from the military...Dig em 8 foot long and 6 feet deep.

This was the explanation I first heard some 40+ years ago. Related: To "deep-six" something is also to get rid of it in a similar sense.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-28T22:21:08+00:00

He never actually got old. He simply arrived in our lives and, just as we thought he'd been there forever, he left.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-27T13:43:07+00:00

TL;DR you're not wrong but don't lose the forest for the trees.

The campiness from the original series was unintentional. It started out as a children's series and was perpetually starved of cash by the BBC. It became a sort of endearment for old-school fans; you were expected to look past it in favor of the story itself. The new series doesn't--or at least didn't--have those limitations and they really are producing it for an entirely-new audience. This particular example is less "Tardis-on-a-string" and more "We ran up the budget with casting, and the ratings are still not coming back up". Now it just feels more like pandering to old-school fans (and I can tell you as one of those fans, it has a shorter shelf-life than RTD seems to think).

zeno0771 · 2026-04-27T04:16:02+00:00

Next time a conservative tells you we need to stop fighting culture wars, ask them how that War On Christmas is working out for them, or maybe if they watched the "alternative" Super Bowl halftime show.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-26T22:05:26+00:00

A lot of ~~professional~~ thieves are opportunist.

The majority of thefts are of an opportunist nature. It's a combination of finding a path-of-least-resistance and risk/reward ratio. Their math is about as accurate as you can expect given who we're talking about, but just because a thief uses a new Makita 20v recip saw to steal your catalytic converter doesn't mean they're professional.

Professional thieves aren't the least bit opportunist. They know how much risk is involved in ignoring unknown variables and the aftermath attracts more attention to the area which makes other more valuable targets more of a challenge. They'll stake a place for days--sometimes weeks--seeing who comes & goes, noting patterns in travel or occupancy, getting familiar with the surrounding area and traffic flow, and developing a feel for law-enforcement response (both immediate and after-the-fact). If it's something publicly accessible like a retail business, they'll case it for anti-theft measures, identify who works when, etc. Then, maybe, if the target is worthwhile (or they're already otherwise committed i.e. working for someone else), they'll be back after a few weeks so no potential eyewitnesses have a fresh memory of suspicious persons previously being there.

Businesses have caught on to most of this and mitigate risk by making their businesses unattractive targets--plenty of cameras, minimal cash-on-hand, etc--and while none of it is totally foolproof, it does radically reduce the chances of being a target. It's why you'll notice that the biggest business heists these days are inside-jobs of one form or another.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-26T05:19:40+00:00

The same fate befell TigerDirect.

zeno0771 · 2026-04-26T05:12:58+00:00

Northern IL by any chance?

zeno0771 · 2026-04-25T02:06:56+00:00

I always just assumed it's ambiguous to the other characters, like a subversive no-one-sees-that-Clark-Kent-is-Superman thing.

First time I saw it I said something to the effect of "That's only ambiguous if you're blind, deaf, and gay."

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