That's the "routing problem" I mentioned.

Some times there aren't any marked crossings for half a mile. Perhaps this could be seen as a school-bus routing problem, but saying "use the crossing" is only reasonable sometimes.

I could see anti-authoritarianism. Most actual jews that I've met have been nice people. The government of Israel, however, is vile.

OTOH, I don't see any sane way to deal with the situation. The comment "surround the place with hazard tape and stay away" has a lot going for it.

You left out the robots. Enslaved to do what when the robots are cheaper?

Be careful there. Lots of AI is being put to silly, useless, or unreasonable uses. OTOH, lots of it is being put to extremely productive uses. (OK, 20% improvement in output, but also an increase in expenses.)

ISTM, that PART of the AI hoopla is a bubble. Possibly much more than half. But the other half is not a bubble, and is growing rapidly. What the collapse will look like depends in part on how much the productive segment grows relative to the other part before it happens.

It wasn't from "a random influencer". It was in a popular science publication, and I believe they were quoting (or perhaps paraphrasing) the person who invented the term.

Does it have a "legal definition"? I doubt it. So for regulations I think it means whatever the person enforcing the regulations wants it to mean.

That really depends on exactly what definition you are using. I suppose you could argue that yogurt could be made at home in a normal kitchen, but cheddar cheese couldn't. And I've never actually seen anyone make sauerkraut, though people certainly used to do so.

I.e., the first published definition of "ultraprocessed" specified "things that couldn't be made in a normal kitchen". I'll agree that it's a very sloppy definition, but I haven't heard a better one.

That's actually a good question. Inks have changed somewhat over the past 5,000 years, and there's no particular reason to think that tattoo inks have been equally mobile across this timeframe.

But now we come to a deeper point. Basically, tattoos (as I've always understand it) are surgically-engineered scars, with the scar tissue supposedly locking the ink in place. It's quite probable that my understanding is wrong - this isn't exactly an area I've really looked into in any depth, so the probability of me being right is rather slim. Nonetheless, if I had been correct, then you might well expect the stuff to stay there. Skin is highly permeable, but scar tissue less so. As long as the molecules exceed the size that can migrate, then you'd think it would be fine.

That it isn't fine shows that one or more of these ideas must be wrong.

It varies from time to time. In the 1940's it was common for folk to get tattoos, at least in the US Navy. Ozzy the iceman was covered with tattoos. (Of course, since he was killed it might indicate that he was something analogous to a criminal, but probably not.)

The real problem is that minimally processed food doesn't keep as long, and often takes more time to prepare.

Actually "ultraprocessed" is too broad a category. It includes things like cheese and yogurt. Probably also sauerkraut. But there definitely are ultraprocessed foods that should not be sold without a strong warning, and many do have deceptive advertising that appears intentionally deceptive.

Damn. You're right. That article doesn't say it, and I didn't find the one I originally read, which was about bacteria living deep in the earth where the radiation generated ionization states that they used. IIRC it was about bacteria living in a granite based low-level uranium source. And they were living a lot deeper than previously detected bacteria. (This was about 3-4 decades ago, so it's not surprising that I can't find that article. I think it was in Science News, but possibly it was in New Scientist. In any case, what I read was a magazine article. And it was rather explicit...though of course not detailed.)

Investment is a tricky one.

I'd say that learning how to learn is probably the single-most valuable part of any degree, and anything that has any business calling itself a degree will make this a key aspect. And that, alone, makes a degree a good investment, as most people simply don't know how. They don't know where to look, how to look, how to tell what's useful, how to connect disparate research into something that could be used in a specific application, etc.

The actual specifics tend to be less important, as degree courses are well-behind the cutting edge and are necessarily grossly simplified because it's still really only crude foundational knowledge at this point. Students at undergraduate level simply don't know enough to know the truly interesting stuff.

And this is where it gets tricky. Because an undergraduate 4-year degree is aimed at producing thinkers. Those who want to do just the truly depressingly stupid stuff can get away with the 2 year courses. You do 4 years if you are actually serious about understanding. And, in all honesty, very few companies want entry-level who are competent at the craft, they want people who are fast and mindless. Nobody puts in four years of network theory or (Valhalla forbid) statistics for the purpose of being mindless. Not unless the stats destroyed their brain - which, to be honest, does happen.

Humanities does not make things easier. There would be a LOT of benefit in technical documentation to be written by folk who had some sort of command of the language they were using. Half the time, I'd accept stuff written by people who are merely passing acquaintances of the language. Vague awareness of there being a language would sometimes be an improvement. But that requires that people take a 2x4 to the usual cultural bias that you cannot be good at STEM and arts at the same time. (It's a particularly odd cultural bias, too, given how much Leonardo is held in high esteem and how neoclassical universities are either top or near-top in every country.)

So, yes, I'll agree a lot of degrees are useless for gaining employment and a lot of degrees for actually doing the work, but the overlap between these two is vague at times.

Here's one reference, though not the orginal one I read.
https://academic.oup.com/ismej...

Note that this is not DIRECTLY eating radiation, but that's still its energy source, as that's where the H molecule comes from. So to simplify, saying it eats radiation is not wrong.

The degree isn't about "getting a high-paid job", it's about knowing what the hell you're doing once you get a job. Although, fair enough, it's quite plausible that not many degrees would meet that standard either.

There is a possibility of a short-circuit causing an engine shutdown. Apparently, there is a known fault whereby a short can result in the FADEC "fail-safing" to engine shutdown, and this is one of the competing theories as the wiring apparently runs near a number of points in the aircraft with water (which is a really odd design choice).

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that (a) the wiring actually runs there (the wiring block diagrams are easy to find, but block diagrams don't show actual wiring paths), (b) that there is anything to indicate that water could reach such wiring in a way that could cause a short, or (c) that it actually did so. I don't have that kind of information.

All I can tell you, at this point, is that aviation experts are saying that a short at such a location would cause an engine shutdown and that Boeing was aware of this risk.

I will leave it to the experts to debate why they're using electrical signalling (it's slower than fibre, heavier than fibre, can corrode, and can short) and whether the FADEC fail-safes are all that safe or just plain stupid. For a start, they get paid to shout at each other, and they actually know what specifics to shout at each other about.

But, if the claims are remotely accurate, then there were a number of well-known flaws in the design and I'm sure Boeing will just love to answer questions on why these weren't addressed. The problem being, of course, is that none of us know which of said claims are indeed remotely accurate, and that makes it easy for air crash investigators to go easy on manufacturers.